Bison at the Terry Bison Ranch, Cheyenne, Wyoming

weeks and up into Wyoming. Terry Bison Ranch just south of Cheyenne was our destination, and we visited several interesting museums, even running into some of our buddies, Mike and Cathy, we had seen at the Winnebago Rally in Iowa!   Just proves it’s a “Small World” after all! Back at the RV Park, we had taken a little train out to see the bison (thus the name) and got closer to them than we ever had before!

The great news is that John and Bob worked on our King Dome (our in-motion satellite TV dome) and were able to get it working again! Yippee!! The sad news was that we were parting again…they to New York State, for Judy to do more hiking on the North Country Trail, and we to the mountains of Colorado…and hopefully cooler climes.

Our next stop was Eleven Mile State Park at an elevation of around 9000 ft., a beautiful

11 Mile State Park, Colorado

park! I took Sassy for her usual walk after getting parked and she was her usual self, but after we got back to the RV, she more or less just collapsed! Respirations were high, and very lethargic, and very unlike her…especially when she wasn’t enthused about eating we knew something was wrong for certain! One morning at 3:30AM, I was awakened by her vomiting, and later that AM, I called a near-by vet, who told us he would call and have us bring her in that afternoon, but he never called back! John did some reading about “Altitude Sickness” in dogs, and sure enough, every symptom mentioned fit Sassy’s to a T! After two days of this “lethargy”, she seemed to be rebounding, just as other dogs had, in the information John had read, so we definitely think this was the problem!  (Sassy completely recovered.)

After an overnight stop in Montrose, John drove us up the “Million Dollar Highway” to Silverton, and elevation of 9300! Jane had driven this route in 2008, so she decided John needed to have this experience! A twisty-turny road (and pretty narrow, too)!  If you want to get an idea of why they call it a million dollar highway, check out this YouTube video somebody made as they drove it in a motorhome.  Just

Jane and Sassy at Animas Forks, Silverton Colorado

after we got into our campground (Red Mountain RV Park) which faced the tracks of the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Train, we got to see our first train come in! Always fun to see that steam train!!

Jane’s allergies became a problem while in Silverton, but we were able to do some four-wheeling in the San Juan Mountains and enjoyed spectacular views and John did a wonderful, safe job of driving! One day Jane’s brother and his wife drove over from Telluride to spend a few hours, and it was fun seeing them and their two “boys”, Sassy’s brother Max and their nephew Frank. Bettye and Jane had several heads turn when we walked the three Corgis! While in Silverton, John and Jane celebrated their 38^th anniversary with another fun day of four-wheeling, and a nice meal out at one of the local restaurants.

Cinnamon Pass, San Juan Mountains, Colorado

After a week in Silverton and morning temperatures around 40 degrees (marvelous!), we moved back North and down the “Million Dollar Highway” to Ridgeway State Park Pa- Pa-Co-Chu-Pak (or Cow Creek) Camp Ground to spend two weeks. Our cat, Trekkie really has enjoyed herself just lying out watching the world and almost having another close encounter with one of the pretty tame mule deer than wander through! The Uncompahgre river runs alongside the campground. Again, we do some four-wheeling and really enjoy our time here. Jane finished her book TomBoy Bride which is about a woman’s experience at one of the mines in the San Juan mountains back in the early 1900s…most interesting, and she would highly recommend it!

As always, we thank you for following along with us on our travels, and pray our Lord’s blessings on all of you!

In Gaffney, SC we had some major routine maintenance performed.  Major since we have now rolled over 50,000 miles.  We needed an engine coolant change (over 10 gallons), new synthetic transmission fluid (at about $35 a gallon), engine oil change (about six gallons of that), differential fluid changed (I think that was only five or six gallons.)  Since we have air brakes like a large truck, we have an air dryer to keep moisture our of the system – that cartridge needed to be replaced.  Oh, we also had a new engine air filter installed – our air filter is about the size of a round kitchen trash can (the kind where you step on a pedal to lift the lid.)

And of course, we can’t forget servicing of the diesel generator [sigh...]  We left quite a bit of money in Gaffney.

