United States in the Fall

Mike and I have spent the last week traveling through the northern US: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and now upper New York state. We have logged more hours highway driving on this leg than in the entire four months in Canada. We know we are heading home and the trip is winding down. We have been pleasantly surprised at the colours and the leaves still remaining on the trees. Small town US is lovely both in scenery and architecture. There are a lot of towns with really nice historic buildings in them. We spent a few hours in towns that we had never heard of like Worcester. Mass which was very pleasant. We stayed an extra night in Portland and went to see the Cirque Mechanics. They are a group of acrobats who use bicycles and wheels as their main props. They were very good. We toured an experimental submarine in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We could easily have spent more time in this part of the world. Weather and concerns about fresh water are driving us home quicker than I like.

One night we stopped at a very large sporting goods store called Cabela’s. They cater to RVs and allow overnight parking. Some of the Cabela’s have RV dump stations and fresh water for filling up. While we were camping there we went inside and I bought a new ski jacket. I didn’t come prepared for the cool temperatures. It is the lightest, almost not even there jacket that you have ever seen. It is lighter and looser than a small windbreaker. It looks like it is lined with tin foil. I didn’t buy it for really, really cold weather but I am hoping it handles temperatures below freezing well. We will see.

We spent an afternoon wandering around Albany. Albany is a very clean city; both the streets and the buildings. The older buildings are really nice looking and they must be cleaned regularly because there is no sign of pollution on the stone work. The one thing that was missing from Albany and many other towns were lots of people. At first we thought that it was because it was a Saturday or Sunday. We were in Albany on a Monday and it still felt almost deserted.

People are really good about allowing us to park. We went into a Denny’s and asked if they minded us parking in their lot overnight and they had no problems with it. There are a lot of truck stops and restaurants like the Cracker Barrel chain that are well set up for RV overnight parking. Even places with “no camping” signs often say they had to put them up but they don’t mind in the slightest and we won’t be bothered. We won’t be staying in a single campground while we are in the US which will be about 10 days.

Our RV now has one not so small boo boo. We had been parking along the side of a street in town and when we drove away we heard a nasty noise. I looked out my window and didn’t see anything accept the car close to the curb. I thought the sound must have been the tires scraping on the curb as we turned out. Mike went and checked the car and it was fine. Later the next night we try to get into one of our external storage compartments and it won’t open. It has been badly dented and scraped. We are now guessing that there was a low sign pole that we must have hit when I thought we just scraped the car tires. We like to do our bit in keeping our body work folks and painters employed in these times.

Today, much to Mike’s chagrin, I had a look inside a few other RVs. None had anywhere near as nice and open a living space as we have. What one did have was the ability to drive your car inside the back of the RV instead of towing it. The living room isn’t as nice or as large as ours but not having to tow a car in Europe would be great. It is probably too late to be thinking about this now when we are hoping to send the RV over to Europe in just a few months. I want to replace the dining table with a custom designed and built desk. That alone will take quite a bit of time to arrange and complete and would be necessary on any RV. Based on where we have been this last week you would think that we wouldn’t need to bother traveling to Europe. We have either been in or near Greece, Liverpool, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Malta, Suffolk, Portsmouth and many other European sounding towns.

As I am writing this I am getting way too hot inside the RV as I am dressed for walking outside. This is one of those days where Mike has decided he wants to drive and not stop and wander around. I think he also feels the end of the trip is near has started to rush things. While Mike is driving I just left my computer that I am as working on, got up and changed my clothes, made a cup of coffee and I am now back at the computer writing this. I just love being able to get up and move around and access the kitchen, bathroom and closets while Mike is driving. Sometimes I move back and sit in my living room recliner when he is driving. I have nice big windows to see out of. If I wanted to I could put a movie on the TV and watch that. I am not keen on spending too much time driving but on the odd occasions that it happens it is quite easy to entertain myself in our mobile home.

We should be home in about two days. The next big task will be emptying out our house and moving our furniture over to our new apartment. I think I prefer “vacationing” in our motorhome. We do look forward to seeing friends and family soon.