2018

It’s been what seems like a fairly typical summer week: hot and humid, afternoon or evening thunderstorms, and a daily workout for the trailer’s air conditioner. It wasn’t till Monday that the heat wave broke and I could enjoy sitting outside without creating my own little puddle of sweat. Yep, southern summers are indeed different from the dry heat I grew up with in Southern California!

I finished out my time at Gettysburg with an evening drive along the Union line and the light was definitely with me this time.

I am already planning a return trip next summer, when I’ll be in the area for a gathering of friends. I still have much to learn about the Civil War and would like to explore more of the area, camera in hand.

My next destination was further south, into Virginia. My route was something like this:
Pennsylvania -> Maryland -> West Virginia -> Virginia – West Virginia -> Virginia.

I love that in 155 miles I touched on four different states. In California, you can drive 700 miles and still be in California!

When selecting my stop in Virginia, I was looking for something halfway to Bristol Tennessee, where I’ll be vacationing this coming weekend. My first pick was Shenandoah, but then the heat wave intervened so I decided to go with electric hookups over a National Park site with no power. Thanks to the power of AllStays, I found Natural Chimneys County Park. Way off the beaten path, it’s in the middle of farmland, but with its own little river and yes, natural chimneys! You can click on the link above to read more about them.

The weekend campers were all locals, and it appears Virginians know a good thing when they see it. Big sites, nice showers in the bathhouse, and quiet enough you can hear birdsong all day long.

I put up both Clam shelter and awning in an attempt to dry them out from the last few weeks of deluges. It worked, I managed to get them both thoroughly dried out and then packed away before the Monday version of afternoon thunder, lightning, and drenching rain showed up. I guess this is the weather pattern: sunny mornings, clouding up after noon, and then boom, the skies open and drop a lot of water, followed by a nice little sunset with white clouds. Weird, but it seems predictable enough I can work with it.

Saturday was “act like a tourist” day and so I drove part of Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park. It was pretty hazy out (still with the heat and humidity) but I managed to get a good shot despite the weather.

Then it was off to Shenandoah Caverns for a look underground. This area is riddled with caverns, and last year I visited the nearby Luray Caverns and enjoyed it so much I wanted to see another. This one wasn’t quite as spectacular, but still interesting enough to make the entry fee worthwhile.

Tuesday I made my way to a one-night stand in Roanoke, at a Holiday Inn Express. I have their credit card and once a a year, I get a free room certificate as a birthday gift, so I cashed it in for this stop. Bella and Breeze know this place as I stopped here last year on my way north, hand in cast. We’re all relieved this year has gone better in terms of not breaking things (no fingers, windshields, tires, or phones so far this year).

As of Tuesday afternoon, when I hit Roanoke, I’m officially on vacation and staying in hotels for the next five nights, whee! I even packed a suitcase, although Breeze is right outside in the parking lot. It’s a luxury to have a big bathroom, fluffy towels, and that massive flat-screen TV at my disposal. But that’s not why I’m here…

It’s Bristol, baby! NASCAR night races on Friday and Saturday, celebrating my brother’s retirement earlier this year and mine two years ago Sunday. We’ll both be carrying my dad in our hearts, the guy that got us into NASCAR and who we took to Sonoma, Phoenix, Vegas, and Fontana to see the show.

See ya next week!

---

Summer in the deep South is not only a season, a climate, it’s a dimension. Floating in it, one must either be proud or submerged. 

Eugene F. Walter, The Untidy Pilgrim

It’s been a thunderous week. As I write this late on Wednesday, there’s rolling thunder and cloudbursts overhead, and that’s pretty what was going on this time last week, too. For those who think that the vagabond life is all sunshine and blue skies like this:

Sometimes, it’s more like this:

The two photos above were taken 2 hours apart on the same day. It’s definitely been a weird weather summer in the east!