The visit with Les and Karen was fun as always and our few days passed too quickly.  After leaving Oriental, we made a bee-line for home so John could tend to some ranch duties.

The idea of being back in Texas in the summer was for the primary purpose of spraying the prickly pear (using a restricted herbicide called Surmount, but John now has an applicator license) to kill it.  Eventually.  The herbicide takes two to three years to kill the pear (as it is called around here),  it is a tenacious plant as you might imagine.  Ranchers actually like pear since it makes great food for cattle (at least once you burn the spines off so the cattle can actually eat it) and it is very drought resistant.  However if there is too much pear, it will decrease the amount grazing land available.  We are on the verge of having too much pear, so it is important to control it now.

Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate (too much wind most of the time) and when it looked like we were going to have a good day to use a boom sprayer on the tractor, the tractor developed a hydraulic leak.  John found a leaking seal and replaced it (along with 10 gallons of new hydraulic fluid – it seems like everything we own uses 6-10 gallons of a petroleum product.)

The tractor was finally back in business (took a few days for the seal to arrive), and so was the wind.  He did manage to spot-spray quite a bit of pear from the mini-truck with a 30 gallon electric sprayer and a hand wand.

John has been wanting to add a roof-top air conditioner to the coach for a couple of years (our present AC is a ‘basement’ unit) for those moments in hot climates, so he finally accomplished that.  It was a great excuse to to buy another toy, er, tool.  He bought a used electric scissor lift (Genie GS-2032) from an Internet auction so he could safely lift the 95 pound unit to the roof of the coach.

July 5th we hit the road headed for the Winnebago factory in Forest City IA for a little more maintenance (are you spotting a pattern here?) and to attend the Winnebago Grand National Rally.  Two days of maintenance and about four days of rally fun passed quickly.  In the meantime our satellite Internet system was having problems.  We got switched to another satellite which was a big improvement, but then had a different issue.  John ended up switching satellite modems out (we had a spare) and that seemed to be the trick – we were on-line again.

Then we headed west to hookup with our RV buddies Bob & Judy in Colorado – we wanted to get relief from the heat and humidity.  When we arrived at a little campground in eastern Colorado (Seibert) yesterday, John discovered the satellite TV in-motion dome (we have DirecTV  while running down the road) has failed yet again.  This is our 4th King Dome (from King Controls) and #4 has failed previously. The back TV is on a separate dish, so at least we have some satellite TV available.

On our way to Colorado, we were in a torrential rainstorm somewhere in Kansas on I-70 and discovered a leak at the top of the windshield (best taken care of by the factory in our opinion), so we’re going to be back there for an appointment September 13th.  [big sigh...]  We’re never at a loss for things to do – there is always something to deal with

Thanks again for traveling along with us, may God richly bless you and keep you safe.

We are tired from all of the activities we participated in for the Naval Academy’s Commissioning Week (one of Jane’s childhood girlfriend’s son was graduating from the Naval Academy) which concluded in the conferring of academic degrees (Bachelor of Science) and the commissioning of the midshipmen into either the Marine Corps, Navy, or even the Army or Air Force (special circumstances for Army/Air Force commissioning.)

The week started for us with a demonstration of precision marching and rifle handling by the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon based at Marine Barracks Washington.  The 24 man rifle platoon performs their entire drill without any commands, drum beats,

The entire drill is performed without any command of any sort

or any other visual or aural clues.  The Marines were all about the same height, looked about the same, and acted as one organism.  Their routine was a thing of beauty to watch.  There are some YouTube videos of the guys performing and I encourage you to search them out and watch the guys in action.

We thoroughly enjoyed a walking tour of the over 300 acre Naval Academy site first established in 1845 by then Secretary of the Navy, George Bancroft.

The dormitory that houses all 4,000+ midshipmen under one roof is in fact named after George Bancroft.  This is one humongous building (the largest dormitory in the world) consisting of 33 acres of floor space, 1,700 rooms and 4.8 miles of halls.

