Wednesday, July 28, through Saturday, August 7, 2010: At Rochester, Massachusetts:
Wednesday was another four-state day. We headed east out of New York into Massachusetts, then south into Connecticut, then east through Rhode Island and back into Massachusetts, near Cape Cod. All in 273 miles. We zipped through all the toll plazas again, due to our E-Z Pass, and it was an easy, relaxing day. Daisy was a terrific traveler, as usual. Appropriately, the RV park is named "Gateway to Cape Cod" and is a nice, though small, park, with virtually no grass. Common to the Cape Cod area, the soil is very sandy---great for cranberry production, which is the principal agricultural commodity of Cape Cod. The cranberry bogs are everywhere. We even drove by the headquarters of Ocean Spray, which is very close, and saw their magnificent headquarters building and beautiful grounds. Very tasteful. They even had a 1930s era truck parked at the entrance.


We have a very nice site, but without satellite TV reception via our rooftop dish. Damn those trees!!! The big goal for Thursday was to buy a portable satellite dish so we can get reception irrespective of whether our site is loaded with trees. I located one locally and spent the rest of the day fruitlessly trying to get it to work. Total failure. I talked to Winegard (the manufacturer) three times, to no avail. From on-site testing, we know the product works, just not in any location we tried. We'll try again later.

On Friday, we drove 50 miles to the beginning of the Cape Cod Rail Trail,


and went on a 21-mile bike ride through the forest, passing by golf clubs, lakes, and pretty summer homes. The weather was beautiful, in the low 70s with barely noticeable humidity. It was a wonderful ride, marred only by the presence of a million other riders, walkers, roller bladers, and other assorted people. Either most of the residents of Cape Cod are unemployed or every tourist is a bicycling aficionado. Similar to our ride in Hilton Head, South Carolina, the local drivers were very polite and let us cross the innumerable streets that crossed the bike trail without the need to stop or get off and walk our bikes.

We celebrated the ride (and Pat's birthday) by having a late lunch/early dinner at Lindsey's, a terrifc seafood restaurant in Wareham. Becky and I both had wonderful mussels and the absolutely-best seafood bisque.

On Saturday, we tried the portable satellite dish again. No dice. We started to call it our $200 paper weight. After another frustrating hour, we decided to give up and try to return it. The people at the store were very nice and returned our money without a whimper. Hooray. Later in the week, a neighbor sold me her extra satellite dish for $20. I didn't even try to set it up, not wanting to be frustrated right away, and also not yet having a tripod or other means of mounting it.

We next went to visit Plymouth, home of the Plymouth Rock, where the Pilgrims landed in 1620. The rock:


is just a shadow of its former self, according to the docent at the monument containing the rock. Apparently, its significance was honored from the beginning, but it was moved so many times in its early years that parts of it broke off and/or were stolen. Plymouth itself is a cute city of about 60,000 people. Much of the downtown area is, of course, a tourist area, with restaurants, specialty shops, etc., all promoting the historic nature of the place.

Sunday, we ventured to the far end of the cape, including Provincetown ("P Town" to the locals), to frolic with a gazillion of the other tourists (including Pat and Bill):


It's a typical seaside town with limited parking and the usual array of T-Shirt shops, local wares, noisy restaurants, boorish tourists, etc. But it was fun to walk around and feel detached and superior. We then went to the home of Catharie and Fred Nass (she is the sister of Chuck Conway, Becky's onetime boss at Union Bank) who live in Wellfleet (on the cape). Lovely people.


Catharie served us a delightful lunch and we learned tasty morsels of information about her brother.

On Tuesday, we took the one-hour ferry ride to Nantucket Island.


What a lovely spot. Very upscale, with, however, another gazillion tourists.


We went there principally to visit Steve and Mary Meadow, former clients (sort of) of Becky's.


Their home on Nantucket was in the Architectural Digest a few years ago. It's a magnificent place---14,000 square feet home on six acres, surrounded by protected wetland. The property is so vast that from the terrace, you can't even see their pool, tennis court, or Koi pond.


We had a lovely lunch at a seaside restaurant.


