Leaving VA, Part 2

We are just outside of Toledo Ohio today.  I am going to start each post by telling you whee we are.  Just so we are all on the same page, so to speak.

So, picking up from yesterday,, there we were, rolling north on I-95, finally on our way.  We got to Washington DC, negotiated the "mixing bowl" and continued on into Maryland.  At Gaithersburg, Susan had a lump-in-the-throat moment as she passed Shady Grove Road Exit, where her culinatry school is located, but we went on nonetheless, relentless, pushing ever northward.

Maryland rolled by without incident.  The cats were contented in their cat carriers. in the air conditioned pickup, and the International rolled steadily north.  We stopped at Hagerstown for tuna fish (for the cats) and sandwiches for the humans, and to allow the International to cool down.  Heavily loaded, it was struggling with the steadily rising grades.  A brief time later found us struggling upward through the Allegheny Mountains.  Drive a while, the truck overheats, we stop, it cools off, we go on again.  Gradually, I came to understand that, at 2200 RPM, the International would run pretty much all day with very few problems.  The kicker comes in when you begin to slow down.  I realized that 2200 is the key.  Not 55 MPH, but 2200 RPM.  So, we go 55 or 35 or 20.  So we go, slow but steady.

Eventually we made Breezewood PA and took of down the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  With 2200 RPM as my manytra, we proceeded down the PA Turnpike to Madison PA, where we stopped at a lovely little KOA for the night.  They had a fishing pond there that cried our for my fly rod and, had we been staying a few days, we might have dined on fresh fish.  Alas, it was not to be.  Trouble lucked just past the dawn.  I will write of it tomorrow.   (Spoiler alert:  it worked out OK.)