In addition to the midshipmen rooms, Bancroft Hall houses offices for the Commandant of Midshipmen, six battalion officers, six battalion chaplains, thirty company officers and their senior enlisted leaders, a barbershop, bank, travel office, a small restaurant known as “Steerage,” textbook store, general store (“The Naval Academy Store” or “The Mid Store”), laundromat, uniform store, cobbler shop, the USNA Band, the USNA branch of the United States Postal Service, a gymnasium, spaces for extracurricular activities, and full medical & dental clinics as well as small optometry and orthopedics clinics. The Hall even has its own ZIP code (21412)!

The building also contains King Hall (named after Fleet Admiral Ernest King), where all midshipmen are fed simultaneously three times daily.

The midshipmen gather in formation three times a day, five days a week (except the summer) in the large plaza in front of Bancroft to count noses and gain more practice at assembling, marching, and following a military routine.  Every Friday, there is a formal Color Parade at Worden Field in which all 4,000+ midshipmen again get more practice in marching and generally following a very regimented lifestyle (my analysis!)  We got to watch a noon meal formation in front of Bancroft Hall and the very last Color Parade for the first class (seniors) midshipmen.  It was so hot and miserable, 62 mids were either carried off or helped off the parade grounds due to heat exhaustion.  We heard one was taken to the academy hospital!  The mids were dressed in their dark blue formal uniforms so it’s no wonder so many were being helped off the field.  The local Annapolis newspaper showed some pictures of the graduating ‘firsties’ playing in a fountain after their parade – celebrating and cooling off!

On the same day as the color parade another tradition happens, the Herndon monument plebe climb.

A ‘plebe’ is a first year or freshmen student that has a very difficult life at the Academy until they transform from civilian student to military student.  These kids leave a known and familiar world for a completely different environment where they are challenged physically, emotionally, and mentally with the upper classmen  and Chief Petty Officers (senior enlisted Naval non-commissioned officers) dishing out the ‘works.’   Their first year is extremely challenging and demanding and when they realize their plebe year is about over and they will advance a year, they are all excited with the realization of a major milestone accomplished in their path to becoming a commissioned officer in the armed forces.

This excitement is discharged with the Herndon monument plebe climb (we finally got back to this!)  All 1,000+ plebes dress in their gym outfits and prepare to climb the 21 foot tall Herndon obelisk with the objective of replacing the plebe ‘dixie-cup’ cap  previously placed on top with a hat worn by 1st, 2nd and, 3rd class mids.  Traditionally the obelisk is greased with lard and the plebes sprayed with water while they climbed, but this year the Commandant of the Naval Academy decreed no grease for safety reasons (which turned out to be an extremely unpopular and provocative decision since he altered a long tradition.)

The Blue Angels put on quite the show

The Navy’s Blue Angels (officially the Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron) performed their amazing aerobatics right in front of the Naval Academy over the Severn River.  We have never ever been so close to an aerobatic show, either civilian or military.  There are 20 pictures of this demonstration in our photo gallery (I took 500!)  You aviation lovers be sure and check it out.

Last Friday was the event that 1,000+ midshipmen ‘firsties’ and thousands of family, friends and supporters were eagerly anticipating – the commissioning of the mids into the Navy, Marines, or for the class of 2010, one into the Army.  The new  Navy officers are commissioned as Ensigns (O-1), and Marine/Army as 2nd Lts (also O-1).  The rank insignia is one gold bar affectionately referred to as the ‘butter bar.’

The speaker for this commissioning ceremony was Vice President of the Unites States Joe Biden while President Obama was the speaker for the West Point ceremony (they trade off each year.)  Biden shook the hand of each graduate – I’ll bet his hand needed

VP Joe Biden shakes the hand of new Navy Ensign Quinn Rohane

a rest after all of that.

We are all very proud of brand-new Ensign Quinn Rohane who has chosen the Naval Flight Officer (NFO) career track.  He reports to Pensacola Naval Air Station in about 30 days for primary flight training.  Quinn’s NFO track is not a pilot track, but he will be aboard Naval aircraft in an electronics warfare capacity or something similar (navigator, radar intercept officer, ??)

