Thompson, CT to Lancaster, PA

Wednesday, August 2nd 2023

We pulled out of Branch Brook Campground in Thompson, Connecticut at about 7am for another longer than we would like of a drive. Our fist stop was at Stormville Rest Stop in Stormville, NY at about 8:15 am. Our next stop was at the Kill Wall Rest Stop on I-84 in Kill Wall, NY at about 9 am.

On the recommendation from an old-timer at Branch Brook, we choose to go through Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. It was a very beautiful drive and we would highly recommend it for anyone that is going that way. At about 10:45 am we stopped at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center in Delaware Water Gap, PA. It was a very nice visitor’s center with lots of parking.

Pennsylvania Welcome Center in Delaware Water Gap, PA.

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Interactive Map of our Route

We then made one more stop at the Onvo Travel Plaza in New Smithville, PA. After almost 2 more hours of driving and papa turning down a short, but big rig unfriendly country road we showed up at Thousand Trails Circle M in Lancaster, PA at about 2:15 in the afternoon. It was “unfriendly” because turn on to the road was steep making us use our rollers, some of the branches over the road were too short so we scraped, and the turn off the road was too tight so we took both lanes of both roads.

One of the little quirks with most Thousand Trails is that they are first-come, first-serve. To make things more interesting, some are a hybrid with basic sites (normally power and water only) and another pay section with full-hookups and normally higher-quality sites. We were assigned to the ‘River Side’ area that cannot fit anything longer than about 36 feet. When we pulled in and the Manager noticed that the staff missed that we were 45 feet long, she gave us a free upgrade to the full-hookup area.