On Wednesday, I attacked a problem that had been around for several days. The kitchen sink had been draining verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowly for a week or so. I had been avoiding trying to fix it until I could consider several alternative solutions. My original plan failed miserably, so I went to Plan B (or was it Plan C?). It was a great success, nevertheless!!! Yea!!!

On Thursday, we went to what used to be called Craigville (near Hyannis), but is now known as Centerville because they closed the tiny Craigville post office and "assigned" everyone to next-door Centerville. It used to be a religious commune that has been converted to a wonderful small area of privately-owned, lovely "cottages" (costing $1M and up, naturally) mixed in with the old inns and meeting areas that are now community-owned. We went there to see Barbara and Clark Gates. (Becky used to work with Clark years ago.)


Their principal residence is in Denver, but they spend summers at their Craigville cottage. We had a great time with them, including dinner (marvelously moist swordfish) at the "Angler's Club" in Hyannis (coincidentaly, right across the street from the place where we took the boat to Nantucket on Tuesday).One thing we noticed locally is that there is a Dunkin' Donuts store every 50 feet (or so it seems) along every street.


We learned that the company is based in the nearby city of Newton. The stores are always busy at any time of the day. By contrast, diesel fuel is hard to find; if my truck ran on donuts, I would be in Heaven.

On Friday, Becky rode her bike on a 17-mile ride to cute Fairview and Bill bought an air compressor (for his 110 psi RV tires, mostly); otherwise we got ready to leave Massachusetts for Maine on Saturday.

Thursday, July 22, through Tuesday, July 27, 2010: At Accord, New York:
Today was a 200-mile, easy trip to Accord (pronounced "Ack cord" with the accent on "Ack"), New York. We took advantage of our E-Z Pass that was so hard to get the other day, and zipped through all the toll booths. The pass works in about twelve states. What fun! We are in the Rondout Valley RV Resort, at the south edge of the Catskills. We are not far from where Chelsea Clinton is to get married this weekend. Yawn!!! The park is very large and very nice. It's filled with families and childrens' activities.


Somewhere along the way, they painted pickle ball court lines on a basketball court, but never got around to putting up a net so anyone could actually play. The nearest "big" town is Kingston---about 18 miles away. Like most of the places we've stayed lately, there is farming in the area, but not nearly as much as we're used to. Virginia and Pennsylvania were hugely agricultural. Beautiful, rolling hills of green. Mostly corn.

On Friday, we teamed up with two visitors to the park (Jim and his wife, Norma---Jim grew up in this area) who led us on a fascinating five-hour automobile tour of the area. Two other park visitors, Sadie and Ronnie, went along. We spent some time at a huge reservoir that feeds New York City, and went through pretty forests and a number of old, small towns that had a lot of charm but no apparent reason to exist any longer. The factories, mills, and passenger trains have left, and there is not much in the way of visible industry---other than tourism. We ended up having an early dinner at a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet in Kingston that was terrific---and very inexpensive.

Saturday was expected to be agonizingly hot. And it was. High 90s in both temperature and humidity. Early in the morning, we headed to nearby Rosendale for their annual street fair.


The A/C in our trailer kept going out---overdriving its circuit breaker. There are no extra electrical receptacles at this park to connect up our backup A/C, so we struggled with the problem until, in mid-afternoon, we gave up, grabbed Daisy, and took off for a drive in the air conditioned truck. We headed into the hills to get some elevation and ended up at the Minnewaska State Park Preserve, a lovely park (with two lakes) about 1,500 feet higher than the Rondout Valley. It was high enough to drop 5 degrees of temperature, pick up a slight breeze, and give us the relief we sought.



On Sunday, Bill and I were having a major pickle ball craving, so we decided to play---with or without a net. We strung a 20-foot long yellow strap (designed for towing) across the court and treated it as a net. (I've had the strap in my "inventory" since we had some difficulty with the snow at the Grand Canyon in 2007. I've never used it for anything previously. I'm a little surprised I remembered where it was stored.) It worked just fine, even though it was sometimes difficult to tell whether the ball went under the "net" or over it.