We leave the Annapolis area tomorrow and are headed to Gaffney, SC for some routine maintenance maintenance on our Freightliner coach chassis, and then later on the week we head to the Oriental, NC area to have another visit with some dear old friends, the Auths.

As a quick recap of what we have been doing for the last month we have been on the road, we left our little ranch in the Texas Hill Country on tax day, April 15 and headed for the Mineola (the Mineola Civic Center) to attend a Winnebago rally.  Mineola is a very nice small town in NE Texas and

John made an ugly little girl

it was quite the contrast to the hill country with its pine trees and sand.  The civic center was quite nice with great banquet facilities and the catered food was really tasty.  As a bonus, there were very large open fields where John got to fly a plane he brought along.

After leaving Mineola, we made a beeline for Chippokes Plantation State Park in tidal Virginia which happens to be across the James River from Jamestown and Williamsburg.  We were meeting up with our RV (and boating) friends Bob and Judy at the park and we were going to do

Jane and John at the Jamestowne visitor center

some more volunteer work there.  John takes care of the park’s weather station and helps out doing some computer maintenance there and other odd jobs.  Chippokes Plantation State Park is about a 1200 acre actual working farm with nice camping and period houses for rent.  While at Chippokes we actually managed to play tourist this time (last summer we worked the entire 10 days we were at the park) and visited Historic Jamestowne.  Getting there is a little fun (at least for the first couple of times) since you have to take a free ferry across the river.  We stayed at Chippokes for about two weeks and left for an RV park in Luray, Virginia which is very near the Shenandoah National Park.

John thought there would be some good sightseeing in the area and sure enough there was.  The Shenandoah National Park was created by the CCC in the 1930s (like many, many other parks and public works) and was designed primarily for automobile sightseeing along the mountain ridge.  We drove this 105 mile long “Skyline Drive” and the scenery was very nice – not spectacular, but nice.  It was good to visit there.

Next on the sightseeing list was the Virginia Military Institute’s “Hall of Valor” civil war museum in nearby New Market.  During the New Market engagement of the civil war, the VMI cadets were called upon to augment

Monument to the 54th Pennsylvania - New Market battle

the regular Confederate solders and saw action.  10 VMI cadets were killed in this battle.  The New Market story was quite interesting and is certainly worth reading about.

Another popular attraction in the area is Luray Caverns – billed as the “Largest Caverns in the East.”  We have been to the granddaddy Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico years ago and didn’t think anything could top that and weren’t particularly interested in visiting Luray Caverns, but we did anyway and weren’t disappointed.  Luray Caverns is quite a bit smaller, but interesting nonetheless.  There is quite the oddity in the caverns – an organ that strikes the stalactites to make the musical notes.  This project was one man’s dream and obsession and after we heard the organ play a recorded piece, we weren’t very impressed.  The music was a little weird sounding – don’t think this will catch on in other caverns .

John has been eager to finally rebuild our website and it actually happened over the last seven or eight days and he just put the finishing touches on it today.  He has been banging and fussing away at the keyboard for what seems like an eternity.  Also there are more pictures added to our gallery, so with this blog entry, we are pretty well caught up!

We leave here later this week and head for the Annapolis area where we will party with the Rohanes/Topleys/Josselyns/French celebrating Quinn Rohane’s graduation from the Naval Academy.  Should be lots of fun during commissioning week.

That’s it for now!

It was a long and painful migration from Serendipity to WordPress blog software, but the deed is done   I had to copy/paste/hand edit some 70-odd posts and later I discovered I made a bunch of extra work for myself.  Oh well…

Another change

With the old blog software I had to use Google Groups for email notifications of new posts, now email notifications are integral to WordPress via a ‘plugin.’  Like before, it is your choice to unsubscribe at any time or you can even select which category you would like to receive notifications.

Other..

We are on our summer trip (part I) and enjoying beautiful weather in Virginia near the Shenandoah National Park.  More later.

We haven’t communicated in, umm, several months. Tempus fugit.

It seems like only a couple of months ago we returned home from traveling last summer. It is always a joy to leave for new adventures and always a joy to return to the little ranch God has provided us.

