Techie stuff

Many of you who know Lee know that he loves his electronic equipment.  In addition, he drives the same way he pilots an airplane, planning everything in advance.  This is good, because it is difficult to do a u-turn in a 40' motorhome if he, or I, make a navigational mistake.  The redundancy is good as well, if one piece of equipment should fail.

When on the road, we have two GPS units on at all times.  We also have Lee's laptop readily available, with a program called "Streets and Maps", that allows for trip planning and includes rest stops and gas stations that accommodate trucks and other large vehicles.

I have my iPhone and iPad at the ready for emergency lookups.  For example, yesterday we were on the road.  I looked at my trusty app which shows rest areas on highways all across the United States.  There were none until just before our final stop, which was not helpful.  So I opened Google maps on my iPad, set it to the satellite view, and started looking for large expanses of parking lot near the freeway with wide roads for easy access.  I found a strip mall that on Google maps had a huge empty parking lot.  I crossed my fingers, hoping that what Google captured that day was the norm, and not an anomaly.  And voila, it worked out beautifully!

Here is the RV:

 
Parked at the edge of the wide open parking lot!

And here is what I saw on Google:

Do you see what I mean?  I love the Internet.  

You may ask how I was able to access my iPad on the road.  We have a Verizon 4G LTE wifi thingy that allows us to access the Internet anywhere where the Verizon signal is strong enough.  This isn't everywhere, but it works in most populated areas.  When Verizon doesn't work, I use my iPhone with At&T cell phone access.  Very rarely, we find ourselves in a location where neither works, but not often.  One such memorable location was the center of the remote northern peninsula of Michigan.

I mentioned above that we have two GPS units.  One is a Tomtom that came with the RV.  The other is a Rand McNally device, made specifically for RVs.  I plug in the size and weight of the RV and information about the towed vehicle.  The GPS then determines a route that avoids tunnels and bridges that are lower than the height of our vehicle; roads and bridges that have weight limitations; and roads with hairpin turns.

I have several useful websites bookmarked on my iPhone.  One I already mentioned, a website that shows, by map, all the rest areas on highways nationally.  For tunnel heights and weight limitations on roads and bridges, I use a couple of RV web sites that link to the department of transportation web sites for each of the states.  Many states have lists or maps of roads indicating those on which trucks and other big rigs, like ours, are restricted from travel.  The map below is of the Monterey Bay area of California.  Green lines show roads that are adequate.  The red-lined roads are restricted.  You can see from the map that Hwy 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, is off-limits to motorhomes 40 feet in length and over, south of Carmel.

A couple of more things that you may not have thought about:

Vehicles towing usually have a lower speed limit than other vehicles.  In California, we travel at 55 mph on freeways when the regular speed limit is 65.  Also, because we have a propane tank in the RV, our vehicle is not allowed to travel through certain tunnels.  This includes the tunnel that moves traffic under the harbor in Baltimore.  In California, the transportation code reads as follows, regarding a tunnel in the San Francisco Bay Area:


VEHICLE CODE
SECTION 31301-31309

31301.  (a) No person shall transport any explosive substance,
flammable liquid, liquefied petroleum gas or poisonous gas in a tank
truck, trailer, or semitrailer through the Caldecott Tunnel located
on State Highway, Route 24, near the Alameda-Contra Costa County
boundary, connecting Oakland with Contra Costa County in the East Bay
area at any time other than between the hours of 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. 

As you can see, it is our responsibility to plan carefully and do the research before we set out each day.  Who would have thought??  Fortunately, the Internet makes it easier than it would have been a few years ago.  Or perhaps back then, ignorance was bliss?  It makes me think of the trucks that occasionally got stuck under the bridge next to the train station in St. David's.  It happens more than you might think!