After several hours of driving, our first venture off of the interstate didn't go exactly as planned. Instead of driving I-84 all the way to Scranton, PA, I had intended to take a scenic jaunt on PA-209 from Port Jervis to Stroudsburg through the Delaware Gap National Recreation Area. This was one of the roads marked with little green dots in the Rand McNally Road Atlas to signify a scenic route. Well, my friends, it turns out that this is a National Park site that prohibits all "commercial vehicles" from passing through. When we stopped at the entrance to the park, the park ranger peppered us with questions about the origin of our trip, our final destination, and most importantly, who owned the RV we were driving. Being forced to procure the RV rental documents added a nice TSA feeling to this encounter (we escaped without a pat-down). Since our RV was a rental, it was classified as a "commercial vehicle" and we weren't allowed to pass through the park. I was pretty pissed off and disappointed with this outcome, but we found our way back to the highway and settled for some lovely views of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre instead. (The car accident and heavy construction work that slowed us down to crawl speed made this detour even more special.) Why do I have an uneasy feeling that this "commercial vehicle" designation might come back to bite us in the butt again? Sigh. I just keep telling myself that we've got to "go with the flow." By this point in the trip, we had surprised Keiko and Amaya with early birthday presents of portable DVD players—one for each of them—and they took advantage of the interstate highway traveling time by watching some movies that we've all seen 500 times; they didn't seem too upset about any loss of scenery. Fittingly, Rachelle and I ended up listening to a Radioland podcast about stress. Go with the flow...
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