So many things have transpired since our last entry.

It has been a long, cold and wet winter. Thanks to the cyclic weather phenomenon called El Nino, we had a very wet fall and winter, both frozen precipitation, and

Pretty in white!

liquid. We have had 1) rain, 2) sleet, 3) snow 4) frozen fog, and 5) pea sized hail at various times over the last few months. We are NOT complaining about the precipitation. We also have five to seven year periods of not much moisture, so we graciously accept the mud, the dirty vehicles, and the cold weather (but there is a little grumbling at times nonetheless….)

Moving along to some geekey things, John uses the winter for indoor projects. On the short list was to totally rebuild a couple of websites he created initially and maintains. John’s favorite web editing software, Adobe GoLive was an ‘end-of-life’ product so John finally decided it was time to move on to a current Adobe product called Dreamweaver. After a couple of weeks worth of on-line video training, he dove in and got the job done. The first effort was a remake of the sudansouth web site (the missionaries in Southern Sudan), the second effort was a complete rebuild of the Friends of Grayson Highlands State Park web site.

He built another web site for nephew Jason’s wife (Christine) that turned out okay as well.

He has had an objective of totally rebuilding the janeandjohn.org web site, but it is like the cobbler’s children not having shoes – he can’t seem to make the time to work on janenadjohn.org.

Our dear neighbor on the other side of the fence to the north finally sold the property. The neighbors were divorced a year or two ago and Marjorie was able to stay in the house until it was sold. It was a bittersweet moment to see the storage pod for the new owners dropped off today after closing. We all need to move on and it was with great delight and anticipation we met our new neighbors today. They seem nice and John was happy to find out the fellow was a woodworker.

Buck’s new “house and yard”

Marjorie endowed us with her pet axis deer (Buckaroo or ‘Buck’ is now in his new home) and her two pet whitetail deer are still in their high-fenced pen on her old property which she wanted on our property. Buck and the whitetail does are used to being around each other, so we don’t know how that’s going to work out. The whitetails were not interested in being walked around to our property. Speaking of Buck, we completely redid the fencing and gates in most of our catch pen and Buck has a pen of about 60 feet by 120 feet (I think this was the size of the lot of our first house!) It took the fence guys about three days to redo the enclosure and they had to build ten gates.

Buckaroo the axis deer

So what’s this about a 19,000 pound boy!?

John has wanted a bulldozer for a couple of years and has been reading and investigating and watching the classified ads and even made an offer a year ago on a dozer about 45 miles away. The dozer is the ultimate guy toy but it is more than a toy – it will be another useful hand around our little ranch. This dozer was purchased from an Internet auction (IronPlanet.com) and the inspector’s report about the condition (and 50+ pictures) was very accurate. John is thrilled to have another piece of useful equipment on the property.

Glamor picture

For those interested, the dozer is a 1999 Komatsu D39P-1, 90 HP turbo diesel, three forward, three reverse speeds, only 1246 hours of use. Joystick steering and a joystick to control the 9′ 3″ wide blade. It is interesting to note the blade on the front of the dozer weighs about 2,200 pounds, about 400 more pounds than his Kubota tractor.

Sorry about such a long time between updates May God bless and a fair wind and a following sea to our friends and loved ones…

Jane and John

True to form, it has been more than a month since our last blog entry – the time seems to pass so quickly.

We left off with a visit to our good friends Les and Karen in Oriental, North Carolina.  From Oriental we headed West and North crossing our route of earlier in the summer while we headed to Ohio.  John describes our summer travel route as “looking like somebody took a handful of spaghetti and threw it on a wall” – we had to backtrack quite a bit due to visit schedules we planned.

John had read about a giant scale model RC airplane show at the Air Force’s Wright Patterson Museum (Dayton, Ohio) over the Labor Day weekend, so off we go.  We both enjoy air museums and have always wanted to visit the Air Force Museum, so this was a great opportunity to see the museum and enjoy a model airplane show.

