Canadian Border & Plattsburgh, NY

    After dropping Mike off at the rental car office in Burlington, Alex, Lobo and I headed north toward Canada.  It was only a one hour drive to the border and another 45 minutes from there to Montreal (apparently most of the 45 million Canadians live within about an hour or two drive from the US), so I started visualizing the border crossing elements…dog papers, fruits and vegetables, and my passport.  Hmmm…did I pack my passport?  I am pretty sure that I did because I remember getting it out and looking at the expiration date, but wait, maybe that was to make sure that it didn’t expire before Rhonda and I traveled to Morocco in February?  Then I realized that I can’t exactly pull up to the security line and start searching through the RV for my passport, that could take hours.  Well, turns out that I did leave my passport at home, which is pretty commonplace for me traveling in North America now that I have left it at home twice after crossing into Mexico and once attempting the same into Canada.  Before Sept. 11 one did not carry a passport into Mexico or Canada.  I have been to British Columbia at least 4 times and Mexico about 40 times without a passport.  It just doesn’t sink in for me…I guess old and set in my ways.  Long story short, I made new plans to hang out in Northern Vermont and New York for the weekend while waiting for my passport to arrive by FedEx.  I was about to pay for 3 nights at a campground when I shared my lame story with the ladies checking me in and they said that they were pretty sure that I could cross into Canada with basic ID and then have my passport FedEx’d into Montreal, for it was only needed to coming back into the States.  So I decided what the heck, I would try to run the boarder and see what happens.  I almost made it through, but the two French Canadian border guards (I picked a tiny crossing point on purpose…there were only two there total) argued with each other for 30 minutes in French about whether to let me in.   They kept asking me if I had a copy of my birth certificate…now who in the heck carries that around?  They finally decided that I needed some proof of US citizenship so that they didn’t get stuck with me in their country and no way for them to deport me if needed (apparently Canada now has a very high immigration flow and it is getting complicated for them to manage).  It was an interesting experience and worth the effort, but back to the campground.   I had a very productive weekend cleaning the RV, doing nearly 2 weeks worth of laundry, running errands and catching up on a pile of work that I ignored for the past 10 days.  I met a really great group of people from Buffalo that were really friendly and talkative and all my age.  I was the only one in my camping section when I went to bed, but when I awoke, the other 8 spaces were filled with a caravan of friends all with pop-up campers who had travelled from Buffalo to Plattsburgh, NY for a week-long vacation together.Still can’t figure out how Plattsburgh is a vacation from Buffalo?While on the road, I figured that I might catch up on my Spanish Rosetta Stone studies, but then Mike pointed out how lame that was while traveling through Quebec.  Plattsburgh, where I spent the weekend, is just 30 minutes from Quebec and wow were there a lot of French speaking Canadians vacationing there.  Most of the language around me was not in English.  So, on an impulse purchase, I grabbed the Rosetta Stone French package at the check out counter at Best Buy and decided that I would redirect my language plans.  Good thing…cause I had no idea how French the Province of Quebec was going to be!

