We woke to more sunshine this morning but it was looking a bit precarious. Keeping fingers crossed we proceeded with breakfast, watching the news from home, dog walking and checking the internet and the campground books for a place to stay.
We had ruled out most options for one reason or another and were hoping for the Hill Top Farm Campground in the Catskill mountains, about a couple of hours in the toad from Queens in New York City where we were going to visit Art's nephew David and his wife Faye. Just before we left Art phoned the campground and spoke with the recorded voice.
While Gillian took the dogs for a last run around Art began getting the dish down, slides in, jacks retracted (all just a matter of pushing the right buttons!) and putting the lap top away and the dinette converted back to the dogs' bed. Last chore was for Gillian to go back to the bakery to buy a loaf of fresh baked bread, still warm from the oven.
As we set off through town Art was glad he had his sun glasses handy—the weather was improving by the minute. Today was another easy one almost all on freeways and only two and a half hours including a fifteen minute pee break at one of the rest areas.
As we cruised along Interstate 84 enjoying the scenery and the fall colours the cell phone rang—the campground returning our call and were pleased to book us in for three days. He gave Gillian alternate directions from what the GPS would show, three exits later, in order to avoid a long slow uphill grind in the motorhome.
Still it was mostly up hill from the highway, the last few miles on a windy country road and the last bit on a single track lane.
We stopped at the office and checked in, getting the half price “Passport America” rate for Thursday and the Seniors rate for Friday and Saturday! (Passport America rates usually aren't valid on weekends.) Three days for a bit under $100.00. A good price I guess for this close to NYC. At the office we were informed of the Volunteer Fire Department's Pancake Breakfast this coming Sunday. We should be well fed for our ongoing travels.
We followed the cart to our space alongside some tall trees set up. The site is very grassy and there had been a lot of rain recently so we went to get the pads to place under the jacks. There were only two thick ones and 2 pieces of half inch plywood. What happened to the other two? Art remembered washing the dirt off them two days ago when we were preparing to leave Whispering Pines and propping them up against the picnic table. Oh. That's where they are! We had previously driven away leaving two more of the one inch plywood pads at another campground. He was quite annoyed with himself as the one inch thick pads were very useful and scraps of one inch plywood are hard to find.
As Art was setting things up he realised that the tall trees we were parked beside were between us and the Starchoice satellites! How would he survive three days with out the TV or the internet! Just for the heck of it Art activated the dish controller and let it do its thing. The dish spun around, bobbled up and down, around again etc etc. Five minutes later it stopped its gyrations, locked on the signal. Hard to believe that we were lucky then there must be a tiny line of sight through the branches and foliage. The wind was blowing very strong and gusty and the signal did drop out a bit here and there but later in the evening the wind dropped and all was well!
Pushing his luck Art got out the high gain wifi antenna for the laptop but it couldn't find anything. Ah well, we can do with out e-mail and jokes for a few days! We'll compose the blog entries using Open Office and copy and paste to blogspot next week.
As dusk approached Gillian took the dogs for a longer walk around this large campground. On her return she remarked to Art “I didn't know that beavers ate apples”! She (and the very interested dogs) had spotted a beaver under an apple tree eating the windfalls! She grabbed the camera and went back to try for a photo but no luck. On the way back she saw two white tailed deer and a fox! No picture of them either.
There was a large pond posted "No Swimming" but they did have a swimming pool which was closed for the season of course. We could imagine that this would be a very popular park in the summer. Even this Columbus Day weekend several families arrived to occupy their waiting RV's.
Friday we went out to drive around the area, stopping first at Rock Hill for gas where Art asked where was the nearest place likely to have a brake/tail light bulb for the motorhome. The young lady pointed to a display at the back of the store where he found what he needed. When Art said that he thought he would have to go into Monticello for it she replied something to the effect that she had always called it "Montickelo"! He managed to keep a straight face.
We then continued to explore the area, driving into the town of Monticello where we stopped for groceries before heading back. Passing through Rock Hill again Art noticed a sign for a deli-cafe advertising Jamaican food so we pulled in to investigate. It was mostly take out--they had one tiny table--so we made our selections and carried them back to the park.
We took our food to a nearby table where we could enjoy the sun and the view along with our very good meal. The dogs too were interested but are well aware that begging at the table gets them nowhere.
