Goin' South

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7 Oct 03/Tuesday Our first day on the road is done. I have seen new sites so I’m inspired to write again. I was running pretty dry there for awhile as you could probably tell by my last entry. We had planned to drive out of our campground about 9AM but it was not to happen. Last night was the coldest night yet and when we woke up we discovered our water didn't work. The temperature had dropped down low enough to freeze our water pipes. The freeze slowed us down a bit, the fact that our slide out wouldn't go back in all the way slowed us down more. But we got it all fixed and closed up and hit the road.

We drove through 4 states today; Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. We drove this same route on our way to Maine so most of what we passed look familiar. The colors were just beautiful. Many times we would climb for a bit then drive over a crest and have the entire valley floor laid out before us in a multitude of reds, yellows, golds and greens. Traffic slowed down in spots due to all the roadside sellers of locally produced maple syrup. We pulled off the road into a Vermont rest stop for a lunch break. We turned the propane back on and had tomato soup and some partially heated spanakopita. Mike and I have decided that of all the New England states we have seen Vermont has our vote for most beautiful. One of the strange sites we passed was a sculpture(I guess) of 2 whale tails sticking up out of the ground on the roadside. Nothing else around it, just the 2 whale tails looking like 2 whales just dove into lawn. Our total wildlife viewing today consisted of seeing flocks of wild turkeys.

Wednesday saw us in Potsdam NY visiting Mike’s cousin Carolyn whom he hadn’t seen since the early 80’s. Potsdam is a very picturesque area with lots of rolling hills and fat cows in green pastures. We had a relaxing visit with Mike catching up with Carolyn and me getting to meet family members I had only heard about. Carolyn is renovating an old house built in 1910 which has a very interesting well in the front yard and a neighbor in the back with a shotgun. Did you know she has a crow for a pet? His name is Scare.