Burlington, VT

Mike was originally going to fly back from Plattsburgh, NY, but there were some issues about all the connections that were needed and Maxx in a doggie carry bag…something that we had no experience with and could have turned out Tasmanian Devil bad.  So he decided to rent a car and drive home, but turns out that there are very few places that will rent you a car in one state for drop off in another state, so we had to redirect our travels toward Burlington, Vermont.  No problem…what do we care, it is all part of the adventure, and I was very happy to have the excuse to see Burlington.  Enroute to the ferry to cross Lake Champlain, was an interesting natural phenomenon billed as the Little Grand Canyon of the East, AKA Ausable Chasm, NY.  We decided that we needed to check that out, and were pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t just a tourist trap.  There was a pretty hefty fee for taking a simple hike through the chasm, but it turned out that the cost was well worth it and easily justifiable given that they have had to rebuild the trails, bridges, and cliff-hanging walkways a number of times in the past 15 years with massive floods that keep wiping everything out (wouldn’t want to be down there when a flash flood arrives).  The walk was great, the scenery was beautiful and we discovered at the end that the 20 minute raft or inner-tube ride down the rapids would have likely been a fun addition to our ticket, especially as warm as it was. The chasm by the way was formed over millions of years from water pressure caused by the river that flows through sandstone, causing collapses of the harder rock types until eventually the chasm that we experienced was well formed.  The ferry crossing point was only a couple miles away and was a fun hour long cruise down the middle of an extremely large lake with a drop off downtown Min St. Burlington, Vermont.  The city is built around the edge of the lake with Main St. running 2 blocks and parallel to the lake edge.  Apparently Burlington is the smallest capital city of any state capital, and the largest city in Vermont, and the smallest of all cities billed as the largest for their state.  Fun useless facts, but did describe Burlington quite well.  The airport where Mike picked up his car felt just like the Arcata / Eureka airport in my tiny Northern California college town of Humboldt.  Turned out that Mike’s trip home took him 10 hours, so we had in effect traveled for about 10 days to cover about 10 hours worth of geographical distance…and now I continue the adventure on my own.

Fort Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain, NY

Today we did another one of our “hmmmmm….that sounds intriguing” maneuvers after seeing the signs pointing off the highway toward Fort Ticonderoga.  Turned out to be a great decision where we enjoyed the scenic route out to and up around Lake Champlain before and after the fort visit.  The fort itself was saved over the years and rebuilt by the generosity of one individual William Pell, who acquired it the 1800’s and spent his whole life rebuilding it for us to see and experience.  Amazing how the government doesn’t have enough foresight to ensure that our heritage isn’t pilfered and left to crumble.  Without people like Pell we wouldn’t have Mt. Vernon, Monticello, Williamsburg and many other national historic landmarks.  During our visit we watched a well orchestrated presentation of the Drum and Fife corps, and learned that the purpose of the corps was to provide a communication system to the troops.  Always did wonder why they would be concerned with musical flutes in the background while cannons are firing, people are dying and mayhem is engulfing everything.  Well, the low base of the drum and the high pitch of the flute allowed the commanders to give specific commands that were broadcast by this corps, for both daily routines (they didn’t wear watches of course and didn’t know what time to get up, eat and get to work), and for the battlefield.  The fort was apparently a significant military control point between the British forces in Canada and American forces during the Revolutionary War, which started out as a British fortress and ended up under American control thanks to Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen, both very famous names for very different reasons.  Poor Arnold, come to learn, mostly switched sides after the newly emerging American Government put him through the ringer, by giving away medals of honor to military personnel who lied and took credit for his achievements, continually pressing charges against him for “dishonorable actions” that were always disproven by investigators, and finally handed a bill for funds owed to the US Congress after having donated most of his fortune to the revolutionary cause…which is apparently the straw that broke Arnold’s back and drove him to the more noble behavior of his British ancestry.  Granted, he could have just walked over the line and switched sides without trying to take assets with him (the fort at West Point), but interesting to learn more than I ever saw in my high-school history books on the guy.  These are things that I did not learn at the fort, but rather part of my reasons for making this trek…find something interesting and dig into the culture and history online while having lunch in the parking lot.

