Glass 6/30/2016

It had been at least 20 years since we had visited the Corning Glass Museum, so we had little idea how much the museum had grown and changed over the years. What a delight. I am always amazed that there are people who can not only conceive of beautiful things but can make them come to life! The museum had everything from a glass sculpture of a dress hanging as if on a human form--so realistic--to gorgeous abstract objects like the cube made of shards of glass.

While at the museum, we had the opportunity to see how glass art is made in various forms. We saw blown glass, and fire fused glass forms. And we were treated to a demonstration by a master glass artist who created a fantastic layered color glass vase. See some of this for yourself here: https://goo.gl/photos/42eZyjh9kdPh1FVz8  Check out the photo descriptions to explain the photos.

One of the benefits to RV "camping" is that we get to meet lots of people along the way. This evening we met a couple from the Westchester NY area that was heading out west to Idaho with their family--in a 45 foot bus towing a car. Makes our little 28 footer look petite... We also met a delightful guy from LA who was headed home with his wife after a 2 week trip up to New England.

Tomorrow we head to the Rochester area to attend Grayson's christening.

On the road again! June 30, 2016

After a tumultuous April and May, with the sale of our NH home and contents, and the purchase of a new FL home, purchase of a new(er) RV, and managing the logistics of moving 2 cars and an RV to the new home, we're traveling again. We shipped the POD to FL with what was left after we sold or gave away everything else , drove to FL in our larger car,  unpacked when the POD arrived, and then took a few days to breathe. 

The neighborhood where we landed seems to be really welcoming, and there are 3 couples (at least) on the street that hail from NH. The neighbors on either side of us are from NJ and MI. Our property backs up to conservation land, and the first morning in our new digs served up a surprise. We woke to a warm, lovely morning to hear what sounded like people talking in our back yard. Curious, Ray got up to take  look. While he didn't see anything, what he heard out on the lanai was clearly the sound of feral pigs roaming the woods. Apparently we arrived in mating season. So that morning (and a few others), we sat on the lanai, read the paper and listened to the chirping of the birds, and the grunting of the pigs. 

Camped in Corning, NY

Our realtor recommended someone to us that, in our absence, will reliably check on our home twice a week, and is an all-around handyman. He brought us to the airport for our return to NH to pick up the RV (which we left in NH with our small car). 

Now that we have the RV, we are on the road again! First stop is Corning, NY. We're staying in a lovely campground that is quiet and looks out on the hills of NY. Today we are going to the Corning Museum.

Different but the same 1/6/2016

We arrived at our new digs on Monday, and are very pleased with them. Our 3 br, 2.5 ba townhome is clean and quiet and has all the amenties of home. Wifi is fine, and TV channels plenty. We have a screened in porch outside the living room, as well as a small deck outside the bedroom. Those outside spaces look out on a wooded area.

This resort is located on the south west side of  Orlando, in a quieter and less traffic-intensive area than where we stayed last year. That's a bonus. But we have found that pedestrian activity is still as insane as we saw last year. When returning from the grocery store on Monday evening, we were traveling down a road with a 55 mph speed limit, with little traffic, when about 50 feet ahead of us (that space quickly diminishing), we spotted a pedestrian wearing dark clothes and with dark hair crossing directly in front of us. We narrowly missed picking him off. Needless to say, both our hearts skipped a beat. In a parking lot yesterday, a little old lady was wandering aimlessly talking on her cell phone, oblivious to the fact that she was blocking cars from coming and going. These people are nuts...

A new life! 12/30/2015

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life." Sounds trite. It is. But it's true.

Today I start a whole new chapter of my life, leaving behind 51 years of paid work experience. But I'm hardly "retiring". In fact, our plans for retirement are really quite exciting, and 2016 looks like it will be a banner year, highlighted by the birth of Alex and Jenna's new baby boy in April.

I have been blessed with a career that suited my personality and skills, and that introduced me to many wonderful friends and acquaintances. It, along with Ray's, provided us a decent living, and the ability to do the things we want to do going forward. We pray for good health, open roads, and clear skies. Onward!

