1. The first 1,000 miles….

First off – sorry to all our lovely friends (old and new) for not getting our acts together better and giving you an update sooner – there’s no excuse other than that we’ve just been having a blast and can’t believe where the time’s gone. We’ll get better…. promise!

So here’s a very abridged version of our first month or so. In fact, it’s so abridged that it doesn’t even mention any of the breweries that we’ve visited on our travels.

We finally collected Dolly from Motorcraft on Saturday 9th April with Geraldine flying out to Toronto on Tuesday 12th and the deadline for us dropping Dolly at Liverpool docks Thursday 14th. Not tight at all then!

Heading back from Doncaster it was obvious that Dolly’s gearbox needed attention. Again the chances of her catching her ship across the pond hung in the balance (we’d had to reserve her spot 3 months in advance and the thought of a 3 month delay when we’d already rented out our house filled us with dread).

It was the most stressful week imaginable; Geraldine flew out to visit Lindsey (daughter), Dan collected Dolly on the Wednesday, dropped her off in Liverpool on the Thursday and after a weekend back home flew out to meet me in Toronto the following Tuesday. That was it, we’d done it – we’d left!

We both learned a lot about American history in DC and took a ridiculous number of photos. Top highlights had to be the Martin Luther King Jnr memorial and the Smithsonian Air & Space museum. And yes, Dan got the cap.

From DC, we headed north towards New York, with a brief overnight stop in Philadelphia en-route to see the Liberty Bell. It was all very Hamilton’s.

Lindsey (gorgeous daughter who’d just finished an 8 month spell at the University of Alberta in Edmonton) joined us in NYC. Such a special time.

2 Air BnBs, two musicals and a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge later and the day we’d been waiting for finally arrived….. On Wednesday 4th May, we got the email to say that Dolly had cleared customs & was ready to collect. All we needed to take, was two copies of the delivery note and our high-viz vests. How difficult could that be??? After a few buses, trains a bit of legwork and then an uber because we someone how ended up stranded on a duel carriageway (don’t even ask) we arrived at Newark Docks. What a buzz! She was gleaming and started first time.

For the next couple of nights, Geraldine & Lindsey stayed in Air BnBs that had already been booked while Dan parked close by in Dolly. The first AirBnB was lovely, right up until the concrete pecker on the construction site adjacent started up at 6:30am! A quick rethink was required, which meant relocating from the Bronx (north of Manhattan) to Queens (south of Manhattan). Only a 25 mile journey according to Google maps – but it was 25 miles through Manhattan on a Friday afternoon in the rain…..

The drive was truly horrendous – taxis, pedestrians, buses, mini motorcycles low bridges and Parkways (which are for cars only). It took somewhere around 4 hours and poor Dan felt like he had PTSD afterwards.

After getting the thumbs up from Lindsey that she was happy to stay in the new Airbnb on her own, (inspite of seeing a mouse run out from behind the loo when she was on it !!!!!) Geraldine came to join Dan in the truck which was parked up under the “L” (elevated train track) in the next street.

At 3am as yet another train rumbled over head (they run every 8 mins 24/7) we decided to relocate to a spot in Brooklyn known as “Van Alley” that Dan had identified through a YouTube video.

When the sun came up, there it was, the Manhattan sky line out of our bedroom window.

Van Alley was a great location, really convenient for travelling into Manhattan, by a park and Brooklyn Brewery but boy was it a popular spot for the young squad! Guys would come down in their souped up motors, play rap music full tilt & smoke weed at all hours day & night – thankfully they were all absolute lovely. It was also there that we met the firemen from Engine 229 who use Van Alley for training on their water pump. They were as interested in Dolly as Geraldine was in them and they ended up inviting us to their fire house to pick up a sticker for Dolly.

It was also in Van Alley that we met Patrick who runs the YouTube channel New Jersey Outdoor Adventures. If was because of a van tour he had filmed a few months previously that we’d found Van Alley. He was interested in doing a tour of Dolly for his channel and we thought hey – why the hell not. We really enjoyed the filming with Patrick although Geraldine will probably always regret her wardrobe choice that day.

Another invitation we received while in Van Alley was to visit Brooklyn Campervans – a small company that converts vans into campers. We decided to swing by as we were leaving NYC to say hi. They were just a lovely bunch with real passion for what they do. They shared lots of good advice and pointed us in the right direction to getting the wifi in Dolly working – they even filled up our water tank for us.