I spent a lovely three days at Locust Lake State Park in central Pennsylvania. The lake is small but beautiful and the walking path that circumnavigates it includes some lovely views as well as a walk across the earthen dam that keeps the water in the lake.

Between rainstorms, it was hot and humid. How hot? How humid? This is a great blue heron sticking his tongue out, trying to get cool on Saturday. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the bird, I’d never seen a heron with mouth agape. Luckily for me, the ranger was snapping photos, too, so I asked her. She’s a heron expert and explained that a gaping mouth and flapping wings are the only ways the heron has to cool down. I felt for the bird. My mouth was agape, too!

Sunday morning, bright and early, I headed back to what has become one of my favorite spots, Gettysburg. I was here a year ago and realized a brief day trip wasn’t going to cut it, so I went back for 4 days this time. I’ve done my homework over the last year, so I knew the big points of the battle and could appreciate what I was looking at and the monuments I saw.

In the photo above (and the cover photo, a more panoramic view), I am standing where the Confederate Army started their attack on July 3, 1863. That tall spire in the distance marks the Union Army line up on Cemetery Ridge. Between those two points was hellfire and death, the battle of Gettysburg. (I’m working on a longer post about Gettysburg, so consider this the preview photo.)

And to go from serious to silly, I met my friend Peg for lunch today and we did a tour of the Utz potato chip factory in Hanover. Yes, we got to see exactly how chips are made. I saw more chips in one room than I think I’ve eaten in my entire life! It was fun, though, and I got a free bag of chips at the end, too.

Meanwhile, back at the trailer, I’m fighting an ongoing issue with my trailer brake controller where the wireless remote in the car randomly connects to the controller on the trailer, or not. My dad, the car mechanic, and QA engineers I’ve worked with have taught me well: I methodically eliminated this, and that, and the other thing over the last few days. Finally called the manufacturer’s tech support line, and they literally said “wow, we have never seen one of our units act that way before!” Awesome being the first 🙁 So they are sending my brother a new one and next week when we meet up, I’ll test it out and see if the unit itself has been the cause of my brake woes. Fingers crossed it is, and I can see the end of this little issue.

---

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. 

Abraham Lincoln, December 1, 1862 

Another week, and another month has flown by. August already? 2018 is slipping away, we’re more than halfway through it.

I’ve spent the last week relaxing at Schodack Island State Park, just south of Albany, and it is one of the newest jewels in the New York system. Electric sites, two places to launch a kayak, well-maintained hiking and biking trails, what’s not to like about this place?

The northern end of the park includes these two older bridges, the front one is a rail line and the back one is traffic branching off the Thruway. Depending on the light, they can be mundane or beautiful things.

How beautiful? The photo below is the land-based portion of the Thruway bridge. There’s just something about the symmetry of the pylons and the patches showing age over the years that speaks to me.

In complete contrast to the mundanity of bridges, there was a Sunday outing to Olana, the home of artist Frederic Church, one of the key figures of the Hudson River School of landscape painting. It’s an Orientalist design, with Moorish and Persian designs predominating, while the inside decor is Victorian in its volume and display (meaning it felt incredibly cluttered and yet fascinating in all the things he managed to fit into each room).

Directly across from the Catskills, with the Hudson below the hill it stands on, this house definitely was built for the views.

Camping within sight of the Hudson has been one of the best weeks ever. And then to be out there on it, in a kayak…

In 1976, I first saw the Hudson River and fell in love with it. I moved from California to New York in 1980 to be closer to it. A few years later, I quit that job to sail up and down the river on the Sloop Clearwater in the mid-1980s. To be back on this water, paddling south for a while then drifting back home on the start of the incoming tide, well, words cannot express how happy I was yesterday afternoon. It was the perfect end to my week here, with the sunset (top photo) providing the final touch.

---

Happiness is making your dreams come true.

Jourdan Dunn

This was a whirlwind of a week, kicked off by Breeze’s spa day at the Safari Condo service facility. I’m very happy with the updates and my shiny new window.