Adirondacks, NY



Schroon River Kayaking



Last night we arrived to the Adirondacks and a nice RV park set in a grove of tall pine trees so that the atmosphere was soaked in everything pine…the ground…the air…the canopy.  We decided that we would stay here a couple of nights and do some kayaking on the Schroon River using our new inflatable kayaks that we purchased months ago and haven’t had the opportunity to try out.  After spending nearly two hours trying to figure out how they inflated (not as easy as putting your lips to the nozzle and blowing) we were finally underway.  The plan involved leaving the bikes at the camp, driving the Jeep and kayaks up river a few miles and kayaking down to the camp so that we could bike back later to get the Jeep.  Everything worked great except that it turned out that the only place where the river actually flowed downhill was at our camp where we saw some minor rapids, but everything else upriver was really just an extension of a lake and didn’t actually flow, thus a very long 3+ mile rowing exercise. After a long nap from so much exercise I got enjoyed a few chapters of “The Help” lounging around outside in our paradise pine grove.   The Adirondacks are much more vast mountains than the Poconos or the Catskills.  We decided to stick to the main route and skip along the edge of the mountains since we couldn’t have our luxury RV hookups and I couldn’t find too many motivating points of interest deeper in the mountains except for the experience of “getting away” and we were already doing that.  Would rather see more of Vermont, Canada, Maine and other places…so we pushed on our current path up the edge of the mountains and toward Lake Champlain and Canada.  We have lots of the same mountains nearby the farm in Virginia and a whole state of mountains just an hour away…West Virginia to explore and get lost in.

Adirondack Mountains

Hudson River Valley, NY

Hudson River Valley



We continued our trek through the Hudson River Valley, which was really beautiful.  It is surrounded by mountains on each side with rolling hills in the center and the Hudson River meandering down the middle.  It is unlike the flat farmland of the Shenandoah Valley and more of a wooded parkland dotted with massive homes and historic small towns.  We crossed the river and drove down to Hyde Park to visit Franklin Delano Roosevelt's summer home and presidential library.  He and Eleanor are both buried there.  We had a nice tour and learned a few things, such as that a part of the early Roosevelt fortune was made on the opium trade with China when it was still legal in America.  We had intended to visit the Vanderbilt estate, which is nearly next door, but our fat RV wouldn't fit through the entrance gates that were built in the 1800's to accommodate horse carriages.  We had also planned to visit the house and grounds of a NY artist from the last century called Olana, but decided to head on to Albany in order to gather some parts to repair the transfer case of my brand new Jeep, which only has 4,000 miles.  After dealing with our first city along this route, we crossed over the Erie Canal and headed into the Adirondacks.  They are more impressive than the Catskills or the Poconos and appear to spread farther and wider than the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  A bit like West Virginia, but much cooler.  We enjoyed our first night in the 50's last night...sleeping was nice.   We found ourselves a decent pine forest RV Campground along a river and may attempt some kayaking for the next day.  One very unfortunate reality for my goal of luxury camping using this RV is that the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation has been given the responsibility of managing all of the campgrounds in both  the Catskills and the Adirondacks, and they have decided that both locations should remain fully natural and primitive.  Not only have they decided to leave the campgrounds without water, electricity of dumping stations, they have actively ripped those things out of the campgrounds that were originally built to include them.  The state campgrounds in all other locations around the state are managed by the NY State Dept. of Parks and Recreation and all include full hook-ups...go figure.  I am sure that the decision to keep this place totally primitive (as if a road, parking space, picnic benches and fire pits is "primitive") has much to do with the politics of supporting hundreds of private campgrounds and resorts scattered all over the region.  Unfortunate for us and excelling our progress toward reaching Montreal sooner.

FDR Summer Home





Catskills, NY







On our first day into the Catskills (everything around here is call something-kills), we thought that we might drive to Woodstock, NY to see the site of the famous Woodstock music festival.  After a few minutes of Ipad research, I quickly learned that the event did not take place anywhere near Woodstock, but rather Bethel, NY which is an hour away.  We pointed the RV in that direction and off we went.  We also learned that the music festival took place exactly 42 years to the day...August 15.  Up until 2000, the site remained a dairy farm operated by the son of the owner that hosted the original Woodstock festival, and visitors to the famous site were not much welcomed.  Thousands of people had been turned away each year until someone finally had the brilliant idea to buy up all the land and create a museum, visitors center and concert venue.  The original 600 acre farm is now a 1400 acre concert amphitheater with a broad spectrum summer line up (Elton John on my birthday weekend was already sold out).  The museum was very well put together and well worth the trek.  We both really enjoyed it as it explained the political complications of the time, history of the evolution of music and gave you a very thorough feel of what that 4 day experience was like for many attending. 

