bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday- We had a nice breakfast out this morning at a local restaurant. We had been there before, but downstairs for dinner, not upstairs for breakfast. The food was very good. Julia left today, so it was just the four of us.

We ran to the recycling center, then NAPA, as we had lost our fuel cap, then on to a little farmers market, then back to the house to drop off our purchases.

We drove south on VT100, past Stowe and stopped at the Cider Mill. We sampled the excellent cider and  Dave purchased six of the cider doughnuts, which we happily helped him eat!

Our next stop was at the Cabot Cheese store. We sampled the cheeses, as we have done in the past. This visit they also had Vermont syrups to sample. We enjoyed them, but only purchased some Sweet Potato Salsa. Bob also purchased a cider and a beer. Dave had also purchased a cider from the Stowe Cider Company, which he did  not like very much.

We continued down VT100, to the interstate, and went to Burlington. We passed Nancy’s office building, and stopped at JoAnne’s Fabrics where I purchased some more of the glue black felt to place on the “T”.

We went downtown, but there was a Farmers Market and a Street Fair. Parking was non-existent, so we went to Home Depot, where Bob purchased some more silicone for the slide roof.

We returned to the house and had a nice dinner out on the porch of Maple Syrup Scallops. Yum! After dinner, Nancy and I watched Mama Mia, the movie; Bob and Dave worked on the slide roof and made a “T” to keep the refrigerator closed.

 

I covered it with the black felt and hopefully it works!

Sunday-  We had a quiet morning. Dave went to church and had a financial meeting to attend after the service. Nancy made some great pancakes for breakfast. Bob worked some more on the slide roof, wetting it down. Unfortunately, it still is leaking!

I worked on the blog and our plans for our visit to Boston. We ate lunch, and all of us took a nap. At around 4:30, we went through Stowe, stopping to look at the changes to Spruce Mountain.

We drove through Smugglers Notch. Since we have always been here in the winter, we have never been through the “Notch”. No wonder it is closed in the winter. It becomes a narrow, very winding road. Just this week, two 18 wheelers became stuck blocking traffic for hours. They have now put up a blinking sign which says, no trucks, but I imagine some RV’ers will ignore it!

We came out on the other side in Jeffersonville, after passing Smugglers Notch ski resort, another place we have skied in the past. We continued to the Cajun Carry-out  restaurant where we had dinner.

Nancy opted for the Cheese Steak sub with an order of fries.

Dave, Bob and I all had the Lobster Roll, which came with fries and coleslaw.

Excellent and only $13.99 vs. $18.99 at the restaurant we went to yesterday!

We returned to the house where I continued to work on our Boston plans. We watched the season finale of ‘The Last Ship’ at 9 PM and we turned in for the night.

Monday- Bob and Dave continued to work on the slide leak. I started laundry. Nancy and I went in their new( to them) BMW convertible to run some errands. We started at the Post Office in Morristown, then stopped at Radio Shack. Somehow the 12 volt in the MH shorted out and it fried the cord to the Rand McNally GPS, so I was looking for a replacement cord, which I was able to purchase. We ran across the road to the Hannaford’s grocery store and then to Price Chopper. While in Hannaford’s Bob called and said that the water was  running through the MH wall and we needed to return to Indiana, sigh!

So when I got back, we sat down and re-worked our schedule. We are going to leave in the AM for Nappanee IN. I spoke with Megan and we set up to visit them on Friday morning. We looked up various RV parks along the way and made reservations. We will arrive in Nappanee on Thursday evening, so we made reservations back at Pla-More through Labor Day (getting the last 50 amp FHU site, only because someone had cancelled), and into next week.

In the after noon we went to downtown for a Maple Creamy (soft serve Maple Ice Cream). they did not have any today, so we each had either a vanilla, chocolate or twist cone.

We returned to the house and ate a late dinner out on the deck, then watched the season finale of “Perception” on TV. We said a fond farewell to Nancy, as she had to leave at 6:45 in the morning for work.

Tuesday- We said good-bye to Dave and left at around 9AM to drive down VT100. We went through three different areas of construction on the road, which because it is winding and narrow, were not fun in the motor home. We finally arrived at the interstate and took  I-89 north. In Burlington we turned onto I-189, which immediately ended, and continued south on VT 7.  The GPS kept telling us to turn to take the ferry across Lake Champlain. We ignored the directions, as we knew there was a bridge about 10 miles farther south.

We crossed the lake on VT17 and continued to Ticonderoga on NY 9N / 22. We turned west on NY 74 which took us to I-87. We continued south. The GPS wanted us to go through the Adirondack’s on HWY. 8. After NY 74, we decided that we did not want to continue through the winding mountain roads.  We decided instead to turn onto NY 29. Unfortunately, this took us through downtown Saratoga Springs, which looked like it was a nice town, if you were not driving a 40 ft. motor home with a CRV attached. UGH, it was pretty awful and something we will not do again!

