Treasured Family Moments

June 17, 2008

We’ve spent the past 4 days visiting Steve’s family in Connecticut. Cousin Dawn, husband Charlie, their daughter Tabitha, her husband Jim and 2-and-a-half year old Allison entertained us over the weekend. We parked on Dawn and Charlie’s driveway in Winsted and celebrated Father’s Day weekend with the family. It was great fun touring the back roads of this rural part of Connecticut, revisiting the town where Steve’s mom and Aunt Francie grew up, and renewing acquaintances. Steve and Charlie were able to locate his YMCA summer camp and a waterfall where he camped several times as a youth. Campbell Falls Park straddles the Connecticut-Massachusetts border. There are inscribed granite markers in the woods along the trail identifying the position of the state line. Steve remembers being thrilled to stand with one foot in each of the two states while poised over one of the markers. We had an excellent Father’s Day brunch buffet at a supper club on a lake with Dawn, Charlie and many other members of their extended family.

Then we went to the southern shore of Connecticut to visit cousin-in-law Harry and Mary in Stratford. They had just returned from Florida and are in the process of moving there to enjoy the golfing and retirement life in The Villages, near Ocala. Harry took us to visit Steve’s Aunt Blanche at her assisted living center in Wallingford, CT. We also toured New Haven and walked around the historic parts of the campus at Yale University. We couldn’t bring the motorhome up the narrow driveway to Harry’s house. So, we stashed it at the park-and-ride at an entrance to the Merritt Parkway for two days, returning to tend the dogs and to sleep there.

We’re now off along the Connecticut shore on I-95 and will shortly turn north toward Massachusetts. We’ll spend two days visiting Old Sturbridge Village then go on to the home of Steve’s college roommate in Pepperell, MA for a visit next weekend.

Diamond Mines in NY?!!!

June 13, Friday

We left Niagara Thursday morning and drove east on the New York State Thruway, a toll road with limited access. It is often 12-15 miles between exits and traffic flows smoothly. We arranged in advance for an EZ Pass, an electronic transponder that is good on many of the toll roads in the East and Midwest. NY gives a discount to motorhomes on the Thruway, charging EZ pass holders the passenger car rate. We drove toward Albany but stopped a little west in the Village of Herkimer. The Herkimer KOA is about 6 miles north of the highway but the diversion is well worth the trip. In addition to the campground, the location includes the Herkimer “Diamond” Mine and Museum. Herkimer diamonds are actually unusual quartz crystals that precipitate out of silica inside hollow rocks in the sandy shelf of the area. The best ones form double-pointed needles. One can dig in the matrix and keep any “diamonds” you find, or buy crystals and finished jewelry.

The campground is along a pretty creek. We were parked nose to the bank so we had a full-screen view of a gently rippling green ribbon of water.

Waterfalls are WET

June 11, Wednesday

The NY State Park at Four Mile Creek is beautiful! The sites are the largest we’ve ever had at ANY park, private or public. They also have electricity, and we’re grateful because we’re getting some warm weather, along with summer showers that send the humidity soaring. It’s on the shore of Lake Ontario and you can see Canada across the water.

We’ve been out exploring the sights. First stop was Fort Niagara, just 5 miles from camp. This fort was built by the French to secure the portage (path to carry canoes around the Falls) at the mouth of the Niagara River. It was captured by the British then was the site of several battles during the War of Independence and the War of 1812. The US military used it for training until the 1970’s. Then it became a historic landmark with costumed interpreters teaching the public about this era. We watched a “lobsterback” (a British officer) train some “new recruits” (children on a field trip) in parade drill. Then, an “irregular” (local volunteer) prepared and fired his musket loaded with black powder.

Next stop was the Power Authority hydroelectric plant Visitor Center. Water from the river is piped around the town of Niagara Falls through a huge conduit then released over a dam to drive the turbines. The diverted water reduces the volume at the Falls so less is diverted during the day (to keep visitors happy) and more is used at night. To even out the power generation, some water is pumped up at night and stored in a head pond above the dam for daytime release.