After lunch Art changed the faulty brake and tail light bulb that he had been neglecting for some weeks. Fortunately we had not caught the attention of the authorities! Perhaps because the car we were towing had working lights. Perhaps because we were just lucky!
While removing the plastic lens he realised that one of the four screws was missing. When checking the other three lights (brake/tail and signal) he found that they too were each missing one screw! Cost savings at the factory? Brass screws are expensive after all.
Saturday was our long awaited day to visit Art's nephew David and his wife Faye in New York City. We had no plans to sight see in the big city, just catching up on Family.
With the dogs to look after we decided that trying to see NYC while being fair to the dogs was going to be difficult. If we later feel that we want to do the tourist thing we will make arrangements for the dogs at home and fly out for a week or so. We might add in Washington DC and a few other cities and make it a tour of a week or two by air.
After breakfast and such we finally set off for Queens. The GPS said we would get there at 12:58--time would tell.
Traffic going towards NYC was much lighter than we had expected it to be. Out bound traffic on this holiday weekend Saturday was much heavier. For the first hour and more the displayed ETA never varied by more than a minute.
Then the toll booths arrived. At the first we lost four minutes. Another eight minutes at the next and finally in the city the traffic caught up with us. We arrived about half an hour "late", managed to back the tracker up the very steep and narrow driveway and we had arrived safe and sound.
We hadn't seen David and Faye for years, when they had just begun their post grad studies. David is now a prof at a New York university and Faye is doing research in Manhattan. They have a very nice 90 year old house in Jamaica NY that they are in the process of renovating and they are doing a wonderful job doing most of the work themselves.
We had lots to catch up on, so we all (dogs included) repaired to the garden. We chatted for hours during which Gillian took off for a while to take the dogs for a walk around the block. Or two. Or three. She went round and round but finally found her way back to the house, ready for a beer while the dogs entertained themselves with the resident squirrel population.
After a while Faye announced that dinner was served! It started with salad and prawns and moved on to roast beef and gravy--Lots of gravy! Faye, like Art, is a real gravy fan. Gillian often tells Art "It's not supposed to be soup!" And Faye agrees with Art that we would like it to be! Oh yes, there were veggies too: Potatoes, asparagus, and I can't remember what else. (Should write this stuff down sooner than a week later!) A huge serving of fruit crumble and ice cream followed with the coffee.
All too soon it was time to retrace our steps back to the Catskills. All was well as we left the drive way and their street, even finding the right turn over the bridge then the GPS began to play tricks: It was leading us home via a different route than the one we came in on! One confusing set of exits was all it took--a wrong turn and we had some 40 blocks of NY City traffic before we were back on a freeway out of town. Traffic was heavy--as heavy as we had seen hours before streaming out of the city as we were meandering inwards.
We arrived home two and a half hours later, Gillian finding the return trip more stressful than the drive into town. And this time Art had been driving!
Sunday morning we woke to another beautiful sunny day and leisurely got ready to depart; feeding the dogs then packing everything up, bring in the slides and retract the jacks. Once all was ready we jumped into the car and set off to find the Mountaindale Volunteer Fire Department's Pancake Breakfast.
Squeezing into a parking place we went in to enjoy pancakes, scrambled eggs, "Western Eggs" (scrambled with onion and peppers), sausage patties and home fries washed down with unlimited amounts of orange juice and coffee. The food was very well prepared and was very tasty. We visited with several locals who were surprise and pleased that we had found their small town (population about 1200). The day was very reminiscent of similar events held at home in Willis Point by the Willis Point Volunteer Fire Department's fund raising efforts.
Pics to come if we can get them out of the camera! We had left our usual camera behind and were surprised to find in the car's glove compartment an old camera with still working batteries. The only problem is that this camera won't talk to the laptop. We will have to locate the card reader squirreled away in here somewhere!
It was 12:30 before we actually hit the road in the bus, tracker trailing behind on our way to New Jersey. Another great day with great scenery. Our route took us along the I-84 freeway to the point were the New Jersey/Pennsylvania borders abut New York's.
Here we turned south east into Pennsylvania and followed the Delaware River then crossed the river into New Jersey.
We stopped for the night at Jugtown Mountain Campsites near West Portal N.J. This was a large campground with just enough trees to interfere with the satellite signal so no TV tonight. Trekker was pleased with the large open field in the middle where Gillian threw his ball until they were both tired out.
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