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers!

As we left the Woodstock site, we cruised around the back side and saw a fenced in complex of run down and trashy looking bungalows just behind the property and thought it to be vary odd and curious.  It looked like housing for a logging company town turned into project housing.  As we passed through the small towns making our way north, we saw more and more of these complexes, all very  dirty, cluttered and run down.  Eventually we made our weekly Wal-Mart stop and found ourselves teleported into Tel Aviv.  The Wal-Mart was literally 90+ percent orthodox Jews, and come to find out that all the bungalow complexes were Jewish "resorts," and that particular region of the Catskills was famous for its summer get-aways for the New York City orthodox jewish community.  It was culture shock to the extreme.  Hardly anyone speaking in English and people crowding the aisles without much regard for normal Western courtesies commonly experienced in Eastern regions of the world.  We left the Catskills and entered into the Hudson River Valley region where we stayed at a nondescript RV park and endured yet a 3rd full day of non-stop rain.


Gray Towers & Milford, PA

Gray Towers

We discovered our first unexpected gem of an experience today as we were traveling in the Poconos and on our way toward the NY State line.  We drove through the very quaint town of Milford, PA and noticed a Forest Service sign for Grey Towers.  I spent the next 20 minutes looking that up, thinking werwolves, Rapunzel or some Grimm Bros. tale, but dissevered that it was Gifford Pinochet's family summer home.  He was the first to push nature conservancy into the government prevue and a leading figure of my undergraduate wildlife management studies at Humboldt State.  Had no idea where he was from or much about his life story, just his accomplishments in creating the US Forest Service and the idea of managing natural resources.  Turns out that he was also 2 time governor of Pennsylvania and that his parents built (to which he later took over) an estate constructed in the French style (PA Gray Stone Towers) that was donated by his family after his passing to the US Forest Service and the continued education and development of conservation.  The grounds were amazing and inspirational, all the way down to the heritage apples that Cornelia Pinochet planted around the property and were fully ripe and amazingly perfect eating (I gathered a handful).  After Gray Towers we made our way on a zig-zag over the Delaware River and into New York.  The landscape was truly surprising.  Felt like a combination of Washington State (was a constant rain or drizzle for 3 days) and Maine.  If a moose walked across the road, we wouldn't have been surprised.  Everything was lush to the extreme.  Ferns, moss, giant trees of all types and lots of

Mike at Gifford's Man Cave

wilderness.  We ended up for the night in the Kittatinny Mountains on the Delaware River at a wilderness adventure camp that apparently hosted over 1200 people attending a big canoe related festival the night before.  The instructions we were given by the night watch for how to find an RV friendly site was a little complicated so we ended up way too deep in the wilderness for an RV and doing a bit of off-roading.  We had to disconnect to get the rig turned around and found ourselves face-to-face with a really fun, thoughtful, caring and sincere Native American Woman who was clearly hired to clean the camp toilets.  She said that she heard there was a big fancy RV up in the woods and she just had to see for herself before starting her work shift.  She was actually very helpful and fun to chat with.  We finally found the one single site with 30 amp electricity out of more than 300 spaces.  The fun NY State Warning that all water from the area spigots "MUST BE BOILED BEFORE USE," kept us on our own water system for the night.  The river had some nice rapids and we noticed people flying through the air on a zip line from the mountain above us as we were departing the camp...fun things to go back and experience on a more targeted trip...hopefully without 1200 partying New York kids.

