We left Speculator, NY at 11:00AM EDT and headed down out of the Adirondacks to Beth’s sister Kathy’s house in East Greenbush, NY (near Albany). We drove 8 miles out of our way in order to fuel up at the TA Travel Center near Johnstown, NY which was well worth the $0.86/gal savings (we saved $20 on that fill up). On our fuel detour we stopped at the Taco Bell in Johnstown, NY for a couple Stackers and a Burrito. As we passed through Albany we made our usual stop at the Albany Water Treatment Facility to dump our tanks. We arrived at Beth’s sister Kathy’s house at 2:00PM EDT (103 miles). Our total distance on this trip so far is 6,665 miles and our overall fuel mileage is 14.4MPG.
Site #1
We had originally intended to head home at the end of July and then drive back up to Albany in mid September to help pet sit while three of Beth’s sisters vacationed in Scotland. Their trip got moved up to mid August so we came directly to Albany from Mom & Dad’s. Beth’s sister Kathy’s cat CeeCee had an iodine procedure done this week for a thyroid issue and arrived home today shortly after we arrived. She seems fine. We are now settling in and preparing to baby sit cats in three homes.
Before they left for Scotland, Lori, Donna, and Terry took the pet sitters out for a meal at Kay’s Pizza (possibly our favorite pizza). Kathy, Beth, and I also had an excellent meal at Tipsy Moose Tap & Tavern while we were pet sitting.
We departed from Erie, PA at 7:15AM EDT and continued East on I-90. We stopped for fuel at the Speedway in Corfu, NY and ate one of their delicious breakfast sandwiches in the parking lot. We arrived at Beth’s childhood home in Speculator, NY at 1:50PM EDT (340 miles). The campground host (Beth’s brother Dick) promptly met us at the entrance and guided us to our site. Our total distance on this trip so far is 6,559 miles and our overall fuel mileage is 14.5MPG.
SpeculatorPhoebe Enjoying the House
We have tray tables that fit in the cup holders (on the armrests) of our theater seats. I love mine for using my laptop and eating grub, but they make it difficult to climb out of the chair because they don’t really move completely out of your way. Additionally, theater seats sit on a ledge (the slide) that is about 2″ above the floor and you have to place your feet out about 4” past the ledge to stand up. I was getting out of my chair one day and lost my balance and fell back into the other seat which had it’s tray table closed and I fell right into the seat and crushed the tray table which is made out of some kind of “waffle wood”. It’s not solid. I crushed it (a lot of people on the internet forums for our RV complain about how hard it is to get out of the theater seats with these tray tables if you aren’t 19 years old). Beth’s brother, who is a master wood worker, was more than happy to build us new tray tables. We went to his favorite wood supplier and purchased a nice piece of poplar. With a harder, stronger wood he was able to modify the design to allow the tray tables to swing out further. Our access to the seats is no longer restricted by the tray tables. Beth applied several coats of polyurethane to the wood and the final product is incredible. He also noticed that we were placing a towel on the center armrest to protect the leather from the tray tables and broke out his sewing machine and created a very nice padded suede cover for the armrest to protect it. We are extremely happy with the results.
New Tray TablesPadded Suede Armrest ProtectorPhoebe Testing Armrest Strength
Today we made our final migration East in the rain to Albany to stay at Beth’s sister Kathy’s house. The rain was very light most of the two hour trip, but on the way we stopped at the Albany County Water Purification facility to dump our tanks (for free) and unfortunately it poured after we got started dumping. On the bright side, our “you know what” is no longer full!
Kathy has a beautiful brand new driveway so we were extremely careful not to do anything that might damage it (2″ x 12″ boards under the stabilizer jacks, etc). Kathy provides 50Amp service, good clean city water, and we are able to sponge off her Spectrum Wi-Fi using our range extender. We were also able to pickup enough Dish satellites (61.5 & 110) to get all our channels in HD after moving R2D2 (our satellite antenna) far enough back behind the garage to clear her two small trees. The weather here is just what we ordered (predicted upper 60’s and low 70’s during our stay).
