.........Looking Back 2008

This year has come to an end and we visited some new destinations such as Virginia and Tennessee which was our longest so far in both time and distance. We discovered that the RV does not like to climb mountains. If you are going to do the Blue Ridge Parkway use the car, not the motorhome.

We found that Gettysburg, PA will be included in our future travel plans. Florida, NY will not be included. I learned that no matter who asks I will not, repeat, not, enter another NJ Good Sam Club Miss New Jersey contest.

Weather played into some of our trips, the three days of heavy rain in Virginia, the tropical storm coming close to us in Delaware, and the wind/rain/snow in Pennsylvania. We were still able to enjoy ourselves.

There were few issues with the coach. The satellite dish gave up the ghost in Tennessee. I had to drive 25 miles with it in the open position to have it replaced. The other "major" issue was opening the living room slide without checking if there was enough room for it to open. We creased one of the compartment doors. The door is being fixed as I type. There were a few other problems that I was able to fix myself.

The major issue this year was the hideous gas prices during the better part of the season. I only had to pay over $4 once or twice on one trip. I didn't fill the tank at that price.

This will be the last post to this blog. Starting with 2009, I will create a new blog for each year. I have been having some issues with this blog recently. Look for http://happytrails-petejoycefah.blogspot.com/ for our 2009 travels. We hope to be heading to Florida in the spring and maybe the West.

Upper Black Eddy, PA

October 27th - October 30th

We wanted to take one more short trip before putting the RV away for the winter. Joyce wanted to visit Byer's Choice in Chalfont, PA, www.byerschoice.com, where they make the caroler dolls that she collects. I found an RV park located between Easton and Chalfont.

Monday, we headed out on the 70 mile route to the campsite. The GPS had me getting off I-78 in New Jersey and going down to Milford then crossing the Delaware. There was a height restriction of 11'-6" somewhere along this route. I made a U-turn and went back to I-78. The GPS routed us again to Milford where we ran into construction. Once in PA, we had to climb some really steep hills and cross a bridge which had a capacity of about half what the RV & car weighed. I had to cross it as there was no way of turning the rig around.

The campground was practically empty except for us, a couple of transient rigs, and a few permanent trailers. I was told at check-in that we would get not satellite TV or phone service as the campground was in a hollow and heavily wooded. They did have cable, six fuzzy channels without ABC. Joyce had to do without her soap or Dancing with the Stars.

Tuesday, the weather turned bad, really bad. High winds, rain, and snow were the order of the day. We drove down to Chalfont and did our tour of Byer's Choice. They had an observation window where you could watch the dolls being made. There was a museum and a store. The museum had to have over a thousand dolls in all sorts of groupings and settings. They also had a store.

It was snowing when we left BC. The snow flakes were big and sticking to everything. This kept up for Tuesday and Wednesday. The wind was very heavy also. We stopped for gas and it was so windy that the snow/rain mixture was horizontal. It was a bad day for self-service gas.

Wednesday, we headed up to Easton & Nazareth to visit the Crayola Factory and the Martin Guitar factory. Needless to say, Crayola was more for kids. We did get to see how crayons are made. They now had two layers of paper wrapped around them to prevent breaking.

There is a canal museum on the top floor of the Crayola building. This was more to our liking. Joyce got to pilot a remote control barge through a seventy foot long canal with all kinds of locks.

Our next stop was the Martin Guitar Company. This I really enjoyed. The factory was in a residential area of Nazareth. You walk into the big guitar shaped foyer with offices on the right, a museum, a store, and an area with a dozen or so guitars that you can sit there and play.

We took the guided factory tour which was over an hour long that showed us the entire process from the wood coming in the door to the completed guitars going out the shipping door. Some of the woods they use are extremely rare and therefore very expensive. They make the wood tops by book-matching, sawing through the board on its edge and opening the two pieces like a book then edge gluing them. Each part is marked with the guitar serial number, seven digits, and go to different operations and come together for final assembly, inspection, tuning, and shipment.

We were each given a sound hole cutout with the company's logo and the year of the visit. This will probably be the closest I will ever come to owning a Martin. We then went into their museum. The company has been in business since 1833. There are guitars from the early days up to the present including the one millionth and the million & first units. They spared no expense when they made these. The guitars were absolute works of art. The are covered top, back, and neck with inlayed woods. The millionth is priceless but I wonder if the million & first can be bought.

The weather cleared on Thursday in time for us to head home. I did not follow the GPS on the trip home. We went north to Easton and got on I-78 there. The only excitement on the way home was that I came close to running out of gas. This would not have been too much of an issue as I have the car in tow.