Travel 10/3/2015

Wednesday was pretty much a travel day. we drove from Breaks, VA to our next stop in College Park, MD, just north of Washington DC. Here are a few random observations and thoughts from our trip so far:

• Kudzu is everywhere down here. Kudzu is an invasive climbing vine. When left to spread, it will and does cover everything. Trees covered in kudzu look like fuzzy columns, and where kudzu has been left to grow unchecked, it looks like a leafy camouflage blanket has been thrown over the landscape.

  

  Kudzu

• When we traveled from the Smokies to Big South Fork, on one of the side roads (route 90), we saw a a tall Texaco gas station sign in the middle of the tidy lawn of a rural house. All we could think was that at one time, this home, or at least at this location was, a Texaco gas station. The station was taken down, but the new property owner liked the sign well enough to just leave it in place.
• It's hard not to love the names of some of the towns we passed through: Beefhide, Sassafrass, Vicco, Sizerock, Isom, and Antepast to name a few.
• Ray had a fantastic phone conversation with a Walmart employee in Oneida, TN (near where we were staying when we visited Big South Fork. We wanted to buy some wine, and there were no liquor stores in the vicinity. Other than beer, liquor and wine sales in grocery stores are at the discretion of the counties. So we wanted to know if this Walmart sold wine. Here is the basic conversation:
• Ray (R): Hi
• Walmart Lady (WL): Hello, hah can ah help you?
• R: Does Walmart sell wine?
• WL: Sell what?
• R: Wine.
• WL: Ah didn't get that.
• R: (Enunciating, and louder) W-EYE-N
• WL: Ah'm sorry, what do you want to get?
• R: (Louder) W-EYE-N, (then spells it)
• pause
• WL: WAHN?
• R; Yes!
• WL: Yes, we carry wahn. But wait, no, ah don't think so. But maybe we do. ah'm just not sure because ah don't work in the back. Ah really have no idea. Sorry.
• I like the dark, but our experience of dark at the campground at Breaks was a whole new experience. When we were out in southern Idaho at the City of Rocks some years ago, it was completely dark, with no wind, no trees, no sound, no moon, no people, just stars in the sky. It was unspeakably beautiful. At Breaks, it was pitch black, we were enveloped by the forest, with no one around, the crickets and cicadas were deafening, and it was creepy. I wanted to put our trash in a campground trash bin located a short distance down the road (150-200 yards). I took one step outside, and even with a bright flashlight in hand, I creeped out, and had Ray drive me to the trash area and back.
• There are some loooonnnnnngg trailer trucks on the road. 50+ feet  is not unusual. You get a whole new appreciation for truckers when you travel a lot on our highways. America really does move by truck.
• Listening to the radio, we heard about a game that is played down in Kentucky: cornhole. That REQUIRED a google search. There are actual leagues!

Rain and serenity 9/29/2015

Today was an opportunity for us to see the beautiful hills of Virginia//Kentucky in a different way. It started raining early on in the day, so we took our umbrellas and headed out to explore Breaks. Breaks Interstate  Park is administered by both Virginia and Kentucky as it emcompasses land from each state. It was first envisioned by some to be a national park, but Congress denied funding. So the two states set this land aside as a state park. It is considered to be a "resort" park, with a conference center, a lodge, cabins, campground, water park, pool, and restaurant located here. I had originally thought we could go to the restaurant here to celebrate our anniversary, but after Labor Day, the restaurant is closed on Mondays and tuesdays. Many people use the facilities here for business

conferences, weddings and family reunions, and those functions usually have people arriving here on Wednesday or Thursday. When we arrived, there wwas virtually noone in the park. We were the only campers along with 2-3 others in the entire campground, where there are a total of ta least 100 sites.