Thursday I headed to my last Canadian stop, Frontenanc National Park. The drive was two hours of rolling hills, dairy farms, and just beautiful and peaceful scenery, one of the most relaxing moves I’ve done in my two-plus years. My spot was great: mostly shady and with enough room I could set up my new awning and outdoor mat. After all this time, I finally feel like I have a practical and easy-for-one-person outdoor arrangement.

I hiked some trails, and the views of the water (Baie Sauvage) were amazing. Canada has not disappointed me with parks, national or provincial.

In this part of Quebec, the roads are generally two lanes, one in each direction. When the roads have to go over one of the many rivers in the countryside, it’s not uncommon to see a one-lane bridge like this:

And surprisingly, considering how crazy the average Quebec driver seems, they are quite civilized about bridge etiquette, taking turns so everyone gets across without a long wait.

Sunday, hankering for home, I headed south, crossing the US/Canadian border at a tiny spot in the North Country of New Hampshire. And just like that, my Canadian adventure was done. Each green pin is somewhere I stayed in my 65 days, with the blue being the last stop.

It seemed both long and short, this trip, and I need to take some time to think about it and what I want to do with the experiences and photos I took.

Driving through the forested hills of New Hampshire, seeing the long stretches of the Connecticut River, I realized I still have much of my native country to explore.

Who knew there were rapids just a short walk from my campsite at Lake Francis State Park? No one mentioned it, but they were fantastic!

This park also won my personal prize for nicest dump station. Honestly, no one plants flowers at a dump station. Except, obviously, here in New Hampshire.

The only not-great part of this campsite was the weather. What seemed like a good enough idea when planning — two nights at a non-electric campsite — became rather unpleasant when a large weather system decided to settle over the whole northeast, dropping a load of rain and humidity on everyone. I’ve been away from New England summers long enough that I forgot just how miserable heat and humidity can be when there is no air conditioning for relief.

Tuesday was a long day of driving, 275 miles of mostly back roads, trekking from northern New Hampshire to upstate New York. Six and half hours of slow driving made for a very tired me, but I thoroughly enjoyed driving through the Green Mountains of Vermont, another place I hadn’t seen in the 12 years I had lived in the Boston area. (I’d post a picture but I was driving!) My reward for the long day was a sweet, shady site with hookups, a short walk away from a Hudson River sunset.

When I moved from California to New York in 1980, it was the Hudson River that drew me, and I lived up and down the Hudson River valley for most of my eight years in New York State: Tarrytown, Fishkill, Poughkeepsie, Saugerties, and Marlboro. I sailed even more places, from Manhattan to Kingston to Albany, so camping by the Hudson and seeing the railroad bridge and the cement plant feels like old home week. It’s good to be back in the US, and it feels good to be right here right now.

---

My home will never be a place, but a state of mind.

Charlotte Eriksson

I’m going to cheat just a bit this week, since Wednesday is the day my trailer has a date at the beauty parlor all day (aka the service department at Safari Condo), where all sorts of things will be happening to the inside and the outside of Breeze. Not sure where I will be while this is going on, so I’ll just summarize the week minus a day 🙂

When y’all left me last week, I was at a riverside campground in the countryside southeast of Quebec City. This place, La Jolie Rochelle, was wonderful and we filled the riverside spots with many, many Altos.

From there, we made a caravan to the Grand Rassemblement, an event sponsored by Safari Condo to celebrate their 20th anniversary of making van conversions and aluminum trailers.

It was a crazy three days, and so much fun. Imagine a big event center (or say a really large Walmart parking lot). Now put 250 vans and 100 trailers like mine in it. Yeah. That. But it actually worked really well, and the pink-shirted volunteer crew made sure everyone got parked and secured with minimal wait times.