Thursday was a helluva day. We started out early (about 8AM) driving through Potsdam and the surrounding towns during rush hour (can small towns have rush hour?) anyway, there were a lot of cars and we were driving through the heart of the downtown areas. A couple of the highlights of our drive that day was the gorgeous fall colors and we saw our first Amish horse & buggy on the side of the highway. We missed a turn (my fault, even with using our GPS program) and thank goodness there was a parking lot up ahead large enough for us to turn around in. Our route put us on the thruway. A thruway is New Yorks version of a privately owned freeway. Before you enter the road you go thru a toll booth and get a ticket which is stamped with the time, date and point of entry. When you leave the thruway the amount you pay is determined by the distance you have gone. A new experience for us. We put quite a few miles behind us in the morning and we were congratulating ourselves on how far we had come (always a mistake). We pulled off the thruway into a service area to gas up and change drivers. One of the difficulties we have had is locating a gas station that sells diesel and once we find one then trying to find the diesel pump. Many times the diesel pump is hidden in the back behind the station or on the side. And in the western US you can always tell the difference between the diesel pump and regular gas by the color of the pump handle and hose. In the west it’s always green. You can see what’s coming can’t you? Mike was driving and I was scanning the pumps for the diesel. I saw green handles so directed Mike to the pumps. Now, remember we are pulling into a busy gas station pulling our huge trailer. So anyway, we pull in and Mike starts pumping. About 10 gallons into the pumping he really looks at the pump and realizes he is not pumping diesel but regular. AARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!! This is a very badddddd thing. Putting regular into a diesel engine does terrible things to your vehicle. We didn’t dare start the truck so we called for a tow truck to tow us to a mechanic. Once again, remember we are towing our trailer so we were interested in how this was going to work. The tow truck driver showed up and hitched our truck to the back of his truck and off we went. Put a picture in your mind of a tow truck pulling our truck which was pulling our trailer. We had to go about 10 miles down the thruway to the next exit. The exits on the thruway are at least 7 miles apart. About halfway there we heard a loud CLUNK…… and a metal rattling sound, then Mike looked behind us and saw some pieces of metal in the road. We got a very baaadddd feeling. The driver immediately pulled over to check out the situation and discovered that the hookup to one of our front wheels had broken off. He hopped back into the truck smiled at me with a partially toothless grin and said “gee, we almost lost your truck, it’s a good thing I put the safety chains on”. Yeah, a real good thing. He had to call another tow truck to bring us in, so we waiting on the roadside for about an hour for the second truck to arrive. The second driver finally shows up and scoots underneath our truck with his tools. We’re wondering what he’s doing. It turns out that when they are towing a vehicle with automatic transmission they need to disconnet the drive train or shaft or something. So the second driver is under our truck swearing a bit then comes up for air, goes back to his truck and returns with a roll of duct tape and underneath he goes again. We’re really getting nervous now. What is this guy doing under our truck with a roll of duct tape? He comes back out with our drive shaft which has duct tape wrapped around the end and tosses it into the back of our truck. He hooks up to our truck and off we go again. The day was getting later and traffic on the thruway was getting heavier and faster. We were going only 40mph so everyone was passing us. We were riding in the tow truck that had broken and following our rig. We hadn’t much experience following our trailer, usually we are in front of it so we were taking in the sight when all of a sudden the sight wasn’t were it should have been. The trailer and truck (ours) skipped sideways almost completely into the next lane of traffic (which was full of other traffic). Apparently, a wind gust had grabbed our rig and pushed it into the next lane. The tow driver immediately got straightened out again but it was pretty damn scary. We get to the auto shop without any more disasters and he starts saying they will probably have to drop our fuel tank out and drain the gas out of it. We are wondering why they just can’t siphon the gas out with a pump and hose and refill it with diesel. The other mechanics at the shop were real characters, butt crack and all. After giving us a good dose of “you did what?” and making jokes about how mentally challenged we are they called the tow truck driver a bad name and proceeded to siphon the gas out of the truck the old fashioned way, sucking it out with a hose. Then they sent us across the street with two 5 gallon gas cans to get some diesel and a comment on “be sure to get DIESEL”. Yeah, okay. Those cans were heavy and we had to cross a boulevard with lots of fast traffic and no crosswalk. We took all the ribbing with grace and sassed right back at them. They loved it. All they charged us for was the time it took to siphon the tank. It turns out that if we had started the engine with gas in the fuel tank we could have ruined the engine. It could have been a very expensive lesson but instead it just slowed us down and gave us a dose of humility. Now see what can happen when you start thinking you are pretty smart?

So, we are on the road again, feeling much relieved. A few hours behind schedule but we could deal with that a lot easier than the alternative. We were about 2 hours from our chosen campground and most of that was on the thruway, an easy drive. We were still hoping to get there before dark but it was not to be. We have seen so many people trying to set up camp in the dark and we were really hoping not to be one of them. The campground was a few miles off the main road so we really needed the GPS to determine where we needed to turn. We pulled up just as the guy had locked the door to the office. He gave us a space (a pull thru site… yeah!!!). We found our space and started to set everything up and plug everything in. I had told you earlier we were trying to beat sunset so we wouldn’t have to set up in the dark but we had another motive for arriving earlier as well. It was Thursday night and Survivor was on at 8PM. We HAD to get set up and in front of the TV before Survivor started. We pulled into our site with 20 minutes to spare. We ran into another snag (our day was just full of them) There was a trailer already in the spot next to us and this old guy comes moseying around his trailer and start chatting us up. “Where’re you folks from? Ya da ya da ya da” First of all you shouldn’t distract someone during hooking up or unhooking. We all have a process in how we do things and if you get distracted it is easy to forget a step. This guy just wouldn’t shut up. We tried to be nice and keep our answers short, didn’t work. We tried ignoring him, didn’t work (he thought we just didn’t hear him so he raised his voice. By this time I had escaped to the inside of the trailer to set things up there (like raise the TV antenna). I left poor Mike out there to deal with the local wildlife. Finally we told him we were sorry, but we didn’t have time to chat, our favorite TV show was coming on we had to finish hooking up and get inside. That didn’t work either. I went back inside and yelled at Mike thru a window “Mike, the show is almost on, are you done yet?” He made his escape. We watched Survivor and everyone was happy.