The model air show was really good – all of the models had to be quite large to be admitted to the show, we think 89 inches of wingspan was the minimum.  These ‘models’ can have wingspans of over eight feet and weigh up to the 30-50 pound range.

You are probably wondering about the cost of these models – about $1,000 – $1,500 will get you one of about 89 inches of wingspan (and about 15 pounds of weight.)  The engine on this size of model will typically run on gasoline, be a single cylinder displacing 50 cc and producing five horsepower (and it weighs three pounds.)

Then there are the true jet models.  These guys have some serious money in their aircraft.  There are real miniature turbine jet engine specifically made for model aircraft - these engines cost anywhere from about $1,000 to $5,000 (yes – just the turbine engine costs this much!)  Some of these models (typically models of military aircraft) will have two engines; some even have four or more.  The jet guys might have a model that’s worth $10,000 – $15,000 dollars!  Didn’t mean to get on a cost tangent, but at the model air show there were about eight or nine jets flying!  They sound exactly like the real thing and even the smell from the fuel is exactly the same (after all, the engines are ‘real’ jet engines.)  Anyway, the air show was quite a bit of fun and we still had to plan some time to visit the adjacent Air Force Museum.

The Air Force Museum was huge and contained extremely rare aircraft and experimental aircraft previously only seen by us in documentary TV shows.  The one complaint we had was the lack of exhibition space – there were so many aircraft, they were displayed very close together which made it very difficult to photograph just one plane.  The planes were also hanging from the ceiling, so it was all a little overwhelming – you didn’t know where to look.

After a very enjoyable visit to Dayton, we backtracked yet again headed for Delaware, Ohio for a long-overdue visit with John’s nephew Jason and family.  We last visited with them two years ago; it was going to be fun to see how the four kids have grown (and check over the parents for gray hairs!)

We have been hearing a slight noise at the rear of the coach (where our engine is located) and it has slowly been getting more and more pronounced, so we decided it needed attention.  Fortunately there was a Cummins dealer nearby, so we called them and they said drop by and they will take a look at the problem.  We drove the coach there the next day and arrived at 9:30 AM.  The tech started investigating the problem at 12:30 PM and after about an hour of trying to locate the source of the noise, they finally found the cause – we had a leaking

exhaust manifold gasket!  This was a bit of a big deal due to a lack of easy access to the engine since it is sort of stuffed into the rear of the coach.  The tech had to remove some access panels in our bedroom so he could unbolt the exhaust manifold – some bolts were accessed from the top of the engine, some from underneath.  Since the engine is turbo-charged, the turbo is attached to the exhaust manifold, so the entire assembly must have been quite heavy.  Fortunately the tech didn’t have to disconnect the turbo – he just unbolted the manifold and moved it far enough away from the head so he could remove the old gaskets and slip the new ones in (six of them.)

They weren’t finished with our repair until about 9:00 PM, so we got pretty tired and bored hanging around the small waiting room. The good news in all of this was our Cummins ISL engine was still under the manufacturer’s warranty (five years or 100,000 miles!)  We had to pay a deductible of $200, but that was fine with us.  If the engine was out of warranty, we think our bill would have been about $1,500 (labor rates for motor home chassis or engine work generally run $100-125 an hour.)

When we got our coach back, it was too late to return to the campground, so we camped out in their parking lot.  Only when we started the engine after the repairs did we realize how noisy the engine had become.  We had been desensitized to the slowly increasing noise level.  It was a great feeling to have the repair behind us and we could get back to visiting!

John wanted to fly the aircraft RC models he brought along, so from Delaware we made a bee-line to the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) in Muncie, Indiana.  The AMA has several flying sites scattered over the thousand or so acres of former farmland so John was really looking forward to flying here.  Things didn’t go so well for him.

He was flying his favorite model (Aspera) in the late afternoon and couldn’t see the plane well enough in a cloud shadow – the model was too far away and he lost orientation and down it went into the ground.  It was a complete wreck.  Not one to give up, John paid a visit the next day to the handy and nearby model shop and selected another plane.  Most of the Aspera parts could be transferred to the new plane, so that was a small benefit.

