Amish Country

Time for a day trip to see the surrounding countryside. We headed to Amish Country in Lancaster, PA. John stopped to show them the old AuWerter homestead, now the After 8 Bed and Breakfast.

Across the street, we stopped to check out a local farmers market – filled with fall vegetables and fruits and the most amazing selection of gourds, pumpkins and squash. Gordon shopped for our dinner that night, filling bags with fresh squash, yams, tomatoes and new potatoes.

We stopped at the Intercourse Farmers Market—which was really more like a tourist trap filled with Amish people selling junk to “the English” (as they call non-Amish). In this case, they really were selling to “the English”—although our only purchase was a piece of shoofly pie.

Jean and I opted for a walk while the boys went to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania—claiming over 100 locomotives and cars from the mid-19th and 20th centuries, including the Pennsylvania Railroad Historical Collection.

Gordon was in his glory with a building filled with railroad cars and engines. (We had to laugh when we combined photos from the trip and found dozens of photos of the train wheels, train engines, and the undercarriage of rail cars.)

Our evening- more wine, more great Gordon prepared food, a roaring fire and again, a drunken hot tub party….It doesn’t get better than this!

A little slice of American History….Philadelphia –The Cradle of Liberty

After breakfast and negotiating the first morning with 5 in the motorhome, we got into our routine. Jean and Gordon, sleeping on what we called “The High Altar of Love” (instead of sleeping on the inflatable mattress on the floor, we had to put the mattress on top of the extended sofa). While the view was lovely—window level, the drop off the side would be catastrophic. They got the coffee going in the morning, Chloe managed to sleep in until 7 AM and then she’d give them the greeting of a lifetime every morning…thrilled to have 2 more adults paying attention to her.

The day was a bit cloudy and not exactly hot so we decided to make the trip to Philadelphia and do the obligatory American history tour along with a trolley tour of the city. While a visit to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall may be a thrill for the patriot from the Midwest, we were trying to be sensitive to the needs of our holidaying Brits and minimize the lessons on American history. We didn’t make them sit through the multiple videos in the Visitor’s Center, but did sign them up for the guided tour of Independence Hall.

We made a side visit to see the Liberty Bell before starting the short tour. The group on our tour was very white and mostly old (lots of WWII vets and their wives). Jean and Gordon did a yeoman’s job of feigning interest in the rooms in Independence Hall.

We heard the story of this “the birthplace of America”- built in 1732 as the Pennsylvania State House. Within the hall, the Second Continental Congress met in May 1775, and The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776.

It’s also where the Constitutional Convention met to draft, debate and then sign The United States Constitution on September 17, 1787. Not exactly a grabber for the Brits, but as always they were real troopers.

We finished the tour and jumped on the City Trolley for a double decker view of Philly.

We got to the center of the city- seeing the interesting architecture of City Hall (as we waited in the Philly traffic) – before getting off at the Reading Terminal Market.

What an amazing place—aisles and aisles of food stands. We hit it right at noon and it was packed with the lunch time business crowd.

John grabbed a table while Jean and Gordon stood in line for the DiNic’s Roast Pork Sandwich-a huge sandwich of roasted pork, provolone cheese and greens.

I raced over to Salumenia for a classic Italian hoagie. Before we waddled back to the bus, we managed to try an Amish hot pretzel and buy some chocolate covered expresso beans. Just making sure we were covering all the food groups.

The bus took us from central Philly, past the Love Fountain in the center of the city to the outskirts of town, past the famous “Rocky Steps” and the countless Philly museums and through the colonial city back to the Visitors Center.

On the way home, we stopped by the ShopRite and picked up fixings for dinner. With Chef Gordon in town, we wouldn’t have to bother with going out to get great, gourmet food. Jean and I, with wine in hand, took on the sous chef role, helping with the chopping while Gordon prepared the chicken for the grill. Our campground was perfect—a firepit, gas grill and our own personal hot tub. The first attempt at starting a fire was a challenge. We had more smoke than fire and our neighbor decided to rescue us with a supply of dry bark to get a real fire going. Wine, great food, a smokin’ fire let to the first of our drunken hot tub parties.

We got back into the coach to find that we had been infested with flies—they were everywhere and Gordon went from Chef Gordon to the Great White Fly Hunter. Armed with John’s fly gun, he must have brought down at least 30 of them, losing all of our rubber bands in the process.

Gordon- The Great White Fly Hunter (Note the angle of the slider room on the right side!)

Jersey Diners and the Jersey Shore

No need to wake up early- everyone slept in, enjoying the space and privacy that Kate and Mike’s house afforded us…. In only a few short hours, we’d be in our crippled motorhome. After saying our goodbyes to Kate and Mike, we headed to the Summit Diner for a hearty breakfast.

Jean and Gordon, having already been to the Diner once before, were pros at ordering. Hash and eggs, toast and coffee for the three of them. I opted for their amazing cinnamon French toast. Mmmm!

On the way back to the motorhome—about an hour south of Summit, we decided to take a bit of a detour and travel the Jersey Shore. We had thought about spending a Sunday afternoon on the Shore and were glad that we did a bit of a preview. It felt a bit like driving the coast of Eastern Florida—lots of ticky-tacky beach resorts, boardwalks and Coney Island type rides. Occasionally, we’d drive through an obviously upper end town- huge homes and lots of Wall Street money. We stopped, hoping to walk the boardwalk with Chloe but found that all of the Jersey Shore towns ban dogs from the boardwalk and the beaches. So much for a return visit to Jersey…
We got settled into our cramped quarters- Jean and Gordon unpacked and we started the holidays…lots of drinking wine and talking sh&%.

The Brits Arrive!

In despair no more…we were at Kate and Mike’s waiting for their arrival. In typical Mike fashion, we ordered massive quantities of take-out Chinese to go along with our many bottles of wine. Their flight was one time and we waited in comfort while the limo picked them up from JFK. Even though it was past 11PM when they arrived, we managed to stay up for a few hours, drink a few bottles of wine and reconnect.

Will our motorhome problems never end??

This morning we had to move sites here in Salem and did our normal routine- put down the jacks then started to run out the slide. The main slide went out-but didn't go all the way--almost, but not quite. Since we've been having problems with it the past few times, we thought we'd try bringing it in just to make sure that we wouldn't be having major problems on a Saturday when no one is available to help. When we brought it in, we heard a racking noise--and the slide came in- all the way on one side and not on the other --- one side of the slide is in the air- pressed against the ceiling). We called the RV Repair place in Indiana and sent them photos and he suggested raising the jacks and trying to get the slide to go out part way-then bring it back in. It is DEAD!! (He also said that it's the worst he's ever seen...thanks a lot --just what we needed to hear.)

Well- the long and short of it--there are no repair facilities anywhere in the Northeast that can deal with this problem -- and Jean and Gordon are due to be meeting us next week.
So-what do we do? It feels like someone's trying to tell us something about this trip....

In despair....

Thinking that we'd have to cancel our trip with Jean and Gordon, we had a Skype call with them and got this email the next morning. Jean wrote:

Now that we've all had a sleep on things, I've had a few thoughts for you to mull over........

Logic dictates that we should cancel the holiday as its going to be so inconvenient etc etc but........

We survived the Harris debacle in Oz

We survived the hurricane debacle in NOLA

If we don't make this trip, goodness knows when we can get there again. Apart from all that, at our age shouldn't we take opportunities as they present themselves?

Hey, we'll cope!! We'll have a laugh of that you can be sure and you know by now that although I try and kid myself, we're not 5-star guys any more - we can rough it if we need to.

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!