Oneonta, NY (05-28-11)

         The last few days have flown by. Paul and I met up with Elaine and Robert, our internet/blogging friends we had never met in person until now. They are from England, and travel in their RV throughout this country for a few months at a time, flying home to England for a few months between visits. Like us, they are having such a good time living this life, they have no concrete plans for ending their journey.
We were so  busy exploring, hiking and visiting, and it's hard to believe we have already left them!  As usual, whenever I am with people, I forget to take pictures. I'll try to do better while I am in Boston, but I hope nobody holds their breath.
             Our first day of exploring started with Cooperstown, home of Baseball's Hall of Fame. We meandered through the downtown and waterfront area, but all 4 of us were in agreement that the Baseball aspect of the town didn't capture our interest. I, of course, am a Red Sox fan, but I just like to watch them play, I am not interested in collecting signed baseballs and trying out different styles of bats.






        We soon headed to the "Beverage trail" which consisted of two wineries and two breweries, so there was something for everyone- except Paul, who doesn't drink much wine and won't touch beer at all. But, since he was our driver, that worked out perfectly for the rest of us!  The first place we stopped had a cider mill, with a small room that had exhibits explaining the process of making cider etc. It was the biggest of the venues, with a large store and a small restaurant.



Ommengang Brewery beer lesson


From there we moved on to the nicer of the two breweries, Ommegang.  Their beer is brewed in traditional Belgian ways and I admit I really liked a few of  them. There are two ways to infuse bubbles into beer, and Ommegang uses the natural method as opposed to injecting CO2 into it. We toured this brewery and found it to be well-run, clean and interesting.  After the tour,  the guide taught us a little about each beer before giving us a taste.  It was all well done. 



They were having a few issues that day because the storms we had the previous evening had knocked out the electricity, and it hadn't been restored yet, but they were up to the challenge.

 The second brewery that we went to wasn't up to the same standards as the first one, but we still enjoyed it, as well as the 2nd winery.  Our plans were to go over to Elaine and Robert's for dinner that night, but we didn't get around to eating lunch until the 4th stop on our route, so no one was really hungry for dinner.
     Saturday was a different story however.  The four of us spent the day at Gilbert Lake State Park, hiking around the lake, finding geocaches ( I think we found 3) and dodging raindrops.  We hiked about 5.5 miles and along the way came across some downed power lines.  We managed to walk around them but we could see where they had scorched the grass when the lines fell, which made it a bit spooky to walk over them. 


hiking with the power lines ( they were not "live")

      Dinner was at Elaine and Robert's that night and we were all pretty hungry.  Homemade pizza.  I gotta say, it doesn't get better than that!  The special beer from the brewery did add to the ambiance as well though.  After a great night of food and conversation, we called it a day.
        Yesterday Paul and Robert worked on a problem Robert was having with his motorhome for a while, after which Paul and I did some errands, and in general just goofed around for the afternoon.  Dinner was at our "house" this time.  Paul made his Chile Rellenos and once again the food and conversation were great.
    This morning we took off and arrived in Massachusetts early this afternoon.

This is a test

A test of the comment system.  I have changed the settings on my comments to see if it resolves the issues people have been having when trying to post a comment to my blog.
  A real blog post should be coming shortly.

A new truck becomes "Ours"

Lack of consistent internet has caused this post to be delayed by one day:




 

After waiting (im)patiently at Keystone State Park to pick up our new F450, the transaction is finally complete! Once the title to our old truck was forwarded to the dealer, we met with them and finalized the sale. Luckily there were no glitches and no hold-ups. The salesman thought it was pretty cool that he didn’t have to go over any of the truck’s systems with Paul, since Paul pretty much knew more than he did. This truck has so many more features than I even knew, it’s amazing. It can be programmed so that it knows

 how many miles and hours it tows our 5th wheel, and we can program multiple trailers into the memory bank. I will no longer have to write down our “towing miles” to have a record of it.



the hitch goes in last



Of course, the navigation system was one of the main things we wanted and it is user friendly enough that I had our destination programmed within seconds. It does have all kinds of added features that we will have to learn over time. One thing it doesn’t seem to have is the ability to add custom Points Of Interest, which is disappointing because I would have liked to program in Low Clearance bridges across the country.