Friday afternoon rush hour again, and another drive across Manhattan! It was utter stupidity and it took us around 3 hours to get out the other side – including a close call with a NY cop who was adamant that we were too tall to fit through the Holland Tunnel. Dan was confident he’d done his homework and we had 6 inches to spare (a lot to be said for 6 inches) and boldly ignored the cop’s directions nearly running him over in the process. Somehow we escaped NYC without a ticket and headed for Pennsylvania, where Kris, a fellow Unimog owner, had offered us to park up overnight on his land.

Kris and his wife Katy were a great couple in spite of having a baby and a part built house, they still invited us to join them for breakfast cooking us up brown sugar sausage and deer steaks that they’d killed themselves.

Pennsylvania is huge – one and a half times the area of Scotland. This gave the Amish community plenty of opportunity to evade Geraldine’s search. We sought them here, we sought them there but no joy.

From there it was on to Lake Erie where we met Sue. Like Geraldine, Sue is also a beach comber, a thrift shop hunter and is learning Spanish on Duolingo so needless to say they hit it off instantly and before long were trading beach treasures.

The route from there to Chicago included a stretch along the Ohio Turnpike. We were around 30 mins into the journey when a warning light lit up on the dashboard accompanied by a seriously loud alarm. Eek – first mechanical issue since we’d arrived. So we pulled over onto the hard shoulder and pulled out the manual to see what it meant. Overheating hydraulic oil was the diagnosis….. somehow we had knocked on the hydraulic oil pump for the winch and luckily all we had to do was turn it off again. Prostate cancer has its side effects, so it wasn’t just the manual that was pulled out. Dan took the opportunity to relieve himself against the side of Dolly – just as the Ohio State Troopers pulled up.

Geraldine jumped into action – distracting them whilst Dan made himself decent again. Dolly of course won the Troopers over and they ended up giving us a recommendation to visit Portillo’s hot dogs when in Chicago – which Dan duly heeded.

Several people we’d met had warned us about Chicago not being very safe, so we were a tad apprehensive as we approached, needless to say wearing our sunglasses ( even though it wasn’t dark and we didn’t have 1/2 a packet of fags). The first night, we stayed some way out of the city at a “Cabela’s” hunting & fishing store. This is a chain of stores that allows recreational vehicles (RVs) and lorries to park up overnight in their car park. Sounds great until you experience the comings and goings of all the lorries through the night. A quick consultation with the “iOverlander” app suggested a place much closer to the city centre just north of downtown Chicago. We relocated there that morning and found a parking spot in a residential area only 10 mins from the “L” – their metro system.

After a couple of nights in Chicago, we woke up with no electricity. We’d parked under a tree and it had been raining, so the solar panels hadn’t had a chance to charge up Dolly’s batteries. So that morning we had a mission on our hands – Dan headed off in one direction to buy a portable generator while Geraldine headed off in another to buy a power cable for the transformer that we’d luckily bought over from the UK. Just as we were connecting everything up and filling up the generator, a very animated chap jumped out of his car shouting “it’s a Unimog – what’s that doing in Chicago?”.

This turned out to by Chris who we became the best of friends with over the next week. Chris became our guide to Chicago (and Alaska), our PO Box, drinking buddy and social media guru. We hope to meet up with him again, in Chicago, Alaska or possibly Mexico.

As if Chicago couldn’t get any better then Lindsey stopped by, en route from Philadelphia to Toronto. She stayed 5 nights with us. As well as going to “Six” with Geraldine, Buddy Guy’s and then Top Gun with both of us and on the day it was released (if you haven’t seen it, go) she also managed to source a student rate ticket to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Happy Days.

Just before she left, there was a shootout in broad daylight on the street just a block from where we’d been parked up for the previous 6 nights. No doubt about it – it was definitely time to move on. So Lindsey spent her last night at a hostel, ready for an early flight the next day, and we headed to a marina to get a view of the Memorial Day fireworks that were being let off on Navy Pier. We met a number of representatives of Illinois’ Law Enforcement Community at the marina – but thankfully Geraldine didn’t bend over and let them see her shake her tail feathers.