Archive for Places to go
August 7, 2008 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Places to go
We still can’t seem to escape the rain. Last night torrential thunderstorms arrived. We all heard them in our sleep, but we didn’t think much of it … until Emma called across the trailer in the dark to report that her roof vent was not closed. Poor kid was lying in soaking wet blankets. Rain had been coming in for quite a while before she woke up. Eleanor quickly stripped the bedding and hung it out to dry, while Emma crawled into our bed and fell asleep again.
This morning the sun was out but the ground was pretty squishy, and a hike we had planned was literally washed out, so instead we met up with Alex and Charon and headed into the neighboring town of Clarion. It’s a small college town with the typical old downtown main street, park square, and courthouse. The downtown feels a bit like a time warp, with a few old-time clothing stores and restaurants that would have disappeared two decades ago in most places.
I was pleased to find an ideal barber shop for a haircut: a narrow shop with four chairs crammed between two other downtown businesses, complete with rotating barber pole outside and old-fashioned chairs inside. For $10 plus tip I got a haircut that should last a long time. We also found a terrific coffee-and-gelato cafe that was worth stopping in.
Trailers have been showing up at Penn Wood today, for a rally scheduled over the weekend. The field we are parked in has started to fill up, which is fun to watch even though we won’t be here for the rally. There’s a certain excitement in seeing the Airstreams show up.
Thunderstorms arrived again and again during the day, bringing some explosive thunder. This is the first time since May that we’ve had 30-amp electric service, so we took full advantage and ran the air conditioning to dry things out inside the trailer while the outside humidity soared. Emma’s blankets and sheets dried enough to be used on her bed again. I spent the afternoon working on the computer without any temptation to quit and go outside.
This evening Charon instigated a small dinner with some of their friends in the park. With thunderstorms passing through, it seemed wisest to take advantage of the park’s “pavilion” and commercial kitchen rather than eating under the awning. It felt like we were having a little rally of our own. Eleanor contributed tiramisu, a favorite dessert.
Our visit has been short but I think I’ve started to get the vibe of this place. Limestone PA is not exactly a “destination” you’d go out of your way to visit, but for everyone here it seems to be a getaway that they look forward to. It’s very relaxing. The area is green and quiet, and the sites in the park are generally private and shady. The fact that cell phones don’t work in most of the park encourages you to disconnect. You can go hiking, antiquing, browsing, exploring, bicycling, etc. Like a lot of places, it is what you make of it. I can understand the attraction, especially if you’re from some urban area where there’s too much going on.
August 6, 2008 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Places to go, Roadtrips
Just as a result of our desire to meet up with friends along the way, and spend two nights, we needed to cover almost 400 miles today. That’s a lot more than our usual driving day. As always, we had to pass up a lot of really good places along the way, which is exactly why I hate to cover such distances. If we’d had more time I would have picked out a stop in Ithaca, Corning, or Watkins Glen. We would have stopped at the barbecue place Randy recommended, and the Soaring Museum in Corning, or one of the many waterfalls in the central NY region, and paused to take pictures of the odd signs I saw along the roadside.
That’s the downside of a roadtrip where the primary goal is to get somewhere. Sometimes it’s nicer not to have a goal in mind, and just let the bright spots of the road find you.
At the end of the winding roads through the Allegheny State Forest, we found Penn Wood Airstream Park. Our friends Alex and Charon are staying here this year, so we came here specifically to seek them out. Since we are transient visitors, we’re parked in a clearing toward the front of the park (with full hookups and a concrete pad, so we’re not suffering). The rest of the park is basically all occupied by lessees. There are a lot of Airstreams tucked away in shady forest spots all around the clearing we’re occupying.
We’ll stay a couple of nights to recuperate from the drive, get some work done, and catch up with our friends. One thing on my agenda tomorrow is to go through the advance copy of our Fall 2008 issue that arrived here FedEx today. Here’s a peek at the cover, and the beautiful photo by Neil Holman. The issue will be mailed later this week to all subscribers.
July 19, 2008 at 9:56 pm · Filed under Home base, Places to go, Travel / lifestyle musings
Early this morning I found myself in a minivan packed with seven friends on the way to the Adirondacks. We were heading to visit Eagle Cave on Chimney Mountain again. Someone in the group had picked up a magazine about super-luxury yachts, and during the drive we were all chortling over the absolute ridiculousness of some of those things. Nobody really needs a 100-foot yacht with 12 bedrooms that looks like a floating hotel, but lots of people buy them for millions of dollars anyway, and then presumably toodle around the oceans in search of something.