John flew the new model (an E-Flite Pulse XT 25e) and decided he did not like the way it handled – it was not like the sweet-flying Aspera.  After several flights with the Pulse, he was getting comfortable with it and was coming in for the last landing before packing it away and leaving the AMA for home.  John rolled the Pulse on its side for some last aerobatics and it tip-stalled and spun into the ground.  Two for two.  This turned out to be an expensive segment of our trip.  (Note:  John bought another Aspera after we returned home – he won’t give up!)

Thanks to our home weather station (which uploads to our web site), we noticed the high temperatures at our little ranch have finally moderated and are now in the 80s, so it was time to head home.  We are very thankful and feel very blessed to have the opportunity and the means to travel and avoid the hot Texas summers – boy did we miss a hot one this year!!

We point the coach to Harper and four days later, we arrive home.  Home sweet ranch!  It is very nice to be back; we love to leave and we love to return!  This summer we covered 7,500 total miles, stayed in about 16 different RV park, and like usual we averaged 7.8 MPG.  Thank goodness the price of diesel was about $1 a gallon cheaper than last summer!!

We’re sorry this installment has been so long, hopefully it wasn’t boring. 

God Bless and thanks for riding along with Jane and John!

We have had reunions with two couples in Vermont that we met while sailing our boat in the Bahamas, and Caribbean, and have spent several hours rehashing old times, and sailing stories with them.  Both couples went much further with their sailing than we did -  ‘Enbar’, (Pat and Carol’s boat) sailed across the Atlantic, and ‘Jacarde’ (Jack and Carly’s boat) sailed across the Pacific!  Carol belongs to the

Fun on Lake Champlain with Jack and Carly

Mountain Fiber Folk Cooperative and the goods produced are hand made articles.  To read more about them go to their web site.  Jack and Carly took us out on their 16′ power boat on Lake Champlain and we met their grandson, Chris, affectionately renamed ‘boat-boy’!

While in Vermont, we visited maple syrup producers and bought some locally made cheeses.  Saw some covered bridges, and did a couple of Geocaches.  Our favorite campground was in St. Johnsbury where we were parked on the bank of Moose River at (appropriately named) Moose River Campground.  The owners, Mary and Gary, are very nice folks!  We visited the Fairbanks Museum which was started by the son of the gentleman who developed the platform scale in the 1800s.

It was in St. Johnsbury that we found ‘Dog Mountain‘ – basically a dog park, we learned, but with a dog chapel, and Steve Huneck gallery who developed this wonderful

Sign advertising ‘Dog Mountain’

‘Mountain’!  Sassy had a blast playing with the other dogs, swimming and even tried some of the agility course!  She did pretty well trying to keep up with the other dogs whose legs were two to three times as long as hers!!

When we left Vermont, we headed to Eastport, Maine, claimed the eastern-most city in the USA .  While in the vicinity, we drove over to Campobello Island in Canada to the Roosevelt Cottage where FDR’s parents bought some property for a summer home, and he, Eleanor and their family went for vacations.  When back in the USA at Lubec, Maine, we visited one of the two light houses in the area (West Quoddy) and heard the blowing of their fog horn.

On driving to see Bar Harbor, we decided it reminded us of trying to get down to the Keys in Florida!  The traffic was something and it was certainly crowded in town!  Drove to Acadia National Park on one of the few sunny days, and enjoyed the drive and scenery!

We are wrapping up a visit with John’s nephew Erik and family in the Endicott, NY area and tomorrow (Aug 3) we begin a two day trip to one of our favorite state parks, Grayson Highlands State Park near Whitetop, Virginia.

Next was a stop at Wells Beach, Maine for three days.  Drove over to Kennebunkport, and no, we didn’t get invited to the Bush home, but we passed a drive with a guard house, so thought that might be the place!  Traffic here reminds us of driving down A1A in Daytona Beach, but this is, after all a beach!

By the way!  John got parts for our satellite TV, installed them and we are back in business!  The dash air won’t be fixed until we get to the Freightliner factory in Gaffney, SC, so that will be awhile yet…hope it stays cool!!  There are lots of trip pictures in our gallery, so have a look!