Today we continued East 141 miles to Beth’s childhood home in Speculator, NY. We departed Rivers Crossing Campground & Marina at 10:15AM EDT and arrived in Speculator at 1:50PM EDT. Beth’s brother Dick and his two sons were all home for supper, so Dick went to Charlie Johns Store and bought us some excellent filet mignons which we all enjoyed.
Today we continued East 263 miles to Rivers Crossing Campground & Marina on the Erie Canal in Savannah, NY just North of the finger lakes. We departed Geneva State Park Campground at 9:15AM EDT and arrived at the campground at 2:15PM EDT. We decided to pay the tolls and drive I-90 the entire way and stopped for fuel at a TA Travel Center in Corfu, NY where we also ate the sandwiches that Beth had prepared for lunch.
Interestingly, Mom & Dad stayed in this campground over a decade ago on a trip to Maine. At that time the campground had a different name and owners. There are a lot of seasonal campers here, but the campground is well maintained. The new owners purchased the campground four years ago. When we arrived at our site, there was no power at our electrical post and Beth walked back to the office to report the issue. While she was gone, a neighbor arrived home and I asked her if she was aware of any breakers for the electrical post. She pointed out that our power post was previously on the other side of our camper shared by our other neighbor and that I needed to turn on a breaker over there. Once we got the power going and the air conditioners fired up, I noticed that our voltage was very low (110v). It was very hot (91 degrees) and I noticed that the air conditioners on all the campers surrounding us were running. By the time we got setup and moved inside to cool off, our Electrical Management System (EMS) had shutdown our power due to low voltage. This is a built-in fail-safe to prevent us from burning up our AC compressors by running at too low a voltage. This is a difficult scenario to explain to a campground owner/manager. They tend to believe it’s our issue because all of our neighbor’s are up and running and blissfully ignorant of the damage they are doing to their systems. So, rather than waste time reporting it to the campground owners, we limped along on one air conditioner until I figured out how to stop our DC Converter from charging our batteries. At that point we were able to fire up the second air conditioner and just barely get by (our voltage was still very low (108v). Once the sun set, everyone’s power consumption dropped and the voltage climbed back up to 115v. They probably don’t have this problem very often since the temperatures here don’t often get this high.
We have full hookups and very few trees allowing our Dish antenna to pickup satellites 61.5, 110, & 119. Our AT&T hotspot connection is receiving excellent connectivity at 181/25 Mbps download/upload speeds. We didn’t try our TV antenna, but we are close enough to Rochester that I imagine we would pickup a lot of channels.
We headed up to Beth’s hometown, Speculator, NY, on Sunday (8/22) to visit her brother Dick and his son Lou. I guess technically we were also escaping impacts from Tropical Storm Henri. Shortly after arrival, Beth and Dick headed off to Charley Johns Store for groceries. They came back with hamburger meat (Yay!). We were just pulling the burgers off the grill when the sky opened up and it poured down rain while we ate dinner. That was just about the only rain we got from the Tropical Storm.
On Monday morning, Beth and I walked up to the Sunrise Diner for our annual “breakfast for gluttons” (they have incredible Biscuits & Gravy). Breakfast there was delicious as usual and we moaned the entire walk home about how we shouldn’t have eaten so much. At least this year we were wise enough to share a Hungry Man’s breakfast which comes with all that you see below. I can’t wait to go there again next year.
Today Donna, Terry, Kathy, Beth and I ate Lunch at El Loco Mexican Cafe in downtown Albany. It is located across the street from Washington Park, so on a Saturday with a Farmer’s Market parking was difficult to find. We ended up parking about 3 blocks away which was a good way to walk off excessive consumption of chips and con queso cheese. Beth had Enchiladas. One beef and one turkey (the beef was better). I had 3 tacos (1 soft) and they were pretty good.
August 17, 2021 – Dinner at Kay’s Pizza
We decided that we wanted pizza for dinner one night so today we headed out to Kay’s Pizza on Burden Lake for pizza and wings. Beth and I ate there a couple of years ago with the family and wanted to go again. Due to COVID they’ve added outdoor seating so we were able to sit right along the water. Our pizza and wings were delicious.