 
 

With the Sirius Radio, we have instant weather, a 5 day weather forecast, and a weather map, all of which we can access with a push of a button or a voice command. We can also find the nearest and/or cheapest diesel fuel in the area, a very nice perk. I don’t know if we’ll keep all that ability once our complimentary subscription is up, but for now we’ll enjoy it.

Once we got back to the campsite, it took us (mostly Paul) about 5 hours to make the truck “ours”. We pulled off some graphics, and added our toolbox and hitch.  It was a hot and sticky day for working outside, but very satisfying that everything went together well.

Keystone State Park comes to life

    I guess it was the combination of good weather and a Saturday that caused the park to come alive.  We went from seeing about 10 people a day to seeing hundreds, mostly people fishing, but lots of people camping with their kids.  The rain finally stopped, so that was a plus as well.  We walked two trails in the last few days, and they are still extremely sloppy and mushy.  At one point we had to turn around because the water was too deep to get through. I am glad I wore my high profile boots that are (mostly) waterproof. The trails are ok in general but still have some winter damage- trees that our down, or partially down, which is actually more dangerous.  Paul was afraid one of them would fall, so he pushed on it to make it fall all the way down, so it wouldn't land on anyone.
   Friday we found out that the truck title did indeed make it to our box in Livingston TX,  which means the end is in sight!  However, Fedex had already been and gone, so they can't ship it to us until Monday, for arrival here on Tuesday.  At least we know that it will get here though, so we can relax a little bit.


Keystone Lake

     We've rented a few movies over the last couple of days- Inception was one of them. I guess I understood most of it, but it wasn't my favorite movie of all time.  I did really enjoy The Tourist though.  We don't usually rent too many movies, but with all the bad weather we've had, we are running out of indoor things to do.  Paul has no "projects" for this trailer, since we'll only have it for a month or so.
     Hopefully the next pictures I post will be of our new truck!

We don't fish, therefore we just wait....and wait.

      We're sitting here at Keystone State Park in Derry PA.  Its a fairly small state park with a very pretty lake that is stocked with fish.  There are a lot of people fishing, even though the weather has been anything but cooperative. I think we've had about 4 daylight hours that it hasn't been raining, since we got here.  We went for a nice walk yesterday but I forgot to bring my camera.  If we get a break in the action tomorrow, we'll try to go for another walk.  Everyone I talk to has complaints about the weather, wherever they happen to be.  After a really lousy winter, the spring has not been much of an improvement.
  We're waiting here because we goofed.  We've been so busy for the last month or so working out all the details of buying a new truck and trailer, and moving our residence to Texas, that we forgot one detail.  I guess that's not too bad, considering all the things we've had to deal with.  We are here in Derry to buy a new F450 from the local dealer.  Unfortunately, we have not yet received our new Texas title for our truck, so we can't trade it in yet.  We have been in contact with the state of Texas, and they have assured us that it should be arriving any day now.  Arriving at our mailbox in Livingston TX, that is.  Then we'll have to overnight it to the dealer here in PA.  We don't have anywhere we have to be until next Thursday, so if we have to sit here for that long, we will. We're not anxious to move this trailer too often. We both feel like we're walking on eggshells, hoping nothing breaks before we trade it in.
    Memorial Day weekend is one of those "musical chair" weekends.  It's one of the few times that we really need to make a reservation, if we want to be sure of someplace to stay, especially here in the east, where RV parks are fewer and further between.   I had already begun researching where we might want to stay but hadn't found anything.  We need it to be within 300 miles of Boston, because we have reservations there starting on Memorial Day itself.  My dilemma was actually resolved without much effort on my part.  There is  a couple that we are friends with, although we've never met them, who happen to be in the NY/PA area as well, and we've been keeping an eye one each other's location, to see if we can catch up and finally meet face to face.  As it happens, they have booked a campground in NY, about 240 miles from Boston, for Memorial Day weekend, so I quickly called and made reservations at the same park.  We will finally get to meet them!

Are we having fun yet? or.......