Then, we visited the NY State Park area around the American Falls. There’s a green belt along the river bank and a trolley that runs the full length of the park. So, we parked at the north end and rode around. The highlights included a ride on the boat, Maid of the Mist, to the base of both the American and Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls, and an elevator ride down to Cave of the Winds, where you can walk along the edge of Bridal Veil Falls. As you board the Maid of the Mist, you get a thin plastic raincoat to protect your clothes. Well, you STILL get pretty wet! The force of the water hitting the lower river is so strong that it throws up a tremendous mist. You get so close that you feel as well as hear the roar of the falling water just a few feet way. The boat captain fights a strong current to hold the boat close to the falls in turbulent water. After drying off in the midday sun and having lunch, we moved a bit upstream and descended several hundred feet in an elevator to the bottom of the cliff next to Bridal Veil Falls. There used to be a cave behind this waterfall that people could enter. However, it was destroyed when a section of cliff collapsed. Now, the park builds walkways along the rubble at the cliff bottom to allow people to go up to the side of the cataract. The walkways have to be rebuilt almost entirely each spring so never follow exactly the same path from year to year. Again, you can get quite wet from the spray but also get to see the pools and rivulets that form at the base. This area is also a large gull rookery at this time of year and the smell of the guano was pungent. There were many chicks among the rocks just off the path and other nests with females sitting on eggs still.

We didn’t cross to the Canadian side after all, although we almost drove across Rainbow Bridge by accident without our passports in hand. Luckily, Steve was able to safely back away from the toll plaza without having to cross.

New York, New York!

June 9, Monday

Leaving Pennsylvania, the I-90 turns into the New York State Thruway, a toll road, about 40 miles east of our last overnight stop. Occasionally we are treated to a view of Lake Erie off to the left. An EZ-Pass transponder, ordered well in advance, let us just cruise through tollbooths. The Thruway has few exits, set tens of miles apart, and a good surface, so we made excellent time. In the middle of this ~60 mile segment, there was a service area with food service and a gas station right on the highway (kind of a super rest area with commercial services). We remember similar embedded service areas from our childhood trips around New England, but there’s no equivalent in the West.

After passing through central Buffalo, we turned north along the Niagara Falls. I exited the freeway too soon onto a road that ran along the shore then turned into the heart of the City of Niagara Falls. After negotiating some tricky traffic, we followed Robert Moses Parkway north to Fort Niagara then east to Four Mile Creek State Park campground. The campground has the most spacious sites we’ve ever seen and a nice view of Lake Ontario. This evening, some thunderheads formed over the lake and we even had a light shower. Does this mean that the heat wave is breaking? We sure hope so.

Tomorrow and Wednesday we’ll sightsee in the area, crossing into Canada also to see their side of the Falls. Steve has been reading the classic Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was fascinated by passages describing Holmes’s “death” at Reichenbach (sp?) Falls. His colleague, Ted, was stationed at Niagara Falls during the Korean War, and we’re looking forward to seeing some of the sights he’s described.

Turning North

June 8, Sunday

This was a travel day across Ohio and into Pennsylvania. Again, traffic around Columbus and Cleveland was light thanks to the weekend. We were amazed at how compact the cities are and how rural are their outskirts. There were far too many dead deer along the roads and we vowed to avoid travel at night. (We don’t like to drive the RV at night anyway but we renewed our decision to pull off the road well before dusk.) The damage to the deer is distressing to see and we can only imagine what the impact would do to the motor home’s fiberglass front cap.

We stopped at a small private campground just west of Erie, PA. We used the laundry facilities to wash all the dusty sweaty clothes from our cave tours then went into Erie for dinner at a local grill. It was strange to follow rural roads that curve, dip and cross at oblique angles. We were reminded that on the East Coast, roads follow streams and Indian trails rather than a rectangular grid. A Walmart stop completed the evening; we’re still discovering forgotten items and restocking consumables. We’ll leave for Niagara Falls tomorrow morning.