I have trouble believing that the happiness that accrues from owning such things is of higher quality than the happiness that we got from climbing around in a damp, muddy, cramped cave on the top of a mountain today. But then, that’s the type of people we are. I suspect the ultra-privileged would look down on our activities as unfit for them, possibly even disgusting. We thought it was a great day, and several people in the group were amazed at themselves for being able to free climb the 12-foot rope that led them up and out of the cave.
So while we didn’t get served drinks on the shaded upper deck of our private yacht while cruising the Caribbean Islands, we managed to come out of the experience feeling like we’d accomplished something and perhaps even grew a little.
Adversity is a common factor leading to personal growth. In this case we struggled with intense humidity (the kind weathermen have calling “oppressive” on the 11 p.m. news), a steep hike that left us drenched in sweat, a grimy cave, tough climbs, and then a long sweaty hike back down the mountain. We must be full of personal growth now. If nothing else, at least I’m sure that my hair was full of cave sand when I got back.
The successful day did nothing for my resentment at the humidity we’ve been feeling lately. It is relentless and heavy, making sweat burst from the skin from the slightest physical activity. The air is thick to breathe. Nothing will dry. The towel I used yesterday in the shower is still damp today. Paper in the trailer has gone limp, and when I run a sheet through the laser printer it actually steams. Everything is gaining a damp smell, which is particularly noticeable in the confines of a travel trailer, so we are running the fans to circulate fresh air day and night.
Humidity is a normal part of the New England summer, but this year it has been just amazing. In June we barely had a dry moment, and now in late July we are getting daily thunderstorms again. (Fortunately, the leaks are in the Airstream are fixed.) I crave the dry air, and am tortured by the knowledge that somewhere on the west side of the Mississippi it is available in abundance, while here every day feels like a prequel to “Waterworld.” Although this part of the country is green and beautiful, I will not miss the humidity when we move on.
Our reward for a day of grimy crawling through rocks was an early dinner stop at Pitkin’s in Schroon Lake. The northeast is not known for its barbecue restaurants, and the Adirondacks are particularly weak on that cuisine, but Pitkin’s stands out as a decent and friendly place to go for the closest thing to Texas barbecue that you’ll find up in the north country.
We seem to get to Pitkin’s once a year, because it is conveniently close to I-87 and our usual routes to Adirondack towns and mountains. A Texan might find it tame because the recipes have been adjusted to New England tastes, but it’s still fine to me. It reminds me of fun times in Texas when we were chasing part of the Texas Barbecue Trail. And in the blessedly air conditioned interior, I could close my eyes and imagine for a moment that a warm dry west Texas breeze was blowing by.
June 28, 2008 at 7:18 pm · Filed under Places to go
Being in our former “back yard” we already know the interesting local attractions to visit, but like a lot of people we don’t often visit them. But with a rainy forecast again today, Eleanor and I decided to take the day at the local Shelburne Museum. The Museum has 39 buildings housing an incredible array of exhibits, so even on a rainy day it’s a great place to go.
The trick to visiting the Museum is to pace yourself. It’s not the usual sort of in-and-out place. With 37 buildings spread over 45 acres, and 150,000 objects on exhibit, there is no way you’ll see it all.
Think about that: 150,000 things to see. If you view an object every ten seconds and don’t stop to sleep or go to the bathroom, it will take eighteen days to see it all. If you zip through an entire building full of exhibits in 30 minutes, you’ll need most of three days to see them all. Even with the standard two-day ticket ($18 for adults, $9 for Vermont adults with I.D.) you have to accept that you’ll only be able to appreciate a tiny fraction of the Shelburne Museum.
I used to go to the Museum every year in grade school, and many times since. It never gets boring. I still see things I have never seen before. But knowing most of the buildings intimately, Eleanor and I decided to focus on the places we like the most. The first stop for us is usually the “1950 House,” pictured above. It’s a remarkably simple concept: take a real house that borders the museum and fill it with all the furniture, clothing, food, and appliances that it would have had back in 1950. Everyone loves it.
We also like the Kalkin House, the General Store and Apothecary Shop, the Ticonderoga paddlewheel steamship, the Variety Unit (with a fascinating collection of automatons, among other things) and many other places. The Shelburne Museum collects “Americana,” essentially almost anything from American life that can be collected. You can get lost in some of the collections, just browsing and fantasizing about being back in days of the 18th or 19th century.
The Apothecary got our attention for its huge collection of antique patent medicines. Most of them cured problems we never heard of. When was the last time you had scrofula, King’s Evil, salt rheum, neuralgia, biliousness, dropsy, or liver complaint? Apparently a good dose of sarsaparilla can fix all that. Or you can take “Kodol” for sick headache, flatulence and “water brash.” The 12% grain alcohol content in Kodol is supposedly added only to prevent the ingredients from fermenting. With that much alcohol in it, who needs more fermentation?