There were presentations (come on, it wouldn’t really be a business anything without at least one powerpoint, am I right?!), beer tasting, a Beatles tribute band, a great dinner, and so much hanging out and having great conversations with fellow Alto owners from all over the US and Canada that I had only known online before this weekend and those I had met at previous Alto rallies. And some crazy Safari Condo guys (the three in this photo were my pickup day guides).

One of the best moments was catching up with Denis, the person at Safari Condo who sold me my trailer and made sure I got what worked for me. This is us, on pickup day and then 800+ days later, both of us now retired and enjoying the traveling life (he and his partner have a Safari Condo van).

Sunday, we wrapped it up and headed over to a private campground for full hookups (electric, water, and sewer connections) and a respite from the massive socializing scene that was the weekend. I was feeling a bit oversocialized at this point, being used to solo traveling and not camping with 699 of my closest friends. This was a reflected shot of the row I was camping in, I’m the second to the right and it gives you an idea of how packed in we were.

Monday was a complete down day: reading, cleaning up the trailer a bit, and getting things ready for the service crew to be able to access places without all my crap getting in their way. It ended with salads and ice cream bars, both to combat the 90F we had. I had kind of thought that Canada was a cold-ish country even in summer, but I was wrong. I’ve used the air conditioning in my trailer several times this trip, and appreciated it every time.

This place, out in the countryside about five minutes from the Safari Condo factory, is beautiful and quiet and I kind of wish I could hang out here a bit longer.

Tuesday? Rain day and also “catch up on all the website stuff” day while I have solid wifi. I’ve even finished my Nova Scotia travel pages (aimed at those who want to know where I camped and what services and attractions are nearby).

So the rest of my Canada trip is a factory day and then one last camping weekend before crossing back into the US. It’s been one of those trips that seems to have gone by so fast and yet felt like so long a time to be here. Maybe that’s the mark of staying long enough in a country to begin to understand it. Don’t worry, Canada, I’ll be back.

---

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman.

Douglas Adams

You might have noticed the posts are a bit less frequent the last few weeks, as I was kind of blowing through my data plan for a while, so I am watching my usage and trying to use wifi more.

I ended my tour of the Canadian boondocks with a stay at Parc du Bic, a lovely spot right on the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which, by the way, is huge. So wide at that point, I couldn’t see across to the other side. I did some hiking with friends and some solo hikes, all with beautiful views.

The wild roses, pink and white, were in bloom and the scent was intoxicating.

Friday till Monday, I camped close to Quebec City with Alto-owning friends and we had a wonderful time exploring the city on Saturday.

The most fun my friend, Karen, had was at this store full of imported French linens. Wow, there was some beautiful stuff in there.

My favorite thing was the funiculaire, a slanted elevator-type thing. When I was in Quebec City 20 years ago with my Dad, we wanted to ride it but it was out of service. This time, it was working so I rode it up and then back down again. If you ever get the chance to take a funicular (the non-French spelling), do it. It’s like a very short circus ride without the carnival.

The city is full of outdoor artwork and it was great fun to walk around and spot the humor in them. This one was my favorite.

And it really wouldn’t be a report on Quebec City without a photo of the most well-known building, the Chateau Frontenac, that dominates the city skyline.

Monday was a short move over to a nearby private campground where I’m meeting up with more friends before the big Safari Condo rally that starts on Thursday. My site is right on this river so I can hear water all the time. Perfect!

Safari Condo is the company that made my trailer, and they are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, so it’s been a great excuse for visiting Canada and spending time in the Quebec area. Tuesday I was at the showroom, helping my friend Linda pick up her new model 2114 trailer. That guy on the left? Francois, whose first day on the job was May 2, 2016, the day I picked up my trailer. We go way back 🙂

I have less than two weeks left in my Canadian adventure. Seems like I’ve been here a long time (and I have, 7.5 weeks so far) and yet I feel like I’ve not seen that much of this huge country. Canada, it’s an amazing place.

---

I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility. 

Jack Kerouac