The Great Rolling Yellowstone Caravan

After a great time in Boston, we headed to Croton Point Park in Croton-On-The–Hudson, NY. We were supposed to meet up here with our traveling companions, Dave and Myra Snowise, but Myra had a doctor appointment in Connecticut, so we just spent two nights here by ourselves. Ellyn did meet up with a friend for dinner one night, but otherwise, it was just a couple of relaxing days. Geoff was able to get a belt for the dash A/C compressor and got that working again. It was a good thing because the weather jumped suddenly into Summer. The day we arrived, the high temperature was in the 60s and the next day it was in the 80s. The forecast for the weather there and as we travel westward in the Northeast is for this heat to continue, so the A/C will be needed.

We left Croton and headed across the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River to New Jersey and a meet up with Dave and Myra. There is a huge construction job going on on the Hudson to replace the bridge. It is quite impressive. Our dashcam caught much of it as we drove along. We’ve been having fun with the dashcam. Geoff has captured all but one border crossing (missed Rhode Island when the memory card filled up. Now we make sure it is empty at the start of each day).

We arrived at the meet up spot, had lunch, then found out Dave and Myra were just leaving home. So we sat in the motorhome with the generator and A/C on and watched TV. Finally we got the call they were almost there, so Geoff went out by the road to wave them in and show where we were parked. We then had some ice cream at the Cold Stone Creamery and discussed where we would try to get to before night. We picked a campground about 2 hours away, called ahead to make sure they had room, and headed out. When we arrived, we had time to set up, have a nice dinner (Myra cooked, we opened up our table and put out settings. It was relaxing after a long day and everyone got some sleep. End, Day 1.

The next morning we were on the road about 9:30 and headed for our first site seeing, the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, PA. A sad place but very well done. They have a big visitor’s center and a wall with the names of all of the victims near the crash site. They have planted a huge grove of trees along the approach and, in about 20 years, they will be magnificent.

We stayed at the memorial a little long and had a long drive afterward to get to our next stop near Cleveland, OH. The road to and from the memorial was the Lincoln Highway, US 30. This highway goes up and over the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. This was a job for the motorhomes, although going down is a bit hairier than going up. At one point, just before we turned back onto the main highway, we saw signs warning trucks from driving any further on US 30. After we got back to the highway, we still had about 3 hours of driving to do, but we powered through. The campground in Ohio is in a State Park, so we only have 20 amps of electric and had to make sure we had plenty of water onboard. We will only be here for two nights though before moving on to Indiana. Memorial Day weekend is here and we are getting patriotic!

Hangin’ with Simone

It is always fun to see our favorite Grand Daughter, Simone, when we are in Boston. She is such a smiley, happy kid. And at 17 months, has a surprisingly large vocabulary. She has been able to do a lot of animal sounds since she was one, but now she is starting to be able to name those animals. She is not quite getting “Grandma” and “Grandpa” yet but she has figured out “mama” and “papa” and “Gus”. She is even working on her first two syllable word, “water”.

We got to accompany her on her first bicycle ride. Maureen seemed a little unsure at first but Simone didn’t try to look around her very much, which can make controlling a bike tough, when the center of gravity keeps shifting around. But it went very well and Simone seemed to have a great time riding along behind Mama.

The next day we got to have dinner at Simone’s house. It was a very nice evening so we had dinner out in the back yard and then did some playing. Jordy went along and got to hang out with Gus a little. We all went for a walk and played with balls in the back yard. It was great fun!

Day three had us having brunch out with Simone. It was a belated Mother’s Day brunch. Simone was a little lady and wore a cute little sweater that Grandma brought for her from our friends Dave and Myra. It was another sparkling day in Boston. We have had a lot of those while we have been here. our luck with the weather has been very good after a lot of rain and gloominess in Connecticut. We’ve had a couple of cool days but for the most part, temperatures have been in the 70s.