Caving and More Caving

June 7, Saturday

Our descent into the new entrance was peculiar, to say the least. A path through the woods leads to an open area and a large, locked metal door set into the side of a sinkhole. Through the door, we descended many steps into a large, dry passageway. In several places, water from above dripped on us and ran down the cave walls. After about two miles of passage and many ramps and steps, we reached the star attraction of this part of the cave. The Frozen Niagara formation is one of the few examples of flowstone in the cave. This is the only public area with stalactites and stalagmites. It was distressing to see how many were broken. Over a hundred years of tourism during private ownership certainly took its toll. (We were stuck by the contrast with Kartchner Caverns, in a state park near Benson, AZ, which we toured about 5 years ago. This is also a wet living cave but recently opened to the public and fiercely protected. Every formation is pristine.) Our concerns about having to ascend the entry steps were relieved – the exit was just a short ascent from the Frozen Niagara and out a different metal door set in a hillside.

The cave is 54 degrees and the air temperature was at least a very humid 90 degrees! What a contrast! We quickly were covered in sweat and found it hard to breathe. When we got back to the coach, we HAD to turn on the generator and air conditioning to cool down again. All the park staff complained about the unseasonable heat which has followed us across the country.

This morning we took our final cave tour, the Historical Tour using the historic entrance. We retraced a little of the same path as our first tour, as far as the saltpeter mill works, then turned off to a different part of the cave. We followed passages discovered and named by Stephen Bishop, a black slave tour guide of the 1830’s – 50’s. He reportedly crossed Bottomless Pit after laying down a log and shimmying along it over a huge chasm. We walked across on a metal bridge. We entered at the bottom of Mammoth Dome then climbed 249 steps to exit near the top of the chamber, a feat impossible in historic tours. There were many examples of historic graffiti, names and inscriptions made by candle smoke on the cave ceiling. One passage, River Walk, occasionally floods during wet springs and had damp soil underfoot; the guide said that last month it held 5 feet of water and has been completely flooded with up to 12 feet at times. One passage is named Tall Man’s Misery – we had several hundred feet of low ceiling that we had to stoop-walk under. Another passage is Fat Man’s Misery, a narrow twisty passage formed by fast-moving water.

After finishing the tour, we broke camp and drove across Kentucky into Ohio. We were lucky to be traveling on a weekend. There were many road work projects suspended for the weekend and traffic through Louisville and Cincinnati was very light. We stopped south of Columbus in a very rural area at a nice campground. Tomorrow we’ll aim for Erie, PA then on into New York, specifically Niagara Falls on Monday.

Underground Tourists

June 6, Friday

We crossed Tennessee in a day and entered Kentucky yesterday afternoon. The terrain is rolling hills then dips. The National Park staff explained that the dips are sinkholes where a cave or cavern has formed in the limestone rock. Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system in North America with >360 miles of mapped passages on 7 levels with many more still uncharted.

Last night we went on our first tour, by lantern light, to the Star Chamber. This room got its name in the earliest days of tourism at Mammoth Cave, about 1815, when guides would throw rocks to chip off black gypsum from the ceiling, exposing sparking white “stars”. We also saw the remains of a nitrate mine used for domestic gunpowder manufacture during the War of 1812. Calcium nitrate was mined from the cave soil, leached, piped aboveground and boiled down to precipitate saltpeter, potassium nitrate, then shipped to E.I. DuPont in Delaware for making gunpowder. The nearly 200-year-old wood is perfectly preserved, as are other artifacts left by early Woodland Indians as long as 4000 years ago.

This morning, a wild turkey and a white-tail doe strolled through camp without any notice of or concern for the dogs and us. They must know that they’re protected in the National Park. This afternoon, we’ll tour another deeper and wetter park of the cave, using the “New Entrance” deliberately created when an early cave entrepreneur dropped 26 sticks of dynamite down a sink hole.

Freeway Fliers

June 5, Thursday

We overnighted 25 miles west of Memphis, in far eastern Arkansas. It was over 90 degrees again today, and we again ran both the house and engine air conditioners to stay comfortable. Today might be a couple of degrees cooler, if we’re lucky. We turned on the coach AC at 11AM as we left a gas stop, 42 miles E of Memphis. This was another in a long string of half-tank $150 fill-ups. Gas has been about the same price since NM. At only 7mpg, every few pennies count.