Since there were only three players (Becky joined us), we traded off playing two vs. one. The weather cooperated for quite a while, and, while it was humid, it was not unbearably hot. Finally, after just the right number of games, it started raining. Thank you, Mother Nature.

We played more pickle ball on Monday and Tuesday. When we took down the net on Sunday after playing (thereby giving the court back to the kids who played dodge ball whenever we weren't hogging the court), We left on the posts the two pieces of rope that were anchoring the net. On Monday morning one of them was gone. We had to go out and buy another piece of rope. Another park guest, LuAnn (sp?), joined us for pickle ball on Monday and Tuesday. She claimed to be a newcomer at the game, but ahe made it competitive and fun. Bill and I hopped in the pool to cool off after we quit playing. On Tuesday night, LuAnn and her husband, Harry, Jim and Norma, Sadie and Ronnie, the Wheelers, and we all went to the Hurley Mountain Inn (in Hurley) for a last-night dinner.

Sunday, July 18, through Wednesday, July 21, 2010: At Port Republic, New Jersey:
Today was a three-state day. We started in Pennsylvania, went through Delaware, and ended up in New Jersey, all in 140 miles. We are at the Chestnut Lake RV Park, not far from Atlantic City. It's an old park, so the spaces are small, and the facilities are a little beat up. But it's OK.

It continues to be very hot---in the high 90s---and very humid. We put out our awning again, to help the A/C keep the interior a little cooler. We'll see how much that helps.

On Monday, we went to see Atlantic City. Big Deal. Except for the fancy hotels/casinos, the place is a pit. We visited the famous elephant Lucy in Margate (right next to Atlantic City). Ho hum.



And the local city planners have not yet bought into the idea of having utilities be underground.


The thrill (if there was one) was seeing the places that appear on the original Monopoly board---all of which are in Atlantic City.

On Tuesday, we ventured out to get an E-Z Pass to make it easier to traverse all the toll roads in the east. We went to the nearest one---in the middle of the Atlantic City Expressway. We arrived at 4:59 pm, not realizing that they close at 5:00. By the time we walked to the building it was closed. One of the workers soon wandered by, and told me where the nearest alternate---that was still open---was. We finally found it, after a few missteps, and got our transponder. (We used it on Thursday, and it actually worked! Our 40-mile roundtrip was worth it. We zipped right trough the toll plazas.)

On Wednesday, we all went to Cape May, New Jersey ("The Oldest Seashore Resort In The Country") What a neat place. It's a typical seaside town, with narrow streets, difficult parking, a lighthouse Pat and Becky ascended, tons of tourists, etc. But it also had a gazillion Victorian houses that were in mint condition and just beautiful. The city is very proud of them---and very protective, as well. They have very strict ordinances about modifying the homes. It works. We took a trolley tour of the town. The guide was full of interesting stories. Neat.

We were scheduled to stay here until the following Thursday, but we decided to leave Port Republic early because there's really nothing to see or do there that we haven't already seen or done. So Wednesday was our last day.

Thursday, July 8, through Saturday, July 17, 2010: At Dover, Pennsylvania:
Thursday was a four-state day, as we left Virginia and traveled through West Virginia and Maryland on our way to Pennsylvania. All of that in only 120 miles. Dover is near Gettysburg. The RV park (Gettysburg Farm Outdoor World) is very nice and the sites are large and comfortable, but there is no pickle ball court. And there's plenty of grass. (Daisy loves to scratch her face in it, and it's very pretty.) We had a late lunch/early dinner on Thursday in nearby East Berlin at a place called Sidney. The restaurant wasn't open yet so we ate in the tap room. It was delicious and creatve. We will go back for dinner, I am sure.

Sunday we went to Gettysburg.


What a place. I've never seen so many monuments in my life. The biggest one on the battlefield is devoted to the 35,000 soldiers from Pennsylvania who fought there, listing them by Regiment, with Company, Rank, and individual name, with each Regiment set out in a separate bronze placque. Quite impressive.


On Monday, Becky rode her bike to York (20 miles away) and I picked her up there. We had to go there anyway, to pick up our mail. After lunch, we took a tour of the Harley-Davidson factory in York. The company headquarters, design studio, significant parts manufacturing, and historic museum are all located in or near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but most of their motorcycles are assembled in York; the rest are assembled in Kansas City. The tour is fascinating.