The special exhibits are always a treat. Today they were running an exhibit of marvelously carved carousel animals, including exotic African beasts like lions and giraffes. Do you know why modern carousels feature only horses? Apparently the carousel owners noticed that children were frightened of them, and mostly rode the horses.
Another fascinating thing about the Museum is that only one of the buildings on the grounds was originally there. The rest were generally dismantled stick-by-stick (or in many cases, brick-by-brick), transported to the site, and re-assembled exactly as they were. That includes a lighthouse that formerly sat on Colchester Reef in Lake Champlain, including the large stones it sat on, and a completely intact steamship called the S.S. Ticonderoga. (The Ticonderoga was hauled from the lake via a specially-constructed rail line.) For that reason alone I am always compelled by the diverse architecture.
The late afternoon thunderstorms arrived on schedule, but that’s OK because we were aboard the “Ti” when the worst of the rain hit. Besides, the Museum closes at 5 pm most days and we were beginning to suffer overload. We have our receipt and may go back again on Sunday just to browse a few more buildings. I think we’ve only seen about 30,000 items so far.
June 2, 2008 at 9:41 pm · Filed under Places to go
After a morning of heavy writing and editing for the Fall 2008 issue of the magazine, I broke out of the trailer with Eleanor and we rode over to Saratoga Spa State Park to check out the facilities. As I mentioned yesterday, this is part of the prep work for the Vintage Trailer Jam 2008. We’re trying to camp up to 100 trailers, many without holding tanks, in a place that is not designed for camping, and so there are many logistical challenges.
But driving and walking around the park, I was seriously impressed — it is a beautiful park, full of shady picnic spots, handsome brick buildings from the romantic age of mineral water health spas, and lots to do. It will be worth the effort, I think.
The Saratoga Automobile Museum is just a couple hundred feet from where we’ll be camped, just a hop across a park road. We’ll be holding our seminars inside that building, so everyone attending the Jam or paying the “walk in” fee will get free unlimited admission. In fact, they’ll get a year’s membership at the museum.
Also right next door to the Jam site a free filling station for spring water. The filling station has both the “state seal” water that was sold for many years, and mineral water. That mineral water is definitely an acquired taste, quite strong, but the spring water is delicious. It’s free for the taking, as much as you want, as long as you bring a jug. (There aren’t any hose connections for filling your trailer.)
The SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center) is a short walk away. There are multi-use trails for cycling and walking, and dozens of acres of open green lawns for picnicking and hanging out. There are two major spas on site, plus a luxury hotel, the Victoria Pool, beautiful and free clay tennis courts, and more.
Just outside the park, about a mile away, is downtown Saratoga. The downtown is exceptionally full of preserved historic architecture, but most of the really good stuff is a block or two off the main street. We spent a couple of hours walking the area and I was really amazed with the incredible buildings that managed to survive 50’s “urban renewal.” They are now the cornerstones of a lively downtown, which has great shopping, dozens of restaurants and cafes, free wifi all over, museums, etc. It is a really fun place and worth a couple of days by itself.
The whole city is impressive, really. It has much more in the way of entertainment, attractions, and history than older and bigger towns. It’s surprising to me that I never discovered it all before, since I’ve driven past Saratoga Springs dozens of times on I-87. But at least we’ve found it now.
After mapping out routes in and around the park, and other details necessary for people coming to the Trailer Jam, we joined our courtesy parking hosts at a local pizzeria and then finished off the last of Eleanor’s key lime pie. It has been a full and productive day, the kind I like, and now that I’ve had a chance to see a little of Saratoga Springs, I’m looking forward to coming back in July.
June 1, 2008 at 10:06 pm · Filed under Places to go, Roadtrips
Our last plan with Rick and Sandi was to visit Hyde Park’s “Eveready Diner” for Sunday brunch before heading out from the state park. This place was just begging for us to come in and try a stack of buttermilk pancakes, an omelette, and some of those fat sausages.
We weren’t disappointed. Breakfast was served quickly, the tall stack was sweet and light, and the interior of the restaurant was just as visually stylish as the outside. It’s a nice spot for a hearty breakfast (served all day, of course) before hitching up the trailer and hitting the New York State Thruway.
We had an easy tow on the schedule. I’ve got to do some advance work for the upcoming Vintage Trailer Jam in Saratoga Springs, which is only 100 miles north of Hyde Park. A client of Colin Hyde’s happens to live in the area and he offered us courtesy parking for a couple of nights, so we yanked the Airstream up the highway knowing we had a spot “by the barn” with electric, somewhere a few miles from Saratoga Spa State Park, where the Jam is being held.