Viewed from the interstate, AR and TN look a lot like the woodlands of my childhood in New England. The stark beauty of the desert SW which I have come to so admire and enjoy is a dry, barren contrast to the lush, watery streams and rivers of this part of the south. With that comes a thick humidity that you can almost cut with a knife this time of year. We have yet to encounter rain, but it must surely come. The gently rolling hills of Tennessee are a joy to see and experience. We turn N at Nashville, heading for Mammoth Cave NP in Southern Kentucky.

Emergency Repairs

June 4, Wed.

We overnighted at Springhill Park in Barling, AR. The park is part of the Army Corp of Engineers Lock and Dam project on the Arkansas River at Ft. Smith. There are lots of Canada geese everywhere, with a number of good-sized goslings. The sign says don’t feed the geese – too bad they’re protected or they could feed us! Ft. Smith is full of historical importance and we wish we could stay to soak it all up. But we’ve got repairs to make. Our engine AC compressor has been making funny noises for thousands of miles, reaching crisis stage on Sunday in Flagstaff, where it started screaming at us. No one could properly diagnose it until Albuquerque. We could not get it replaced there, so we called ahead to Greg’s Too in Ft. Smith and pre-ordered the needed parts. Greg’s guys had us back on the road at 2pm. It was over 90 degrees today, and we had to run both the house and engine air conditioners to stay comfortable. Our longhaired dogs don’t want to be traveling through the south in summer without AC.

Flagstaff, AZ

June 1, Sunday

We finally got started at 1 PM on Saturday, considerably later than planned. (I guess this is normal for us and I shouldn’t get so bothered by our perennial lateness.) We needed to get into Arizona on Saturday and planned to stop near Williams, AZ. An RVer had recommended an area near Coleman Lake on Forest Service lands as a nice boondock campsite. While driving, we set an appointment with our friend Joyce for breakfast 7:30 Sunday morning at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Flagstaff. So, despite the late start, we HAD to make it to Williams for the night. Well, we pulled off the paved road onto a dirt Forest Service road about 11 PM in total darkness, found a wide flat spot and just parked and collapsed into bed. When I took the dogs out, the sky was crystal clear and FULL of stars. We are so hindered by light pollution near the city that we don’t appreciate the beauty of the night sky. In the morning, we saw that we were parked on the edge of a pretty oval meadow with just two other campers barely in sight.

We got up and off to Flagstaff in time for breakfast. We had a great visit with Joyce and caught up on all the news, including the imminent arrival of her first grandchild. We caught her during an overnight stop at home, en route with daughter and her husband from Colorado to San Diego to await baby’s arrival. It was a lucky happenstance for us all to be in Flagstaff that particular morning.

D Day - maybe

Our goal is to be on the road early this afternoon (or after Friday evening rush hour if we miss our earlier target). We'll only drive ~2 hours, maybe to Victorville or Barstow, then overnight and start early in the morning.

Despite weeks of preparation, the to-do list is getting longer, not shorter! It always seems to work that way. Wish us luck in completing the last-minute tasks.

Two weeks and counting ...

Another hot weekend -- temperatures in the nineties. A long-time friend is visiting from Stockholm, so trip preparations must take a distant back seat to catching up and being host. Motorhome insurance renewal came through wrong, again. So much left to do in the next 12 days. I wonder if we'll get it all done before we have to leave. Last night I learned from Jonathan Edwards that he lived on Cape Breton Island years ago. We're hoping to get a chance to see that part of Nova Scotia as well. We'll not ever again be closer.

Scratch that!

Over the weekend, we received a call from Adventure Caravans wanting to talk to us about our trip. Of course, they called mid-day on Saturday while we were out. We finally talked to a live person at 6 am Monday morning. The 56-day trip we had booked was cancelled - not enough subscribers! So all our planning and advance reservations are trashed.