Poconos, PA

Delaware Water Gap

I have always been curious about the Poconos, Catskills and Adirondacks, which are all names of mountain sections of what we call the Blue Ridge Mountains or Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia.  It appears that the Appellation Mountain chain is called something different in every region.  The scenic route from the DC area to Montreal passes through or by each of these 3 mountain regions that are resort areas for the metropolitan regions along the coast (95 corridor).  We have no idea what to expect and there aren't really any specific destination points, so we are just going to drive up through them and see what happens.  We spent most of this day driving, as the desire to stop and explore increases the further you get away from home base.  We figure that anything that is less than 4 hours drive from the farm is suitable for a long weekend excursion.  The Poconos are situated in Pennsylvania, but right along the New Jersey state line, so even though we were still in PA, we got to experience a little slice of the New Jersey population.  Need I say more?  We drove up through the Delaware Water Gap region of the Poconos, which is a 400 million year-old erosion feature where the Delaware River pushed against some weak rock in the Appellation Mountains and created a wide valley where the water slows and widens significantly for a stretch of a couple hundred miles, then narrows back down and increases speed as it approaches George Washington's famous Delaware River crossing just downstream.  The whole region is now a National Recreation Area after the Government pushed out 15,000 residents via the powers of eminent domain in order to build a dam, flood the valley and create a reservoir that never materialized some 50 years ago.  We ended up at the KOA because there are nearly no official camp grounds in the Poconos, and full hook ups seemed

Silver Thread Falls, Delaware Water Gap

 attractive.  When we arrived for check-in, we were advised that the Water Wagon Hay Ride was about to commence and if we didn't want to be pummeled by water cannons each time it passed our campsite, we should be sure to remain indoors.  You can imagine Mike's unpleasant reaction as we drive the RV and Jeep that he just spent 4 hours washing the day before past the water cannon brigade (15 twelve-year-old Jersey boys) all firing off at our RV and Jeep prematurely...wasn't a pretty sight.  Luckily we were just starting our set-up operation when they started their insane idea of Poconos camping fun, so we were able to avoid the actual hosing as they passed by 3 or 4 times.  Mike pointed out how curious it was that they start training Jersey kids so early on the fine art of drive-by-shooting, and we wondered collectively what the next street-survival activity might be in this for this secret KOA training camp.  Thankfully some major all-night thunder storms arrived that drove the massive hordes of pre-teen kids into their tents and held them there all night and into the next day.

Caledonia State Park, PA

After an unpleasant stop at the Georgetown office that caused me to hit the most amount of Friday traffic out of Washington, DC, I was underway to the first evening of my adventure to Montreal.  The plan was to meet Mike at Caledonia State Park in Pennsylvania.  He was driving the RV directly from the farm and I was traveling in the Jeep.  He arrived first and found a fairly decent campsite for us with electrical hook ups (the minimal luxury necessity), which is all very lucky given that it was a Friday night, just a couple hours from the DC area (5 hours in traffic) and we didn't have reservations.  Making reservations on what I like to term as a Gypsy-Trek is impossible.  The idea being that you just meander on a day-by-day basis where you have no idea where exactly you will end up and how long it will take you to get there.  Caledonia State Park was a really nice pine forest slightly up into the mountains that surround the 81 valley corridor, where the temperatures were 10 degrees cooler, just 15 minutes off the highway, and the air was filled with pine fragrances.  The campground was very full of what appeared to be an average slice of Pennsylvania.  The brochure for the campground stated that the campground was "open from the start of trout season to the end of dear season."  We really know then that we were entering the world of hunters.  The type of place where you can legally be shot if hiking on a trail without an orange blazer and everyone talks about what an idiot the dead hiker was an makes no mind of the beer-impaired hunter with the 6th grade education that fires at any moving thing without regard to the type of mammal he is killing.  Forget the fact that the hunting license process requires training that you only aim for the deer's heart or a narrow spot just behind its head and that you get a read on the age and sex of the deer before you fire...but out here, if it ain't flashing orange, who cares what it is...just wave your gun in that direction and let em have it.  Ahh...the great out doors.