There’s a lot to do in Saratoga Springs and a lot of details to resolve before the Jam can occur, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. We’re trying to hold a vintage RV rally on the grounds of the Saratoga Automobile Museum (which is in the state park), and there are no hookups of any kind available, nor any dump station or dining facilities. So we’ve got to bring everything in, which means thousand logistical challenges to resolve.
I expect it will be worth the effort, because just from the little I saw from Route 9 as we drove by, the park appears to be absolutely beautiful. I’ve also been told the museum is great, as is the horse race track, the golf course, the spa, and the famous spring water that people used to come here for. Eleanor and I will be checking out as much as we can over the next two days.
The RV Industry Association reports something we already knew: Even with higher fuel prices, traveling by RV is still less expensive for families on vacation than the alternatives. Air travel is getting more expensive too. Tallying up our costs even at $4 per gallon (which today we paid for the first time ever), our fuel cost for this cross-country roundtrip from Arizona to Vermont will be less than $2400. Add in lodging (campground fees), tires, and maintenance and we’re still under $4,000. That’s for six months of travel, meaning about $22 per day. It’s still the best deal around, and still cheaper than staying home.
Our coordinates: 43 ° 5’47.54″N 73 °51’5.20″W
May 31, 2008 at 10:50 pm · Filed under Mobile technology, Places to go
Friday was a fairly lousy “day at the office” as a result of a few frustrating jobs I had to do, even though I was in an Airstream at a state park and not in an office. People often think that because in traveling around and working from different locations, problems are somehow lessened. Actually, when things go poorly, you have to face them just as you would anywhere else. You’re still you, and the problem is still the same.
I guess the major compensation is having the option to walk out the door at the end of the day and take a walk around an interesting new place, and have the first long uninterrupted conversation with your spouse in months. At least, that’s what it was for me.
And we had the pleasure of our friends Rick and Sandi showing up around 7:30 in their Airstream Safari 23, to camp right across the way from us for the weekend. So things bloomed quickly with dinner and conversation. Before we knew it, we were yawning and realizing it was 11 p.m. That’s why you didn’t get a blog entry last night.
This morning we woke up late and had a little breakfast in the trailer. I tapped quietly on Rick & Sandi’s door around 9:10 a.m., but hearing no response, walked back to our trailer. Eleanor was working on a key lime pie for dessert this evening, and I got a chance to play ukulele and read a trashy sci-fi novel. Nice morning.
It turned out Rick & Sandi were awake when I came by but simply didn’t hear me. We discovered this when Sandi came over to invite us to a massive Rick-crafted breakfast at 10:00. Communications breakdown, I guess, but we worked it out by having a second breakfast that was so hearty it lasted us until dinner.
Our only plan for the day was to visit the Vanderbilt mansion (which has for 68 years been a national park site). The mansion is the smallest of about 40 Vanderbilt mansions that were built in the 19th century, and it is still 50,000 square feet, originally on 700 acres of land. It’s a nice peek at the Gilded Era lifestyle.
Not far away there’s a historic railway station by the Hudson River, which is probably overlooked by most people but worth a quick stop. There we found the strangest find of the day: a 1960s era Vendo machine that dispenses fresh apples. I used to own a 1963 Vendo Coke machine, but have never seen or heard of one that sells apples. This one is an antique, but the idea is not gone. Cornell University has one today.
The rest of the day was completely blown off with a three-hour visit to Dunkin’ Donuts, some iced coffees, and a long talk about everything in the world. As we got back to the state park a fast-moving line of thunderstorms rolled over, but in an hour the rain was over and it was late enough that we needed to be working on dinner: marinated flank steak by Rick, mashed potatoes, squash and zucchini by Sandi, and Eleanor’s key lime pie. And so another day in the state park flew by …
Solar report: With heavy tree cover we’ve picked up hardly any power during the day. Our first evening it was cold, 46 degrees, and setting the furnace at 56 degrees plus some lights cost us about 30 amp hours. I used a lot of power working on the laptop all day Friday, but cloud cover kept us from needing the furnace that night. At this point, after dinner and dishes, we are down about 82 amp-hours, which is nearly half of our “safe” capacity. (We have more power in reserve but avoid using it, to get maximum life out of our batteries.)
That’s no problem at all, even with a third night and lots of power-hungry laptop use. I track this only because it’s useful to understand the power we need on a routine basis, so we can plan major boondocking episodes at national parks under challenging (no sun) conditions.
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