From "Hellhole Haddam" to lovely Salem

We are so happy to be in Salem. Our days in Haddam, Connecticut went from bad to really awful...I have officially dubbed it "Hellhole Haddam". John managed to do some tweaking on the transfer switch and the burning ceased. But, the temps were in the high 90's and very humid and the park power would work until about 10 AM when everyone started to turn on their A/C's and we would lose power. We tried to complain to the camp managers- who really didn't seem to give a hoot. They told us to run our inverter (which would have drained our batteries, had we followed their advice). Instead, we spent 4 days running our generator. On Saturday, it was finally time to leave and while John was busying himself outside, I started to get everything ready to go....until we got to the big monster slide..and when I pushed the button, it started, came in about 6 inches and STOPPED. I tried again--then called for help. I thought John was going to throw up--we were sick to our stomachs--in the middle of rural Connecticut with no reliable power and a 3 day weekend ahead of us. We finally tried pushing the button and both of us pulled on either side of the slide with all of our might and it slowly came in. My heart was pounding so fast and even though we had no idea if we were facing a long term problem with the slide- we were going to anything to get out of the Hellhole. But, our heart pounding continued when we started the engine and realized that our 4 days of running the generator had drained the diesel (we, unfortunately, didn't follow our standard rule of always parking with a full tank of diesel). As we drove out of Haddam on the winding, narrow, rural roads, the "empty tank" light kept coming on and the indicator would fall from 1/4 to empty as we went up and down the hills. We had not idea of how much fuel we actually had in the tank, but we knew it wasn't much. And- we were in the worst state in the country for truck stops--there just arent' any!! I pulled out my handy, dandy book--and confirmed what I already knew--there were no truck stops for at least 40 miles. We held our breath and drove...and finally found a truck stop. I've never been so happy to see a fuel stop in my life.

We finally got to Salem, the slider went out with no problem (not sure about coming in....but we're crossing our fingers). And every morning, we wake up with a smile on our faces (I don't even mind Chloe's 6:00 AM wakeup call for a pee and breakfast--the sunrises are so spectacular). We've been doing our standard doctor/dentist thing...

Chloe at 3

Today, Chloe has to go for a Bordadella vaccination (kennel cough)...poor thing, what a way to spend her 3rd Birthday! In between the doctor appointments, we've been seeing the "Charlies"--Charlie (the ex-park manager) and his wife, Debbie brought their dog, Bailey over for a bit of wine and play time (the dogs ignored each other). And we've gotten together with John's ex-Army buddy, Charlie and his wife Gail a few times (again this Friday). They have a dachshund named Matty (they call her "Fatty Matty").

They just moved back to the area last year after being away for years...and have just finished renovation on an adorable little house in Marblehead (just across the harbor from us). They had us over for dinner the other night and they've really done a gorgeous job of renovation.

From Cleveland to Connecticut

We had a very nice, relaxing week in Cleveland--not really doing much at all...just trying to recover from the lake house. We had dinner with several of John's old high school friends. On Sunday, we got together with a group of 5 other couples---most of the guys hadn't seen John in years and years. They separated the table into boy's and girl's sections...so I was left talking to the wives. They were quite charming and interesting and as the wine flowed quite freely, it was, all in all, a wonderful evening (except for the fact that we closed down the restaurant, then drove home, had a few more glasses of wine - and then had to get up in the morning to face a 10 hour drive from Cleveland to Connecticut!.It was, needless to say, a painful day.

We didn't get into Connecticut until about 7 PM and we were just exhausted. We're in a tiny little town (actually staying at a campground that was once the site of John's Spencer relative's farm).

It's a lovely little New England town--but there is absolutely no infrastructure--and it is blisteringly HOT!!! We're anxious to see if the hurricane headed toward us later this week will bring a little much needed cooling). Worst of all, we're on a 30 amp service-shared with the site next to us so every few hours, we lose power. We spent the entire day yesterday running our generator so we could run our A/C's. (If we run on 30 amp, we can only run 1 A/C and no other electronics or it pops the circuit). After running the generator all day, we were getting ready for happy hour yesterday and suddenly heard the smoke detector going off in the basement compartment. It was our transfer switch Turns out that our brand new (just replaced last month) transfer switch was causing the problem...once again, the insulation on the leads started to melt. It's really an unsettling feeling to know that we're sitting on top of such an unreliable product and that it can actually cause a fire if left unattended!