Archive for Uncategorized
August 30, 2007 at 9:08 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
After a somewhat delayed start this morning, we managed to get our little parade (truck, Airstream, car) on the rural roads of east-central New York again. We make a rather conspicuous caravan, with bright shiny Airstream leading the way and the vivid orange Honda trailing close behind like a whale calf. Woe to those who get in between Eleanor and I on the road — the Airstream is difficult to pass on rural roads, and the Honda Fit is so nimble that Eleanor can trap or intercept any vehicle that dares to separate us.
As we were heading north toward the New York State Thruway, we encountered a downhill grade along Rt 28 heading toward Mohawk, with ominous signs warning of the danger. A mandatory pull-out for “cars towing trailers” brought me to a stop and a large billboard that explained the workings of the runaway truck ramp. It was sort of like a pre-flight safety briefing, except without the flight attendant. I’ve never encountered such an elaborate program before, and yet after all that the downhill grade was only about two miles and seemed relatively mild compared to many western grades we’ve traversed. Still, every time I encounter a steep downgrade I shift down and give thanks for the Kodiak disc brake upgrade.
I thought traveling as a pair of vehicles would be an enormous pain, but it has actually been very nice and convenient. Eleanor has no trouble staying with me, and with walkie-talkies we are able to stay in touch easily. I have the GPS and lead the way with the Airstream, so navigation is simple and there’s no risk of Eleanor turning somewhere that I can’t with the big rig.
The campgrounds have so far been very accommodating about the second vehicle. Tonight’s stop is Letchworth State Park in western NY. There’s a vehicle day-use fee of $6 here, so it does cost us a little more but nobody blinks an eye at our request for a second vehicle pass at the campsite. And for an overnight stop it’s great to leave the trailer hitched up and hop in the Fit for a look around.
Lower Falls at Letchworth State Park
This park is called “The Grand Canyon of the East” for the long deep gorge that runs through the center for about ten miles. Tomorrow it will fill up for the Labor Day weekend, but today it is half empty. We encountered hardly anyone when we hiked the trail to the Lower Falls, one of three major falls in the park.
Bridge over gorge narrows, near Lower Falls
This park has the look of a great summer destination. There’s swimming in several spots, plenty of trails to hike, a great campground, scenic overlooks, a restaurant, an historic mansion, visitor center, etc. The weather has been gray and damp this evening, giving the park a muted tone. Outside our screen door insects and frogs are making a musical racket, and while there’s a faint whiff of sweet wood smoke, there are few other signs of neighbors. We may have hit it just right by arriving a day before the big rush. Tomorrow, we will press on to Ohio.
August 29, 2007 at 9:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Our host arranged for a little tour of the nearby Limestone Mansion Bed & Breakfast inn next door. This very impressive Victorian house looms just outside the back yard of our courtesy parking spot, and I was immediately intrigued by the Italianate style. It reminded me of an 1855 Italianate style Victorian we used to own many years ago.
But this house is much bigger and beautifully restored. It’s also obviously made of limestone, chosen specifically because the first house burned down. Since this is the end of the season and only one guest was in residence, we were able to walk through all but one of the fourteen bedrooms, plus the kitchen, pantry, basement, and common areas. It is a spectacular structure, with ornate details everywhere, from marvelous painted ceiling medallions and gumwood railings inside, to quoyne blocks and scalloped slate Mansard roof outside. So as fans of Victorian style, every room was fascinating to Eleanor and I.
The Limestone Mansion is a relative latecomer to Cherry Valley. Many of the residences in the historic center are from the Colonial era, including the house we are parked beside. The town was lucky to be an important stop on a turnpike from Albany, then fortunate again to be completely bypassed, thus preserving much of the town’s architecture. First the Erie Canal stole traffic away from the Cherry Valley Turnpike, and then the NY Central Railroad did the same, and finally Route 20 and the NY State Thruway (I-90) left Cherry Valley as virtually a time capsule.
But unlike so many other New England towns that have been bypassed, Cherry Valley avoided becoming a run-down fragment of itself. Importantly, its architecture and downtown survived, giving it a small-town appeal with an attractive walkable center. The town is again thriving as a tourist stop and a place for visitors to nearby Cooperstown to find a choice of quiet B&B’s. Students of New Urbanism could take lessons from Cherry Valley.
Late this afternoon the UPS truck arrived bearing replacement parts for our hitch. With the help of our host (who really did most of the work), the parts were installed in about 20 minutes, the hitch was re-assembled, and re-greased. We’re ready to go again. I’ve posted some photos of the broken parts at Airforums if you are interested in the forensic details.
By 4:30 I had the grease cleaned off my hands, but it was too late to go anywhere, so we’re spending another lovely night in Cherry Valley. Tomorrow we’ll start heading west in earnest, toward Labor Day weekend with friends in Ohio.
August 28, 2007 at 9:31 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The day didn’t turn out as expected, but it turned out better. This afternoon blog reader and fellow Airstreamers Bruce and his wife Lena dropped by for a visit, and then Eleanor came back to cook dinner for our hosts and it turned into a party.