After a break of one day, we got to see Simone again for dinner at her house, but this was a very busy day for us. We got up early to join one of our favorite Rabbis, Neil Gold, for breakfast and a long catch up on all the things that have happened in the last year and a half since we had seen him. There have been some big changes in his life but his family is doing well and he seems very happy with how things have turned out.

Next, it was into Boston to go to the Science Museum. We have a membership at the Mote Aquarium in Sarasota and this gets us free membership at the Science Museum in Boston. Pretty sweet. However, we did spring for admission to a couple of the Omnimax movies they have there. We really wanted to see the one on National Parks because we will be seeing some of them this Summer.

After a great dinner at Simone’s and some fun around the living room before bed time, we headed off to our fourth event of the day, a meet-up with an ex-coworker of Ellyn’s from IBM, Mary McDonald. She lives in Texas but was in Boston for some work related activities and we met her at The Cheesecake Factory for dessert. Whew! And poor Jordy was home alone the whole day. We did get a dog walker to come to the RV around 3:00 but Jordy would not go for a walk with her. He did get his dinner though.

So on Saturday the 21st, we stopped by Simone’s house to baby sit while her parents went tout to look at a house. They did not decide on t, but we got to get some hugs from Simone before her nap and then some quiet time while they were out and she was napping. Then Logan and us went to see the Red Sox play at Fenway. It was one heck of a game with the Red Sox winning over Cleveland 9 to 1. We had a great time!

Sunday was Geoff’s birthday and Simone and Logan came by in the morning after Maureen went off on a business trip. We played in the playground at Normandy Farms and walked around the campground a little. Then we all went out to lunch at Fresh Catch before Logan and Simone headed back home for nap time.

A New Re-Start

Well, we spent 10 days in Connecticut doing something we prefer not to do when traveling by RV; we moved out of the RV and into a friend’s house. Then we put the RV into a storage lot. However, we were in the area to visit and say good bye to a good friend who was dealing with cancer. There are no RV parks in a reasonable distance and we had no other alternative. It turned out to be a good way to handle it and the amount we paid for a month in the storage area, of which we only used 8 days, was less than we would have paid for a campground for that time. And our friends were very good to us, cooking on most occasions.

Their dogs and Jordy got along well although Jordy seemed to prefer the food their dogs were getting over that which he normally gets. He also refused to come up to our bedroom one night and he slept with our friends on their bed. The next few nights we had him come to our room but allowed him to sleep on our bed. This seemed to work OK and everyone got a good night’s sleep although we got up earlier than our usual time because of Jordy’s desire to get going. Normally, we have him in his crate and he stays put until we let him out after we get up.

The RV was OK after being in storage and getting its new batteries. However, a problem has returned of it stalling out after about 20 seconds of running and then restarts hard. It did it when leaving the storage lot and then did it again the next morning when getting ready to leave. Geoff is thinking it might need a new fuel filter. He regrets not getting an oil change done while it was waiting on the new A/C unit in Florida. Now it will probably have to be done on site in Massachusetts. He is also going to see if he can get a new belt for the dash A/C compressor. the old belt disappeared during the trip North. We may not need it for a while but we will want to have it by June. Things might be warming up a bit by then. We will also get a spare in case we lose another one.

So now we are in Massachusetts at one of our favorite campgrounds. We came to Normandy Farms in Foxboro back in 2008 after we bought our first RV. The campgrounds have changed somewhat since then but is still a great place to spend a couple of weeks. Our plan is to be here until May 24th and then we will go to New York to meet up with our friends from Connecticut again to start our journey West. Coincidentally, we came upon some other friends here in the campground who live at Sun-N-Fun in Florida. We and they were equally surprised to find each other camping within 100 yards of each other. You just never know what your going to find when you live the good life. We are looking forward to seeing our 17-month old Granddaughter, Simone, for the first time since we were at her first Birthday in December. We have been able to see her a lot over the internet but it will be fun to hold her again.