Brian, Lori, Terry, Donna, Beth, & Beverly at Kay’s
Kay’s Warning Sign
August 12, 2021 – Travel to Albany
Today we completed the last Eastward leg of our trip. We left Lebanon Reservoir Campground in Hamilton, NY at 9:30AM EDT. We stopped for fuel at the Stewart’s in Esperance, NY and topped off for $3.19/gallon. We arrived at Beth’s sister Kathy’s house shortly after Noon.
Today we continued East departing from Camp Eriez on Lake Erie in Lake City, PA at 8:50AM EDT in a heavy rain. The rain didn’t stop until we reached I-86 and headed East a bit. We stopped for fuel at M&M Junction which Beth had discovered on last year’s trip. We think it’s on an Indian Reservation because fuel prices are significantly cheaper (50 cents this year) than at the nearby exits. As good as that price was, it was still 94 cents higher than last year.
One of our favorite movies is Nobody’s Fool (starring Paul Newman). The movie is based in Bath, NY and since we were passing by Bath we decided to exit and purchase groceries at their local grocery store located close to the interstate. After getting groceries we drove through the downtown area and tried to decide whether any of the buildings looked like ones we remember from the movie. Now after doing a bit of research I have discovered that the fictional town in the movie was “North Bath” and was actually filmed in Beacon, NY. I guess it pays to do your research ahead of time, but we were stopping for groceries somewhere today anyway and this store was conveniently close to the interstate. For those keeping track at home, Bath looked like a nice town, but don’t expect to see any scenes you’ve witnessed in movies.
Following our tour of Bath, we exited I-86 to take SR-226 in route to Watkins Glen, NY. What you can’t see on a map is that each of the Finger Lakes is located in a valley between decent sized mountains. Apparently the engineers that designed the roads in the area were unfamiliar with the concept of switchbacks (or even curves for that matter). We turned off SR-226 onto CR-23 to head into Watkins Glen and immediately encountered two things. The first was a sign indicating that there was a 5 ton weight limit (why not tell us before the turn) and that there were significant fines for perpetrators. They even posted a number to call in order to report said perpetrators. So now we’re breaking the law (no place to turn around) and hoping we don’t encounter a local constable when we see the steepest incline we’ve ever witnessed in our RV. We never really had a chance to get any momentum going so I dropped into third gear and hoped for the best. As we crawled up the hill we kept losing speed (as our engine temperature was on the rise). We dropped to second gear and continued to lose speed. There was a spot near the top where the grade decreased enough to seem level and let us build a little speed before becoming very steep again for the remaining half mile. We’ve been on much longer grades out West but nothing that steep. I checked on Google Earth this evening and that section of road had 10% to 13% grades (Wow!). Thank goodness it was only a 2.5 mile section.
Passing through Watkins Glen was nice. The view from the bottom of Seneca Lake was quite impressive. I remember coming to Watkins Glen on a childhood family trip. I remember Mom and Dad taking us to the race track. We never entered because it was raining. In fact all I remember about that trip was that it rained most of the time we were in New York. It was nice and sunny today as we passed through.
Our next challenge was the 8% – 9% grades coming out of Watkins Glen on SR-79. Although it was an effort, it seemed mild after the previous climb and once again was a fairly short distance. From there we headed to Ithaca, NY where the biggest issue was the 8% – 10% downhill grades coming into town. There were plenty of warning signs (including an area to pull off and test your brakes). We were able to ride the exhaust brake down the grades with no issues other than a string of cars behind us.
There wasn’t much about Ithaca that really caught my eye as we passed through. I didn’t expect Cornell University to be along the main traffic route and it indeed wasn’t. From there we followed SR-13 to Cortland, NY. Now that town had a lot of beautiful architecture. The homes along SR-13 entering town were quite impressive and there weren’t just a few. There must have been a lot of “well to do” residents in that town near the turn of the 20th century.