Most of what we saw of York is old and run down. It's pretty depressing. But we focused on the downtown (much of it historic) area. The Continental Congress met there (not in Philadelphia) at certain critical times, and the city claims that it was actually the first capital of the United States as the result. Who am I to disagree?

On Tuesday, Becky, Pat, and Pat's granddaughter, Hannah, who is visiting from Marshall, Michigan, went to Washington, DC to spend two days. Bill and I survived, doing very little. It's been very hot; occasionally over 100.

The girls came back Wednesday night. They had a great time in D.C.

On Thursday, we ventured out to the Snyders of Hanover pretzel company plant for a tour. It was like the Route 11 potato chip factory on steroids. It was at least 20 times as large. Man, do they spit out the pretzels. They make pretzels in about 15 different flavors. I didn't know that. They also make potato chips in various flavors---including the "Jays" brand, which I haven't seen since I left Chicago 55 years ago.

On Saturday, Pat and Becky went on a 23-mile bike ride from York to just over the Maryland state line, crossing the Mason-Dixon line in the process. They went on the paved "rails trails" path that follows railroad tracks all the way from York to Washington, D.C. I picked them up in New Freedom, Pennsylvania, just inside the border.

Alas, it's our last day in Pennsylvania, and we never got back to Sidney for a gourmet meal.

Thursday, July 1, through Wednesday, July 7, 2010: At Front Royal, Virginia:
The 110-mile trip to Front Royal was uneventful. Front Royal is located at the Northern entrance (near Dickey Ridge) to Shenandoah National Park, which is an amazing 100 miles long (but very narrow). Our RV park is well-equipped and the people are nice, but, since the park is old, the spaces are small and very difficult to get into. They're also quite uneven and sloping. It took us several attempts to get our trailer situated properly. We finally gave up trying to get it level. And there are so many trees we get no satellite TV reception. Bummer!

The day we arrived, we went to the park to get a small taste. What a beautiful place, with spectacular views.


It's nice to be near mountains again. Where we've been lately has been very flat. On Saturday we did a 100-mile loop including Mount Jackson, the home of Route 11 Potato Chips, where we took an interesting tour of the plant (and bought a shirt), and Luray, another of the innumerable historic towns in the South, which was actually quite nicely preserved. On the way to Mount Jackson, we had to go through one of those neat old covered bridges.


Late Saturday afternoon, Bill and I (and a third gentleman, a regular at the RV park) acted as judges of a contest to choose the person to sing the national anthem at the July 4 fireworks display at the RV park. The contest was directed at youngsters. There were five signed up for the tryouts. The first, Christina, was a 10-year old who was actually very good. The next three were successively less qualified, and the fifth decided not to sing at all. We unanimously picked Christina. The person running the contest made certain that we had no prior experience with Christina or her family because she was concerned that people might think the "fix" was in. (Her older sister won the previous three years.) The fireworks display Sunday night was terrific, and Christina did a good job with the anthem.



Sunday was an incredibly hot day, and there were several power failures in our area of the RV park. We had to turn off one of our air conditioners in an attempt to reduce the power demand. It didn't help. We still had to call maintenance time after time.

On Monday, we went back to Shenandoah NP to meet to meet with Dana Quillen, an old friend from Los Angeles who is now the marketing director for a resort in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia.


It was great seeing her. When we returned to the RV park, there was a note on our door offering to let us move to another site---with a much better power setup than the one where we were then located. The offered site was one we had requested the day we arrived, but which we were told was available only to "members" of only that park. We immedately agreed to move. The new site was an easy pull-through, quite level and flat, with access for our satellite dish. We had TV again. Yea!!!

On Tuesday, we all went to Winchester to visit Camping World, to buy little goodies for our RV. On Wednesday, Becky and I went back to Camping World to buy a new electric cooler (to supplement our loaded refrigerator). It's the fourth electric cooler we have bought in the last 11 months (the first three failed after varying lengths of time) and the first one from a new manufacturer. We'll see how long this one lasts.