Friday morning we were on the road headed toward Buffalo. We were taking the trailer into an RV service center to get a few things fixed, mostly electrical (of which we don’t know very much about). Luckily, we have friends living in Buffalo who were willing to let us stay in Hotel Forrest for free as we needed to leave the trailer at the shop for a few days. Well, not completely free, we had to let them take us shopping, show us the local sights and feed us. We met Kelly and Ryan in 1995 when Mike went to work in the baby ward in the hospital at Travis Air Force Base. She actually trained him on the ward. We got to be good friends then they got out of the air force and returned to their home in New York to finish their schooling. Now they both have college degrees (Kelly is an registered nurse and Ryan has a degree in engineering) and are both commissioned officers in the national guard. We had a fantastic weekend with them. The summer we spent in Maine was beautiful but we were seriously restaurant/good food deprived. We did not find one decent restaurant within 100 miles of our campground. The best food we had all summer was the stuff I cooked. While visiting Carolyn we went to a steak place which was good but while in Buffalo we really went over the top. Mike had told Kelly how we were in serious need of good food so she put her mind to it and came up with some stupendous (I can’t think of a better word right now) restaurant choices. First night we went to an Indian place (drool drool), second night was a german restaurant. The german place was very noteworthy. Just a few tables and very authentic. If I closed my eyes when I tasted the purple cabbage I could swear I was back in Germany. We all had schnitzel of some type and a dessert. This place is definitely on our must go to list when we get back to Buffalo again. The 3rd night Mike and I decided to cook a greek meal to say thankyou for the hospitality. Plus it was a treat to cook in a full size kitchen again. I know some of you who are reading this are getting jealous or having pleasant flashbacks of eating our greek food. We seem to be getting better and better at it. This was some of the best tziki(?) I have every made. We did the usual meal of lamb kebab, yougurt sauce, my spanakopita, baba ganoush (eggplant dip), hummus. Of course it made it easier that Kelly has the ultimate grocery store to shop at. They actually had an olive bar and make their own baba ganoush! We could not believe this place. It was fantastic. That is how the whole weekend went, I just keep using words like ultimate, fantastic, stupendous, etc. Sorry if I keep repeating myself, but you can blame Kelly and Ryan for being such great hosts. We also got the chance to visit Niagara falls on a sunny day. They drove us over to the Canadian side (the best side to view the falls from). Hard to describe the impact the falls has on you. The pictures and movies of the falls are pretty impressive but actually seeing them for real is just so awesome. We got soaked from the spray/mist that rises up higher than the falls and you feel like it’s raining. I have attached a photo Mike took of the falls and the boat “Maid of the Mist” that takes tourists to the base of the falls. The boat is not a small boat even though it looks small in comparison to the falls. Also note the rocks at the base of the falls which are just barely visible thru the mist.

Monday morning came and since all our laundry was now done we decided it was time to take off again. You know fish and visitors begin to stink after 3 days no matter how many times you bathe.
Monday was very calm and quiet. The colors we saw on our route were vibrant, reds, yellows, gold, oranges. We just kept going ooooooohhhhhhhh aaaaahhhhhhhhh during the trip. Ryan told us US219 was a beautiful drive and he wasn’t kidding. We kept it to a short day (only about 100 miles) and pulled into our campground mid afternoon. The campground was just beautiful. Very much like a park with trees and grass everywhere. The best thing about it were the resident bunnies. There were bunny rabbits everywhere, all sizes and colors. They wouldn’t let you pet them but they did love to be fed.

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Photos

Niagara Falls
The photos don't even come close to doing it justice. Seeing it for real if amazing.

Fall colors
This was taken at a roadside rest stop

Broke down on the side of the road
We weren't broke down. The tow truck pulling us was!

Potsdam NY early morning photo op
This is what we saw when we emerged from our trailer in Potsdam early morning. The mist was amazing