A Day From Hell. 
That was yesterday.  Seemed like everything we touched turned to you know what.
     We left Indiana early in the morning because we had to make it to the RV park in Michigan 260 miles away, park the trailer and drive 65 miles to pick up a part for the truck, before the place closed at 3 pm.
The ride was uneventful, except when we pulled over to take a quick break, we saw that the globe to the ceiling fan light had fallen and smashed into a bazillion little shards of glass.  Ugh.  There was nothing we could do at that point so we waited until we got to the RV park.  Problem number 2 happened when we tried to get in the trailer when we arrived in MI.  The door wouldn't open.  We have keyless entry, which we tried, then we tried the key, etc etc.  It took Paul 20 minutes and a pair of pliers to get the door open.  Once he did, he told me I wouldn't want to look inside.  Apparently the refrigerator in this trailer has a touchy clasp that is difficult to close and yup, it wasn't closed, so as we were driving down the road the refrigerator was spewing its contents all over the floor and carpet.  I think the eggs and the pickle juice were the worst.
  It was about 87 degrees inside the trailer, so Paul got the AC going as soon as he could.  It couldn't keep up though, because I was running the vacuum, creating a lot of heat.  Do you know how long it takes to make sure you vacuum up every single little piece of glass, so that the cat won't cut himself?  A long time!  So long, that we were very close to not being able to get the truck part.   When we realized how late it was, we dropped everything, didn't take time to eat, and just drove off to go get the part.  Luckily they knew we were coming, so they waited for us.   That's when the day took a turn for the better.  We did have trouble getting in the trailer again when we got back, but Paul made some adjustments to the lock and he thinks its OK now.
   We have some stuff to drop off at our storage locker and a few things to get from it, as well.   We'll stick around here until Sunday morning, then take off for Pennsylvania.

Happy Mother's Day!

     So far, it's been a pretty good one for me!  Paul cooked breakfast (as usual) and then we went for a 4 mile walk.  Afterwards, I spoke to my son on the phone for almost an hour.  Can't wait to get to Boston to see him! My daughter and her fiance came over for a late lunch.  David is leaving Muncie today.  He has finished school and after stopping at his parents in Wisconsin for a bit, will be headed to California for an internship in the film industry.

David and Jess

   Paul made it back from Texas with no car issues, after spending a week with his mom. The day he arrived home happened to be Cinco De Mayo, so of course we picked up the kids (in their Lincoln) and headed to the nearest Mexican restaurant for dinner.  The Lincoln he brought back with him is an early (very generous!) wedding present for the kids, from Paul's mother-her 2000 Lincoln LS.  The kids were tremendously excited about their wedding gift, and I admit, its nice peace of mind for me to know Jess has something reliable to drive!  So, thank you Gerry!  

     I'm not sure where the time went when Paul was gone, but it sure did fly by.   I did go for a bike ride the day I planned to, but it was a long short bike ride.  It wasn't that many miles but the first half  I had a tail wind and on the way back I had a head wind that was so strong and tough to battle that when I put my leg down to stop for a minute, it didn't hold my weight, I was that tired!  Ugh.    Since that day I've gone walking several times and I am hoping to go for another bike ride tomorrow, IF the weather cooperates, which it really hasn't been doing lately.  I must say, after being back in the Midwest for a while, the deserts of the west are growing on me. The constant sunshine, lack of humidity and milder temperatures are fond memories. A lot of my full timing friends are still in the western states, and I admit I am somewhat jealous and can't wait to get back there.  All in good time though.  I wouldn't give up spending time with the kids for anything.
    One of the ways I have kept busy for the last week was by finalizing the specifications for our new Mobile Suite 5th wheel.  Call us spoiled, but we have decided to go forward with the purchase of our "new" new trailer, for a lot of reasons, actually (that I am not going to get into here).  We ordered it last Tuesday and it should be built by mid-June or so.  We'll know the timing better next week.  We went back to the factory to look at interior colors and make those choices, and also to discuss some of the customizations we have ordered.  I can't even post pictures of existing units and say that's what we are getting because some of the changes we're making are changing the look of the interior.  We sort of took one floor plan and substituted in parts that we liked from other floor plans, and then put in some of our own ideas as well.
   Now that we've ordered the 5th wheel, we need to buy a new truck to pull it. Ours won't tow that much weight, so we are looking to get a 2011 F450.  We've gone round and round on this one- debating 350 vs. 450 and 2011 vs. 2012.  It's too late to order one and have it be a 2011, and Paul, after talking to his buddies at Ford, has decided he doesn't want a 2012. They are downsizing the brakes, apparently.  Plus, because of the Tsunami in Japan, you can't order one with a navigation system until further notice.
So, we have been searching dealer lots trying to find one that will fit our needs.  We finally found one in Pennsylvania, and we're hoping its still there when we head that way next week.