A New York Kind of Weekend

May 29th - June 1st

Joyce and I planned to spend a quiet weekend at the Black Bear Campground in Florida, NY. Before we left, I went on Google to print the directions to Black Bear. Further down the BB listing was a site where other campers rate the campground. The people that added their two cents panned the site mercilessly.

I figured that those who shot the place down were just being too critical. Wrong! It lived up to all its reviews. When I went to register, I asked the person at the desk if they had charged us for the three nights which they hadn't. We had been charged one night. Thank you, lord. Our site was a quarter of a mile up a hill with RV's in all states of disrepair.

We got to our site and set up for the night. I had picked up a couple of brochures at the desk and we went out to see the sights. We chose a couple of antique shops to visit. Not one was open. Some were out of business. This was a bad omen. We dicided to leave the next morning for.......anywhere but this place. I called a campground we had visited early last May. The office had closed by the time I called so I had to wait until the following morning to see if they had any sites available.

We headed up to the Lazy River Campground in Gardenier, NY. I explained our problem to the woman at the desk and she knew of Black Bear. She said it is a place people stay at only once. We heard the same thing from other campers we met.

We ate dinner Friday night at the Gilded Otter in New Paltz, a restaurant we discovered last year. We got back to the RV and watched the movie, Charlie Wilson's War. Half way through the show, we lost power in the RV. It came back on after I reset the breaker outside. This happened a couple more times before we went to bed.

Saturday we drove down to Montgomery to look around the historic district. We returned to the campground and I asked a fellow in the office if anyone had had any issues with their power the previous night. We seemed to be the only ones. He came over to see if there was anything he could do to help us out. He lent me a short wire that converts a 50 amp plug to a 30 amp. It didn't help. We decided that the problem might be in the box that we plug into. He lent us an extension so we could use the box at the next site. It worked for the rest of our stay.

Saturday afternoon was spent visiting two wineries and a bunch of antique shops. We had a little rain, but it didn't amount to much. It was Mari Gras weekend at the camp. It was for the kids. We walked over to see what was going on and met two couples, one from Dobb's Ferry and the other from the Albany area. Both of them knew of Black Bear.

Sunday, we had a leisurely breakfast and went for a ride. There is a small airport about two miles from the camp that caters to a skydiving club. We watched a plane load of divers take off and hung around to see more than twenty land. I took a bunch of pictures. We returned to the campground and got ready to head for home.

This was probably the most relaxing trip yet. We had problems that we took in stride, the bad camp and the possible electrical issue.