Becoming Nomads

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Cross Creek, OH

Driving further west and into Ohio, it took us a lot longer than expected to reach our destination, about an hour north of Columbus, the state capitol. We took a few country roads along the way wandering through seemingly endless fields of corn. Our new home was an award-winning RV park with full services...and it was packed with families, kids, and lots of travelers. Being the end of the season, we got an indrecit rate and for our nights, we enjoyed great service. Two state parks are nearby and that provided lots of walking space and biking opportunities.

We took one day to drive into Columbus. The state's capital was quiet as expected. The downtown barely inhabited. We drove around the area looking at the buildings and wandered into the Germantown area with all of the wonderful 19th-century row houses. The area has been gentrified with loads of shops and restaurants...most closed or offering limited service. Since we were in a large city, we took advance of access to an IKEA store, a large hardware store, and we stocked up at a really great Kroger.

And, we found time to visit the local IKEA. While we did not buy anything...no need...it was fun to add another location to our international list. We have visited IKEA stores all over the world, and interestingly, many in countries you would never expect like Kenya and Uzbekistan.

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Lake Chautauqua, NY

Lake Chautauqua is my friend Lin Winters' childhood home. Many of you may remember the beautiful woman in the long red dress at our wedding. She was my "best person." Her parents owned a rather distinctive home on the shores of the lake, within the Chautauqua compound. I've heard stores about this place from her for years and we finally made it. We found a really great RV park just a few miles from the village. Once again it was a huge residential and holiday home resort. There were only two travelers in the transient area when we arrived. end of the season. Bright blue and cloudless skies blessed our four-day stay.

In the nearby town of Jamestown, we toured the Lucy and Desi Museum. Lucille Ball was born a few miles from here is a small lakeside town and this was also the home of her famous Lucille McGilooguddy character. It was great fun touring the sets from the I Love Lucy show, seeing the memorabilia, and the costumes. Something I was not aware of was that the original set was done in all greys, included most of the costumes. The cinematographers wanted the filming to have a greater resolution on the screen.

A lot of bike rides and a drive around the lake filled out days. We devoted one day to visiting the Chautaugua Institue. The village of Chautaugua is a completely gated community. We have to get a free ground pass to even enter. The events at the institute are over for the summer and after finding a suitable parking spot for the truck, we unloaded the busses and rode around this unique enclave for a few hours. The historic residence, the grand hotels, and all of the pavilions of learning were quite impressive.

What stood out also was in visiting the family home of our friend. The Packard Manor, as it is still called, was built by the luxury car manufacturer as a summer home. All 32 rooms and 12,00 sq. ft. were home to my friend's family from the early fifties (her dad paid $25,000) until 1996 when she and her siblings sold it for a "few" million dollars. The house sits impressively on the lakefront, on what was once 100;s of acres of private land, lawns, and gardens. Over the years the land surrounding the home was sold off. While we were not able of course to visit inside, it was still impressive.

Our drive around the lake took several hours, on narrow local roads, passing beautiful parks, homes, and amazing hardwood forests...all of course in glorious fall color.

Friday, September 25, 2020

Concord, NH

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We departed New Haven late for the drive north through Massachusetts and into New Hampshire. We selected a camping resort on a lake near Concord, HH, the state capitol and set up for a weeklong stay. Sandy Beach Family RV Campground is mostly a residential vacation camp, with lots of big trailers and motorhomes, as well as holiday cabins on annual sites. Our spot was in the transiant area, surrounded by huge trees, and just lovely. It is a big park with over 300 spots, just ten minutes off of the interstate, and was so peaceful.

We had two motives for visiting New Hampshire. The first was to visit with our friend Lin Winters who lives about an hour away. The second was to see more of New Hampshire. Unfortunately the pandemic had shut down most attractions, the state house, etc. So we enjoyed daily bike rides and walks.

We needed some supplies for our trailer and there was an RV supply store in Concord so that got a few visits. We wandered the downtown area a bit, viewing the state buildings.