Lena, Bruce, and Sprocket
Eleanor did some serious shopping about fifteen miles from here for this dinner event. I was in charge of grilling and Emma was in charge of food delivery from the Airstream to the poolside cabana. I grilled steak, salmon, portabella mushrooms, onions, and eggplant. Eleanor also made couscous, two different green salads, and a favorite appetizer of fresh fig with goat cheese.
Wendy and her parents came bearing wine, along with Wendy’s roommate, the three of us, Bruce and Lena, for a total of nine people at a long table set up poolside.
With work and the change in plans, we never did get to roam Cherry Valley. But we’ll try again tomorrow, while waiting for UPS to deliver the hitch part we need. It looks like we may need to stay another night, which would be fine, but we won’t know until tomorrow. It depends on work and when the UPS truck arrives. We have three invitations for courtesy parking tomorrow night, counting here, so we won’t be hurting for a place to stay no matter what.
August 26, 2007 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This morning Emma was recruited over to Rick and Sandi’s trailer to help make breakfast. Rick likes to put together a big breakfast on weekends away, and since today was the day to go crawling around in a cold wet cave, he didn’t hold back.
After a leisurely breakfast, we headed over to the hamlet of Clarksville to visit the cave. It’s long been informally open to the public but in the past few years the cave has been purchased by the Northeast Cave Conservancy and is now managed. Access is still governed by the loose policy of not identifying the exact cave location. If you want to visit, it’s best to go with someone who knows the place.
It’s also good to go with someone who knows the basics about caving in the northeast. Caves here usually run in the mid-40s all the time, and are damp. This cave requires wading through knee-deep and occasionally waist-deep water which is about 55 degrees, and there are numerous low crawls and plenty of mud. So you need to be prepared, with three sources of light per person, clothes that stay warm when wet, kneepads, helmets, a map, snacks, and at least half a brain. Hypothermia, and injuries from falls do kill people in caves who don’t pay attention to safety.
Eleanor and I have visited this cave many times but not in several years. This visit we were disappointed to find a lot of trash and some graffiti in the cave. Apparently people have come in here to drink beer and dump their empties and used glow sticks all over the place. We gathered a bag of trash on our way out, but there’s plenty more in there. (And look what somebody else left in a cave!)
Emma’s first “wild” caving trip was a huge success, for all of us. Emma loved it, even the cold, wet, and muddy parts — which was pretty much all of it. She and Eleanor left through the main entrance after about two hours, but Rick, Sandi, and I continued to explore another arm of the cave for another hour and finally exited through a different entrance.
Just up the road is John Boyd Thacher State Park, which sits atop a limestone escarpment and thus offers a spectacular view of the land below. We took this route back to our campground so Rick and Sandi could take in the view, and enjoy some open space and sunshine after our hours in the cave.
The little state campground we are camped at (not a “state park” for some reason) seems to be dominated by seasonal residents, who have set up little tent cities on their sites. Across the way from us the residents have hung a carved wood sign declaring themselves “The Governor of Thompson Lake”, and our neighbors (not to be outdone) have a similar sign calling themselves “The Mayor of Thompson Lake”. It’s a friendly place where most people seem to know each other, but it also feels more like a residential park because of all the settlement.
Rick and Sandi hung around into the early evening, but finally had to go back home so they could be at work on Monday. I don’t have to go anywhere but I will also be back at work on Monday, alas, trying to finalize the Winter magazine. We’ve got a few days of courtesy parking planned just a short distance west of here.
August 25, 2007 at 10:04 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We have departed Vermont after our two month stay, much to the relief (I think) of many blog readers who were getting tired of me ranting about yogurt and wakeboards to fill the days when we didn’t go anywhere. But believe it or not, most full-timers settle into a place for weeks at a time. It’s fairly typical and even an essential part of full-timing. It’s part of the balancing act that makes this lifestyle work.
Not that it was easy to go. Not only did we have to leave family and friends behind, but we had one big task left on Friday: loading the moving truck. Eleanor and I arrived at our storage unit at 10 a.m., but the driver was late and ended up arriving at 4 p.m. Not only that, but the temperature soared well into the upper 80s (a strange occurrence this late in the season in northern Vermont) and the humidity rose too.
So it was not a cheery event for us, loading a late truck on a sweaty Friday afternoon when we had many other things to do. But Eleanor and I managed to do the job in about two hours and still get back to the beach by 7:30 to attend a small gathering of friends and family who had come to say goodbye. We picked up the newly-cleaned and detailed Armada at 9:30 and crashed into bed with lists of preparations still to be done first thing in the morning.
We are, finally, completely free of the storage units we had in Vermont. That’s a financial and mental relief. (Of course our house in Arizona could be considered a very expensive storage unit since we don’t yet live in it.) Our personal possessions have been culled down to a manageable pile, and should become even fewer after we take another look at them this winter. Now the challenge will be to keep the pile from overtaking us again in the next house.
Our first night “on the road” in a while is in a state campground not far from Albany NY. Fellow Airstreamers Rick and Sandi are here as well, to join us tomorrow morning on a caving expedition. Right now thunder is rumbling overhead and there is some rain, but earlier it was a nice — if humid — late summer day. Thompson Lake State Campground has a sandy beach and a roped-off swimming area, where we spent most of the afternoon standing in the water while catching up with Rick and Sandi.