We arrived at Lebanon Reservoir Campground in Hamilton, NY at 4:00PM EDT. We were first assigned to Site #11. It wasn’t visually obvious, but the site had a serious decline from front to back. We had to break out all of our leveling wood and blocks and by the time “Bubbles” leveled the camper the passenger side rear tires were a good 8″ off the ground. We brought the RV down off the jacks and moved it back and forth on the site looking for an area that was more level, but it had a consistent downhill grade. Beth went back up to the office and asked for a different spot. They acknowledged that they had just built the sites (they don’t show up on the Google Maps satellite view) and were unaware that this site wasn’t very level. They had us move North three sites to Site #14. It was very level and we were able to drop the jacks and level without any wood or blocks. We were only able to get one satellite (61.5) using our roof antenna, so we broke out our portable antenna (R2D2) and placed it where we could access all three of the DISH Eastern Arc satellites. We have full hookups, but only 30 Amp electric (which we can get by on). There is no campground Wi-Fi. This is not a campground we would make an effort to return to, but it was really the only thing available at a reasonable price (beats the KOA in Watkins Glen for $125/night).
On our second day we went into town to eat lunch and make sure the roads we chose to get back to US-20 weren’t going to have any special surprises (i.e., a 13% grade hill). Hamilton, NY is a beautiful town and we discovered that Colgate University is located there. We drove through the campus. It is beautiful. I can’t imagine how beautiful it is when the leaves turn color. After our tour we ate lunch at Rusch’s Bar & Grill where Beth had a decent Philly Cheesesteak and I had a delicious Buffalo Chicken sandwich.
Today we traveled up to Beth’s hometown of Speculator, NY to visit her brother Dick and her nephews Lou and Jerry. We left at 12:30PM EDT. On our way out of Albany, we stopped at Stewart’s Gas Station and topped off the fuel tank for $2.49/gallon. From there we headed to the city of Albany’s Water Purification Facility to dump our black and gray tanks. Once the tanks were empty we headed West on I-90 to Amsterdam, NY and then North on SR-30 to Speculator. It was a perfect Fall day and the further we got up into the Adirondacks the more the Fall Foliage improved. We arrived at 3:00PM EDT.
Once we setup the camper, Dick ran off to the grocery store and picked up two huge steaks. Beth cooked German potatoes, asparagus, and mushrooms while we grilled the steaks and corn on the cob. All five of us enjoyed a fine meal at the dinner table.
Drive Around Mason Lake – 9/23/2020
We wanted to get out and see the fall foliage so today we took a drive North of Speculator on SR-30 to Mason Lake and drove around the lake. The scenery was beautiful.
That evening Beth’s brother Dick and his sons Lou and Jerry went with us to dinner at the Melody Lodge. Our meals were great and we got to see some great views overlooking Speculator.
We left Cherry Grove Campground at 9:45AM EDT and stopped for fuel just down the road at a Sunoco Station where we purchased diesel fuel for $2.42/gallon. We headed East on SR-370 and stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts 15 miles down the road to pickup coffee, breakfast sandwiches, and some delicious donut holes. We continued East on SR-370 and then took I-690 through Syracuse and picked up I-81 South. Once again, to avoid tolls, we skipped I-90 and took US-20 on into Albany. Today we drove 188 miles and arrived at approximately 2:00PM EDT.
Hiking at Barberville Falls – 9/16/2020
Today we went hiking at the Barberville Falls Preserve in Poestenkill, NY with Beth’s sister Lori. There are three hiking trails in the preserve and two were accessible from the parking lot along Blue Factory Rd. The Falls Trail is a short, but very steep hike down to the bottom of the falls, so we took it first in order to get the hard climb on the return from the falls out of the way. The falls were beautiful.
Barberville Falls Trail – Poestenkill, NY
We then took the Ridge Trail out through the surrounding woods. There were a lot of hills to climb and descend, so the short 1.3 mile trail still provided a challenge. At roughly half way through the hike we stopped and ate lunch. Overall it was a great hike on a beautiful day.