There are a number of short trails that lead to overlooks that provide sweeping views of the valleys below. This area is incredibly beautiful. The valleys between the mountains here are not wide and flat, but very narrow. Most roads are nestled in the hollows with hills to either side, with a creek to the side of the road. Any homes are built across the creek, and are connected to the road by a small bridge. While this is not always the case, it is very common. This is the heart of Appalachia. Coal

country. From up on the high overlooks at Breaks, we were provided an incredible view of all the mountain folds, their hollows, the changing fall foliage, the river and the railroad that carries coal out of the area. Clouds were low in the hollows.. We stood there in the quiet (we were the only people there), rain coming down, umbrellas in hand, mesmerized by the serenity of the moment. Ray mentioned that it would be great to have our lounge chairs there and then to sit in the silence, sipping a cold beer, and feel the

peace of the place.

We visited all of the overlook trails, and started down one other longer trail, but it started to rain even harder. It was getting to midday by then, and we opted to return to the RV, at least until the rain stopped. We had lunch, read a bit, surfed the web (using our phone signals--there's Verizon 4G here), and I took a short nap while listening to the rain patter on the roof of the RV.

The rain did stop later in the afternoon, and we decided that a hike would be too soggy, so we revisited  a few of the spots we had so enjoyed that morning.

Our anniversary day finished with dinner and a movie in our little retreat in the woods.

Thanks, Garmin! 9/28/2015

Behold Kentucky Route 611

Around a hairpin turn leaving Big South Fork.
I was following in the Elantra.

Our ultimate destination today was Breaks Interstate Park that sits on the border of Kentucky and Virginia. In leaving the Big South Fork campground, our only choice if we wanted to shave at least 1-2 hours of extra driving, was to go out the way we came in--up and down the sinuous curves we negotiated on the way in. To make it easier, I drove the Elantra, rather than hooking it up to the RV. That made it a bit easier to go around those hairpin turns. Ray drove the beast like a champ, and we traveled the 4 miles from the campground down to a place where we could connect the car. It took 15 minutes to go 4 miles.

After a brief stop in Oneida for gas and few groceries, we set off using a directions list Ray had printed out from the Good Sam Club (an RV club) website. Issue #1: we missed the turn for a state road going east. When we realized this, we checked our state paper road map, and saw that another road would connect us to the Interstate to which we were heading. We headed down that road. From that point, our Garmin (specifically designed for the needs of RVers) had a different route mapped out than the Good Sam route. Which to use? Issue #2: we chose the Garmin. All was fine until Garmin directed us to turn onto Kentucky Route 611. Let me stress here that our Garmin specifically routes RVs on roads that are RV-safe. Issue #3: Route 611. OH. MY. GOD. This route made the entrance to Big South Fork look like the Interstate. Route 611 looked to be just slightly wider than our driveway, and a whole lot more steep and riddled with curves and hairpin turns. The road was JUST wide enough for the RV. No other cars. JUST our RV. So Ray carefully (there's really no other way), guided the RV down route 611, through what I imagine the towns depicted in Justified looked like. (Harlan county is actually just south of this area.) And then... Issue #4: THE SCHOOL BUS. To our extreme horror, we came around a bend, and beheld a full size school bus coming down the road directly at us. We couldn't back up. There was no place to go. We couldn't move over to the right. Our passenger side wheels were at the very edge of the pavement, and there was a 2 foot drop off directly at the pavement edge (can you spell "snapped axle"?) we stopped. Our blood pressure spiked (at least mine did). The bus driver advanced...slowly, and eased the bus by, putting his wheels onto a sliver of grass on the other side of the road, with about 2-3 inches (not an exaggeration) to spare between our 2 vehicles. We assume that this bus driver has done this before. we drove on this hellish road for about 8 miles.It seemed like an eternity. In some places, the edge of the road had collapsed, narrowing the already too-narrow road. We met a few cars coming form the opposite direction, and they politely stopped and moved to the shoulder to let us pass. Thanks Garmin, for the great RV directions!

Finally we arrived at Breaks and at our campsite. With some difficulty, we leveled  the rig in our full-hookup spot (water, electric, sewer), and were somewhat surprised that there were no other people on our campground loop. We're all by ourselves. In the pitch dark. In the woods.