Pocono Vacation Park Revisited

October 9th - October 12th

We joined the Jenkins and the Novotnys on this trip to the Poconos, again. The trip out to the park was uneventful except for the fact that our RV does not like to climb hills. We are looking into a air intake/exhaust system that should solve this.

Thursday, we had lunch and dinner in our own rigs. We went to Mt. Airy Casino after dinner. I won a couple bucks and Joyce lost a few. This is the opposite of what normally happens.

Friday, we had to pick up a few things in Stroudsburg in the morning and visited the local outlet and antique malls in the afternoon. We had dinner at "Studebaker's", a nearby restaurant. The food was very good. After dinner, it was back to Mt. Airy for the Friday night Country & Western band, The McKenzies. The locals appear to love line dancing. We were too late for the class. Too Bad!

Saturday we went to the flea market at Marshalls Creek. We had been there earlier this year, so it was nothing new. We bought a jar of "Essence of Emeril" at a spice dealer.

Dinner this evening was the campgrounds yearly spaghetti dinner. It was OK, but...... We were going to have the group to our rig for coffee and cake. The group decided to have a campfire, so we had it outside.

Panther Lake

September 21st - September 24th

We decided to take a short, local trip. Joyce found the Panther Lake Campground on the Internet. It is located out I-80 and north on US Route 206 in Andover, just 38 miles from home.

We had a leisurely trip out to the campsite, checked in, and went to set up the RV on our assigned site with water, electric, and sewer To level to rig on this site, the front tires were 6 to 8 inches off the ground. This is not the way you want to spend four days. We tried another site which was marginally better, the tires were only two inches off the ground. I was unable to lock on the satellite dish for TV. We moved, again, to a site with only water and electric. Leveling the rig was a snap as the site was almost level to begin with. The satellite dish locked onto the three satillites quickly. Joyce had to see "Dancing with the Stars".

The campground was well kept, but very empty. In the area where we finally ended up, The Cloverfield, was set up for both RV's and tent camping. The campground catered mostly to seasonal campers rather than transiants, those of us that don't spend the Memorial Day to Labor Day season in one place. There were a lot of the "two story" trailers there. The second story is only 4 feet or so high. Not a place to sit up in bed and read.

The only excitement during this trip was that we lost two sets of keys, Joyce's house keys and the second set of RV keys. We made sure that we had the RV keys in our hand before we locked the door of the rig. We searched the rig from top to bottom, front to back a couple of times. As it turned out, we found the RV keys between the front doors of the house when we got home and the house/car keys in the kitchen. It would have been a pain replacing one or both of the sets.

We took a number of trips around the area. We found a antique shop or two, a small outlet center, and a really nice gift shop in Andover.

Panther Lake is a campground that we would go back to.

Delaware Samboree - 2008

September 4th thru September 7th

We headed south again for our second Delaware Samboree. There were three Jersey Pioneers going as a group with another couple joining us at the site. We met the other two rigs at the Molly Pitcher rest area on the Turnpike and headed off to Harrington, DE. The trip was uneventful. Our sites were in a grove of trees with one oak about three feet from my windshield.

We left home knowing that we were going into the path of hurricane Hannah. She was coming up the Atlantic coast. The forcasts on tv showed its path coming directly over our area. I don't know about anyone else, but if it looked bad, I was prepared to pull up stakes and head west.

Thursday night we went over to the casino so I could make my required donation. We went back to our rigs for dinner. Last year, Joyce and I brought a lot of food and we ended going out every night. We didn't bring anything this year expecting to go out every night except the one night that the Samboree had a catered dinner. It was off to the restaurant down the road. We had eaten there last year and had enjoyed the food. The place went out of business. We took a ride looking for another place to eat without any luck. When you live in an area that has restaurants on almost every corner, this came as a shock. We ended up buying something at the Food Lion and taking it back to the rig.

Friday, we took a ride to the town of Milton. Fenton had a problem with a lockset on one of his doors and we went to an RV dealer and a hardware store trying to find a replacement.Later, we had a chapter meeting.

We had dinner at the casino with the group. We returned to the RV to make sure that everything was stowed before tomorrow's storm hit.

The storm didn't live up to the hype "they" gave it on the news and weather radio. One small branch fell about 20 yards from our rig. We did get a lot of pine needles on the roof. The seals around the windows held nicely.

Tonight was the samboree dinner and entertainment.

The trip home was uneventful.