Rick made us a hearty stew for dinner and Sandi broke out a toy ball made of glow sticks for after-dinner entertainment. This was a huge hit with Emma. I was playing with a new wide angle lens of Rick’s (Nikkor 12-24 zoom) which is ideal for interior photography of Airstreams, and with a steady hand I managed to capture some time exposures of the ball bouncing around.
August 22, 2007 at 10:47 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I’m still not going to call it a nip in the air but this is the fourth night in a row that we’ve had to run the furnace at night. (As far as I’m concerned, a “nip in the air” requires frost on the ground in the morning.) But it is getting chilly. Last night the lake finally calmed down and we got some good boarding in until sunset, but I was shivering all through dinner as I dried off. Normally I don’t even bother with a towel, but eating on the outdoor deck with the temperatures plummeting was tough. Everyone broke out their fleeces and sweatshirts. If we get out on the water again this week I’ll probably have to wear my wetsuit.
The Airstream, of course, is always ready for a change in weather. I only need to get one of the propane tanks topped off before we go, because we’ll be in the north for a few more months, although not in Vermont. Eleanor was talking about how she’d left most of her warm clothes in Tucson and was now regretting it. We do have a basic supply of cold-weather clothing in the trailer, so it’s not a crisis. We’ll have to dig it up from the deepest recesses of our storage bins and rotate out most of the summery shorts-and-polos that are on the top of the clothes pile now.
“Indian summer” will probably come around soon enough. Even here in Vermont the forecast calls for a brief period of upper 80s this weekend. September is a great month to be traveling New England, because the weather is moderate and crowds are gone. Even though we’re heading west, I wouldn’t want to dissuade anyone from coming here and enjoying the late-summer weather. If we had more time we’d stay another month in New England for sure, as we did last year.
Last night we had a visit from fellow Airstreamer Jim Breitinger. I met him in Perry at the International Rally, where he was selling meteorites and stones at a booth. Jim has a 1973 Airstream that is getting serviced at Colin Hyde’s shop in Plattsburgh NY right now. On his way up there to check on progress, he stopped in here and joined us for dinner and an overnight in our Airstream Safari.
It’s easy hosting fellow RV’ers in the Airstream, since they already know how things work. No need to explain the operation of the toilet, or warn about the six-gallon hot water capacity. Experienced RV’ers know when to duck, when to sit down and get out of the way, and generally how to co-exist in a small space. So Jim was an easy guest to have. We’ll see him again in January 2008, at Quartzite.
Meanwhile the rush to get ready continues. So far, so good. Our stuff in the storage unit is 98% ready to load on the truck. On Thursday the Airstream will get a thorough interior cleaning (which doesn’t take long since the space is so compact), we’ll take care of a few errands, and we should be just about ready.
I have decided on a minor luxury. The Nissan Armada has not been well cleaned in two years, and the interior is frankly a mess. The rugs are impregnated with desert dust, beach sand, cookie crumbs, and dried clay. The seats are splotched with souvenirs of everything Emma has eaten in the past two years. The vinyl surfaces are mottled with black from grease-stained fingers, and there are numerous light scratches in the paint’s clearcoat. For the first time in my life, I will take a car to a detailer for a thorough cleaning, including shampooing of all the carpets and fabrics. The car really needs it, and being two years old, it has a lot of life ahead. Time for a little cosmetic maintenance.
The cleanup will be one of our last maintenance items until we arrive in Jackson Center, OH at the Airstream factory. I’ve got a list of items for the factory service techs to deal with when we get there, but nothing major.
August 21, 2007 at 11:55 am · Filed under Uncategorized
One of the famous old traditions of Vermont is the pie social. They still pop up once in a while, at the nearby Rokeby Museum, and in town greens on summer evenings.
A pie social is sort of a casual garden party these days, with some live music, and occasionally crafts or exhibits. Last night I was driving back to the Airstream past the Vergennes city green and saw an orchestra in the bandstand and tables set out with an incredible assortment of pies. Naturally, I had to stop.
The band was playing Sousa marches while people lounged on the grass in the cool evening air, or stood leaning against the old trees, talking to friends and neighbors. Kids were running around in the back, playing tag and throwing balls. I bought a slice of pie for later and wandered around to see who was there that I knew. After all, it is a “pie social” … you can’t complete the experience without socializing.
Little moments like that are getting scarcer for us. We are now in full-blown departure mode, with every minute of each day scheduled tightly. I have already begun the trailer and vehicle prep, Eleanor is doing the last load of laundry at my parent’s house, and we are rushing to get the last few boxes packed for shipment on Friday. In between these efforts are a few medical appointments, work on the Winter 2008 magazine, and some final visits with friends.
We could let the schedule slip a week, but I’m sure that would mean only a rush of preparation next week. Besides, there’s a schedule of things we want to do this fall, printed in blue ink on our dry-erase board. Time is the limiting factor. We all have only a fixed amount of time in our lives, and that means choices must be made. Considering everything, this Saturday looks like the day to hitch up and move on.
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