Lin drove down for the day and we had a wonderful visit in the park. She got to see the trailer and we fixed lunch, caught up on eachother's lives, and just had a grand visit. Lin was my best "man" for our wedding and we have been friends for about 30 years. She is the best in all regards. After she left we realized that not one of us took any photos. So here's one I found. I just love her so much.

We set one day aside for a long drive up into the White Mountains. We drove north from our site through lush hardwood forrests, all in fall colors. We ended up making a huge cirle that included Burlington to the north and then back town through Vermont. These two states are so small that we were able to to the whole dirve in five hours.

New Haven CT

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We drove five hours crossing more of the beautiful rolling hills of eastern NY state. Crossing into Massachusetts, we stopped for lunch at a rest area and then could not get the truck restarted. That of course raised the blood pressure a bit. We called for road service and in an hour, we had a tow truck arrive. Being a weekend with most service closed; we had conceded to having to possibly stay at the rest stop for several days. The tow driver suggested we try once more before starting to unhitch…and the truck started. With this, we limped into New Haven, CT a few hours later. We have scheduled to get the truck checked this week.

Our home base in New Haven is an older residential mobile home park. In the rear is an area set aside for RV stays. This was one of two choices in the immediate New Haven area and at $42 a night, we are within our budget. The interesting thing about this stay is that it was hit by a tornado two days prior to our arrival. Trees where down, several homes and RV received considerable damage. It isn’t pretty, and not so neat, but we have full hookups, decent Wi-Fi, and lots of travelers for neighbors. We seem to be surrounded by OTR welders and construction workers. The lady next to us is a traveling nurse.

Bobbie’s sister Becky and her husband live in Florida, but they own a vacation home in Old Lyme, about 30 minutes away. Thus, our visit. Over two weeks’ time we got together for outside activities, a couple of BBQs, some bike rides through shoreline communities, and dinner at our place. It was great to spend time with them as always. Robert, their son, is a rather gifted young man. He was just entering high school the last time we saw him. Today he is a student at UF and was buy with online classes. For our first BBQ Leo served lobster.

We took the truck in for what was supposed to be a regular oil changer. We noted our earlier problem with the truck and ended up doing $3,700 worth of work to the turbo-charger, etc. It took several days and we had to take it back one for a tweak. However, so far so good.

We visited New Haven one day, taking in the Yale University campus and historic downtown. New Haven is all about Yale and one that was accomplished there was little left to see and do that was outside and accessible. Most of the campus is closed with large iron fences and keyed entry gates. We were able to walk around the major common areas and take in the architecture. The student-guided tours were unavailable as well so we were on our own.

New Haven, Haven, Fair Haven, South Haven, Haven Cove, and Haven Beach. All separate towns sharing the same base name. We took advantage of our lengthy stay to have our eyes examined. Its only been four years. Both our scripts needed updating and we ordered glasses to be delivered in a month to St. Louis.

There were long walks in the rural neighborhood, a few long bike rides, and some pretty truck rides throughout the area. We are still figuring this whole thing out, where to go and what to do.

Monday, August 31, 2020

Cooperstown, NY - A week in the Glimmer Glass District

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It was a beautiful drive north through the hills of Pennsylvania. The skies were bright blue and it was warm. We touched the corner of New Jersey before heading due north into New York state. Farmland, small towns, and amazing vistas graced our journey. Once off the interstate, it was an hour’s drive along a two-lane road and into the small town of Cooperstown. The village of course is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the homeland of James Fenimore Cooper, America’s first novelist. The village sits on the south shore of Lake Oswego. Ten miles further north along the shoreline brought us to our campsite for the next seven nights.

Cooperstown Deer Run Campground is a huge, sprawling park with flatland sites next to the nearby farmland, and long-term holiday home sites in the trees and along the hillside. All around are small farms, forests, and rolling hills. We set up our rig on a site with a few large trees. We are getting better at this whole unhooking routine and were up and running with 15 minutes or so.