We couldn't reschedule for the later version of the original tour - it returns too late to get back for the start of school. So, we had to switch to a shorter tour (omitting the Gaspé Penninsula of Quebec). Our new tour starts 12 days later and returns 7 days later. One benefit is additional time to visit family in New England. However, we must cancel numerous reservations and rework the cross-country schedule for both directions. We'll now visit Niagara Falls on the way east and spend several additional days camping in New England before arriving at the rendez-vous site on June 28. The trip west will be much more rushed and still Elaine may have to miss the faculty meetings that take place the week before Labor Day. Oh well!!!

The new itinerary and map are now posted. The old version is now just a figment of the imagination.

Hot and harried

Los Angeles just had a weekend of record-breaking heat - 98F this afternoon! We spent the weekend cleaning out cabinets and compartments in the motorhome, inventorying supplies and starting to pack. I also spent the hottest parts of the afternoon indoors at the computer: mapping our routes, planning stops and talking to the friends and family members that we plan to visit along the way.

Suddenly, the upcoming trip seems like it's really going to happen. It also seems like there isn't going to be enough time to get ready! Just for fun, I bought a tote bag with a bright red appliqued lobster and a matching red ball cap. I'll have a special outfit just for the lobster dinners that occur during our trip. I'm planning a little surprise gift for our caravan leader (the wagonmaster) and assistant (the tailgunner). I found two boxes of red gummy lobster candies and some lobster snack plates. Do you begin to see a theme here?

Seriously, though, there's lots to do to get people and pets ready to travel. We all have medical and dental appointments in the next month. We need to preorder medications, arrange house and garden care, prepay bills and complete maintenance projects. We managed to get it all taken care of last summer and hopefully it all will go smoothly again this year.

April 2008 - We begin preparations for our trip

The Carters (human, feline and canine) are preparing for a motorhome trip through New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador - the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada. We will be traveling in our 31-foot motorhome, a Holiday Rambler Admiral 30PDD, and towing our 4-wheel-drive Suzuki Samurai for exploring.

In the summer of 2002 we rented a small motorhome for a tour of the National Parks of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. After 17 days and 3000 miles, we returned the rental and went RV shopping. We bought a 25-foot Georgie Boy Landau and traveled frequently for the next 3½ years. We wanted to go to on longer trips so we began preparing for extended travel. First, we traded up to a roomier coach, our current HR Admiral. We ordered the coach from the factory, waiting over 3 months for it to be built with our chosen options. We included a bigger AC, dual-pane windows and extra batteries, all with an eye towards comfort and flexibility. We now have solar panels and an inverter (to make 120VAC from 12V DC battery power) so we can camp without services ("boondock") anywhere along our way.

Last summer we spent 3 months traveling through all types of terrain and climate in British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska. This summer, we're off to the other side of the US and Canada. We will zip eastward as soon as school ends to rendezvous with an Adventure Caravans tour in Maine. Along the way, we will visit Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Niagara Falls and family/friends in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. We also hope to spend several days camping along the Maine coast, where we both spent some memorable times during childhood. Elaine lived in a seaside mansion in Bar Harbor, ME for a summer during high school. She was awarded a National Science Foundation summer internship at Jackson Laboratories, doing research in biochemistry, and had many occasions to explore Acadia National Park. With only a short time to travel 3200 miles, we will stick to interstates and forego most sightseeing opportunities. We hope to return to the East Coast for a more leisurely exploration in the future.

The RV tour then spends almost two months in the Maritime Provinces. Elaine looks forward to Nova Scotia and plans to visit the village of Shubenacadie, the birthplace of her paternal grandfather, Norman Frame, in 1869. We are reading the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery in preparation for our visit to Prince Edward Island. We also look forward to our visit to Newfoundland. Last summer in Oliver B.C., we met Darrell Miller, a Mountie (a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer) who grew up in Newfoundland; he whetted our appetite for a visit there. We expect to indulge in Atlantic lobster and seafood frequently - a real treat since we grew up in New England and miss the opportunity to get lobsters right from the docks for dinner.

After the tour ends in August in Bangor, Maine, we will ride the interstates back west. We plan to visit Rocky Mountains National Park, near Denver, then Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah. Finally, we'll have to brave the deserts of Utah, Nevada and eastern California to complete our homeward journey, just in time for the start of the fall semester.