We made it through town and continued to I-90. We took I-90 west to Verona, which is between Utica and Syracuse.  We pulled into The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park. at around 5 PM, a casino resort, although it was located  one mile away from the casino. We never actually saw the casino.

This was a very nice resort, but expensive at $42.50/night, after a 15% discount through Escapees. Oh well! We had a nice site with 50 amp, FHU. We appreciated the 50 amp because it was hot and humid. We ate dinner( another crock pot meal we had started at a rest stop) and walked the dogs around the park before watching TV and collapsing into bed.

Wednesday- We left Turning Stone at around 9:15 and continued west on I-90. The ‘T’ for the refrigerator is not working so we are back to the old system with the pole and the telescoping shower rod. That works, but is a pain in the neck, so Bob is developing plan C.

The NY thruway is expensive. Today it cost us $30 between Verona and Buffalo and another $12.50 between Buffalo and the Pennsylvania line. That was in addition to the $12.50 yesterday, for a total of $55! I think user taxes are a good idea, but this was a little bit much!

We drove along the Lake Erie coast, but only caught glimpses of the lake in Ohio. We arrived at the Kennissee Lake Thousand Trails at a little after 4 PM. This time we were able to park in a pull-thru site so we did not have to disconnect the car.

We settled in, ate dinner(the second half of yesterdays crock pot meal), I worked on the blog and Bob worked on a few items that he wanted to deal with.

Thursday- We continued west on I-90 through Ohio and into Indiana.  We arrived at Pla-More at about 5 PM, after another long day of driving. We cooked dinner, watched some TV and went to bed early.

Friday- We were up early to take the MH to McMillers. We showed PJ and Megan the issues and left to go run errands. We started just east of Goshen at RV Surplus, where we did not find anything we work looking for…. then we went to Lambright Comfort Chairs. They are 4 miles from Shipshewana and the Amish make custom RV chairs, which are lighter than other chairs. We found chairs we liked, in the right material, which were more comfortable than the Lazy Boy chairs we had looked at previously. They  were less expensive and made from better materials. We had to go back and re-measure to make sure that they would fit in the motor home. We wished we had found this store before! It was listed on the Pla-Mor campground map, so we should have been able to find it. Oh well!.

From there we went to Bontragers Surplus, in White Pigeon MI, another surplus store. We found a couple of items, but still not everything we were looking for!  We drove from there on MI 12 to Elkhart were we stopped for subs at Penn Station East Coast Sub. It was sunny at this point, so we could not leave the dogs in the car. The subs were okay, but we prefer Jimmy Johns!

We went to RV Nation, still looking for two passenger/driver fans, as two of ours had blown out with the 12 volt issue. We still did not find them, so we continued south to another RV store where we purchased the two fans. We returned to Nappanee. PJ and Megan had completed the work and were waiting for the adhesive to dry. Then PJ watered down the slide to see if it was going to leak,. It did not, so we took the MH back to Pla-Mor and settled in to wait for thunderstorms. We did not have to wait long!

The roof leaked again, but a whole lot less than the deluge we had been having. I called Megan, and we are scheduled to return on Tuesday for them to work on it again!

I called Vernon, the Amish sales person, and ordered the chairs. We are purchasing two wall hugger, swivel recliners and one straight chair.

We went to dinner at Dutch Market Village Restaurant for an Amish Buffet. It was a small buffet, but everything was, of course, excellent. This was not your typical buffet with mac n’ cheese. It was a nice salad bar and hot bar with stuffing, gravy, mash potatoes, green beans, corn, fried fish and fried chicken. Dessert was cinnamon pudding, pecan bars or soft serve ice cream.  All for $9.99.

The restaurant was very busy with Amish, Mennonites and the rest of us. We had live entertainment watching a large Amish family at the next table. The Amish family had seven  small children. The oldest was a girl, about 11-12 years old. The parents looked like they were early 30’s. There were five boys and two girls, the youngest was a new born girl.

The kids were pretty well behaved, quiet, but typical kids. They had to eat their dinners before they  could hit the ice cream machine. Mom or Dad went to the bar and picked up the food, and the kids then ate. Dad sat between the two youngest boys and fed them, spoon to boy on right, spoon to boy on left, then he ate a spoonful. The man was shoveling food, it was a hoot to watch, while trying to keep the toddlers in chairs.

The father, mother and oldest son all had shoes. The rest of the kids, except for the baby, were shoeless. The baby didn’t count, as she kept kicking off her little patent leather Mary Jane’s! The mother just laid the baby in the center of the table. The oldest daughter’s role was to take her younger brothers to the ice cream machine to get their ice cream. She did this individually., each returning with an ice cream cone. Then it was her turn and she came back with, instead of a cone, a cup with which was so overloaded it was too funny watching her trying to manage the cup without spilling it.

We returned to the MH, watched TV and went to bed.

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