They say if you can pull a U-Haul trailer with your RV through New York City, you can pull one anywhere. Or something like that. I would like to think so anyway since we hooked a trailer to our campervan and did just that – delivering a load of furniture to our youngest child living in Brooklyn.

I’ll confess, Julia and I were both a little anxious at the prospect of driving through Manhattan and Brooklyn and then parking on a narrow city street. But it all worked out well. Our campground was right on the Hudson River in New Jersey, so on a Saturday morning we first took the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan. Easy peasy.

Traffic was busy but moving steadily. Other drivers let us change lanes along the way without so much as a hurry-up honk. And cars could still squeeze by as we double-parked in front of our daughter’s apartment to unload. I was a little concerned about blocking in already parked cars but had forgotten the first rule of congested city parking: once you find a place to park your car, you will avoid moving it at all costs.

Speaking of Costs

It was probably a good idea that we did not check the fares for the toll bridges and tunnels ahead of time. Ignorance is bliss. We drove through the Holland Tunnel three times while visiting New York City. The final time was on a weekday morning as we were departing for Vermont. I later checked our EZ Pass account online to see why it needed replenishing multiple times daily. Staring me in the face was the cost of this single weekday tunnel drive: Forty-four dollars. One way. One time. To cross the Hudson River.

Of course, there were many more charges to the account thanks to Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other tunnels and bridges in New York. In less than a week, our tollway costs totaled more than what we run up on our Oklahoma Pike Pass account for three vehicles in a year.

Life in the Underground

We were in New York for only a few days. When not delivering furniture, we would board the train near our campground, and after a 10-minute ride from Jersey City under the Hudson River,  would arrive at the World Trade Center. From there we hopped on a subway to Brooklyn. After a day of doing this, we no longer felt like complete amateurs. We never got on the wrong line. We got off the right one once when we thought it was the wrong one. But no harm, no foul. Ten minutes later we were back on board the next one that stopped.

Before we ever boarded our first train, we researched and downloaded several apps to help us navigate our commute below the streets of New York. They were all pretty much indecipherable. We then asked our daughter what app we should use, and she responded “Uh, Google Maps”. This was excellent advice as it gave us accurate and understandable real-time directions on how to get from A to B to C on the MTA. Wide-eyed neophytes no longer.

Fastest Ain’t Always Best

For our departure to Vermont, we selected the “fastest” route on Google Maps. After taking us through the Holland Tunnel for that one last fleecing, it had us traveling north through Manhattan, hugging the Hudson River and then through Yonkers on a very scenic route. There was just one little glitch with this route. Somewhere after leaving Manhattan, this road was no longer meant for vehicles taller than a pick-up truck. It just so happens our van is 9 feet 8 inches tall. Google Maps may be great navigating below the city streets, but it is not the best app for an RV driving on the streets of New York.

In order to drive under several of the picturesque stone archway bridges planted along the way, we had to quickly move to the inside lane on what was a busy thoroughfare. Even with this move we had only a few inches to spare under a couple bridges. The stress of it all resembled a nightmarish geometry pop-quiz: quick, at what point does a 9’ 8” tall object traveling north at 65 miles per hour intersect an immovable stone arc with a height of a 7’ 3” at the right edge of the outside lane? Or something like that. After it became apparent we had entered the seventh circle of bridge hell, we exited and took an alternate route. This detour added an hour to our journey but left both our van and sanity intact.