Maybe Lums Pond State Park if we leave a day early!

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Wednesday -April 15 – Lums Pond State Park –Delaware—Site24

We stopped at Lums Pond on our Eastern Seaboard Trip last year so if we leave on the 15th we will try to stop here again.  Nice place but very basic but good for the first

Long day and rain at the end!

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1.      Lums Pond State Park – Wednesday, April 15 – one night

           Lums Pond State Park, Bear , Delaware   number of sites 67- April 15 with electricity.  Site 16  Cost for an out of stater $26 with electricity using a senior citizen discount

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              This is a 68 site campground with modern showers, a dumping station, picnic tables and grills.  It is a self-checkin but there are a few hosts sites if you have a problem and the rangers come around in the early evening to check on everyone. There are also  4 horse campsites.  They had also just built a new ranger station at the entrance to the campground this year.  We always try to camp at Lums Pond State Park at least as our first stopover heading south from Rhode Island.  It is beautiful but the sites don’t have much privacy even though they are good size sites.  The trees are getting taller and it is a great place for families and for one to ride their bikes but this time Delaware had soaking rain for a day and a half when we got there so no bike riding.  We were lucky that it wasn’t raining in New England and the rain had turned to showers in NJ so driving wasn’t a problem. 

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There are about 8 sites and some Yurts that have electricity and you can make reservations even the day before like I did.   Our site 16 can hold an RV over 45 feet but because of the heavy rains the site was very muddy but most sites looked quite dry considering the down pour that these sites had.  We were able to find sections of our site quite dry and level but we only have an RV that is 25 feet.  It is a good thing I made reservations because another woman paid for the site but I was able to show my printed out reservation confirmation.  All the electic sites were taken by 5 in the afternoon.

  As I reviewed this campground last year the bathrooms were very clean.  If one drove around to the other side of the pond there was a boat rental place and picnic sites.  They used to let you swim on the other side but because of state budgets cuts with lifeguards and a high bacteria count that has been stopped.  In the campground there is a trail that goes around the whole pond and there is also a fishing pier.  Follow the directions off the website not your GPS by taking 1A off of I95 in Delaware (much faster than by route 13).  It is a good stopover for those from New England and especially if you plan to go down the eastern shore route through Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

Our day – We had planned to leave our house at 3 AM in the morning to get through CT, NY and part of NJ by the peak traffic times of 6 to 10 just like last year.  Since we spent last week visiting our youngest daughter Justine in LA where she is a first year teacher and it was a work vacation – selling her our car, visiting the DMV and many other things that parents do to try to help out we were exhausted.  We got back late Sat night and had packed the RV somewhat but we still had so much work to do to try to get it ready to leave early Wednesday morning.  It was a mutual decision that we just couldn’t go to bed late after midnight and then get up at 2:45 am to drive a long day (310 miles in a RV).  Therefore we decided to leave at 8 AM but actually left a little later because of problems with our refrigerator.

     Off we went and luck would have it that the drenching rainstorm that NY and the middle Atlantic states got overnight and during the day New England did not.  We had light showers in NJ and into Delaware and reached our campground before the heavy rains began again.  This was our first long trip with our new RV and with diesel gas (ULSD) so we stopped twice on the CT 95 interstate and missed filling up at one because you have to come in at the right angle and George did not know if it was ULSD so mom got out and went into the garage to find out.  Continuing on – since George’s bike can no longer be stored in the RV and has to go outside with mom’s of course he had to cover it.  Well, we almost lost our cover on the way with people tooting at us etc and we were in NYC at the time so we had to wait to get over the GW bridge before we could fix it.  I wanted to take the cover  off but George did not want his super, duper LLBean bike to get wet.  When he covers it - it hides the left blinker so I pull it back enough so that cars behind can see it because I refuse to drive with our blinkers being covered!!!!  We figured out how to cover it and see the light.  We also stopped on the NJ turnpike to try to figure out where to park a RV there were so many trucks there and which pumps are ULSD – stopped 3 times because one we could not find a place to park.  The last reststop the guy started talking to someone else while he was pumping our gas and let the thing overflow all over the side of the camper while George gave out a war cry to watch what he was doing.  We used our EZ pass which is so much easier paying tolls because we don’t have to try to find the one place where they take cash and it is not stop and go.  The NJ turnpike still has the cheapest gas even diesel almost 70 cents cheaper than CT.

    Finally, we arrived around 3 in the afternoon safe and sound but exhausted.  We ate a late lunch and then George had a nap until his son woke him up on the cell.   Plans are for just staying inside the RV with our computer, TV and good books.  Glad this first day is almost over since this is our longest day to drive and right now the weather is not good but the forecast is good for the next 5 days with the temperature going up to the high 70’s.