For the next few days, we laid low staying away from the tourist areas for the weekend. We wandered into town and walked the few streets admiring the 19th-century homes…many converted into luxury B&Bs. Cooperstown has less the 2,000 residents and it is all about the Hall of Fame and the Fenimore Museum. There are upscale golf courses dotting the landscape, a massive chateau on the waterfront, and beautiful, manicured streets with loads of flower gardens. The entire downtown area was under a mandatory mask ordinance, and thankfully everyone was complying with the rule. A lot of tourist shops were closed, a few open and accepting customers. There were a few restaurants and cafes offering outside seating. What a pretty place.

On Monday, hoping we had missed the weekend crowd, we visited the Hall of Fame. It is a large complex housed in several buildings and contained three floors. Guests were allowed in at timed intervals and of course with masks. There were hand-sanitizing stations throughout. We felt relatively safe until we got into the museum where people were too close and really not paying much attention to the social distancing guidelines. We waited patiently for one group to depart a display case before attempting the view the contents. The museum is a sanctuary to baseball, with displays featuring key players, stats, and of course the history of the game. Bobbie, being a huge baseball fan, assumed she would be there all day. I made tentative plans and thankfully there was good cellular service. However, the displays quickly became repetitive and our visit only lasted a little over two hours.

We visited the Fenimore Museum housed in the original Cooper family mansion, it was a lovely collection of American art and artifacts. The lower level was devoted to a private collection of Native American art and the quality of their Alaskan collection was superb.

The balance of our stay was sitting under those great big trees, talking long walks and a few bike rides through the country. The last three days were during Hurricane Laura. We were surprised by the weather forecasts and the amount of wind and rain that made it all the way up to us. For a few days we had no choice but to stay inside. I celebrated my 70^th birthday on our late night and Bobbie made me a homemade lemon pie.

Having a renewed interest in getting back to painting, I completed a landscape of the fields and farms in the distance. It was a lovely stay and we are looking forward to heading on to New Haven, CT where we will hook up with Bobbie’s sister Becky for a short, Covid-19 balanced visit.

Harrisburg, PA

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We settled in at our campsite 20 south of Harrisburg to the north, and Gettysburg to the south. Nestled in the rolling hills and small mountains, our camp was primarily a holiday/vacation resort. There were over 150 travel trailers permanently hooked up for long term stays. At first, we thought they were primary residences, but when no one came home at the end of the day, we figured they were all “mountain cabin” getaways. Over the two nights we were there we were able to confirm our suspicion. It amazes me that someone would purchase a trailer, then park it at a basic resort and pay $350 a month plus utilities. Although, if it was a mountain cabin you sought, this might be the less expensive option…and of course it is moveable.

We spent our full day driving to Harrisburg where we visited the state capitol complex. We got a safe, private tour of the building. Our tour group was limited to one guide and four guests. And since we were not in the same family, the guide asked us to make sure we gave each other a full six-feet distance. She reminded once again a bit later on. And, we also were allowed to use the elevator separately. It was a very large elevator and we decided to share it. Already, some of our rules are getting relaxes…but that is the subject of another post.

The current capitol building is 120 years old and was elaborately decorated. Set up as most, it had senate chambers in one wing and congressional in the other. In-between was a magnificent rotunda with a glass and terracotta tiled dome. Leaders of state departmental offices lined the hallways. Throughout the building were remarkable applied canvas murals, sculpture, and cases of historical documents and artifacts. Baroque columns, ornate niches, and stunning carved-stone cornices were eclipsed by unique chandeliers weighing over a 4,000 pounds each.

Outside was a memorial fountain surrounded by other state office buildings and the state museum. The museum was closed due to the pandemic. The downtown area was remarkably quiet; few folks were on the street and businesses appeared open but without customers. Walking back to the truck, we decided to forego lunch and head out for some shopping.

On the way out of town we stopped at a large local supermarket called GIANT FOODS. What initially looked like a big, discount box store turned out to be a really nice, well-stocked market, rivalling Whole Foods in every respect. We stocked up on basics and fresh, and then discovered they were offering flu shots at the pharmacy. We each got our seasonal quad-virus shot, free, and the staff could not have been more pleasant. The pharmacist administered the shot in a private room. We felt perfectly safe.

Returning home, we had an earlier supper and sacked in early. Tomorrow is a 300 miles drive to reach Cooperstown.