Thanks for reading!

Time to get ready!  We moved on the coach Wednesday, June 17 and in spite of having most things we need already permanently stationed on the coach, many trips to the house were still necessary to load up for travel.  This trip was going to be different.  Our beloved friend and companion, Bosun the cat, was not going to make this trip.  Bosun was on the last trip we made to the Bahamas in our sailboat and accompanied us on every trip in the motorhome.  Sorry you couldn’t make it old friend.  We did have a new companion, Sassy the Corgi.  We had no idea how well Sassy would take to traveling (or no idea how we would take to having a doggie along), but we easily fell into the routine of doggie care and enjoy our new furry “kid.”

We are ready and leave our little ranch Saturday, June 20 and head to New York State to meet up with our travel friends Bob and Judy whom we haven’t seen in two years.  We traveled for four days straight and had enough (we usually travel 300-400 miles a day), so we stopped for a couple of days, and then finally met up with our buds in Cortland, NY.  We have read about the disintegration of bridges and our Interstate Highway system in general since the economy declined, but based on about 1500 miles of Interstate travel, we really don’t think it is better or worse than we have experienced over the last few years of travel. But we digress.  This was among the worse campgrounds we have experienced.  30 years old, poor electric (as in low voltage due to inadequate wiring), non-level sites, poor maintenance, bad roads (ruts, potholes), and tree

Jane and good friend Judy start out on another leg of the FLT

limbs all over the place.  You might ask, “why Cortland and this crummy campground?”  It was because our RV friends Bob & Judy were there so that Judy can hike the Finger Lakes Trail which goes all over the place in that area.  We were there for a couple of days and Jane and Judy enjoyed the fellowship and hiking.  Bob and John were the support crew (dropped the gals off and picked them up usually a couple of hours later.)  We all had a good time visiting and catching up on two years of news.  We then moved to a campground about 30 miles to the west near Ithaca, NY.  More hiking, more visiting, and we played a few games of Mexican Train (a domino game.)  We had rain, rain, and more rain – we kept praying that we could have diverted the moisture to Texas since we are very dry at the ranch.  (Now that we own animals, we worry about the availability of grass for grazing and it is turning brown at a fast rate.)

The peaceful and lightly-populated Ithaca campground turned into a noisy and busy place almost overnight over the July 4th holiday weekend with kids running around and dozens of families enjoying a respite from their daily routine.  It was really special when we were awakened at 1:30 am with people talking loudly in spite of quiet hours – rarely have we encountered such rude behavior in over 40,000 miles of Rving.

Our home on wheels is generally a joy and we think a wonderful alternative to hotels/motels, but we have a few added responsibilities and even some headaches – it seems there is always something that is broken or needs attention on the coach.  Our dash air conditioning (runs off the engine) quit about a week ago which isn’t a big deal because a) it’s cool up here (we’re currently in Vermont), and b) we can run the generator and our main house air conditioning. Also our in-motion satellite TV dome (we can watch DirecTV while running down the road) didn’t work quite right.  We usually don’t watch TV while in-motion, but our recorder is always on-duty looking for our TV programs to record.  John just diagnosed (with the help of the factory) the problem, so we have a part on order which hopefully relieve us of this current headache.

We have been watching the weather at our little ranch (thanks to our weather station that’s on-line) and noticed the high temperature recently was 100.0 F at 6:00 PM; every time we notice the triple-digit temperatures we are thankful and feel blessed that we can be somewhere else.  It is wonderfully cool here in Vermont (60s during the day) as we write this and we even need to run the heat pump in the morning to take the chill out of the coach!

Our travel plans currently include visiting old sailing friends in Vermont, sightseeing in Maine, volunteering at a couple of state parks in Virginia, seeing some dear friends in the Oriental, North Carolina area, John’s nephews and their families in New York and Ohio and perhaps a visit to the Winnebago factory in Iowa for some service.  We have already put about 1,500 miles on the coach and will probably cover another 5,000 miles before we return home sometime in October.

Thanks for riding along with us and we’ll post another installment in two or three weeks.