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2019 Road Trip – Letchworth State Park, NY

Today we visited Letchworth State Park which is also referred to as the Grand Canyon of the East. Much like the Grand Canyon, pictures certainly don’t do it justice. You really need to see it to understand how huge the gorge along the Genesee River really is. We highly recommend visiting here.

There are three sets of waterfalls within the state park (Upper, Middle, and Lower). Although you can drive to parking lots that are fairly close to each of the falls, we were trying to get in shape for hiking out West. Having had no changes in elevation to practice on in Florida we elected to hike from Inspiration Point (North of the Middle Falls) to the top of the Upper Falls at the South end of the park. This 2.8 mile hike was definitely good practice. We climbed down 91 steps (and back up on the return) from Inspiration Point to the Middle Falls and then up 262 steps (and back down on the return) to the top of the Gorge Trail above the Upper Falls. Beth had packed sandwiches and we stopped near the top of the Upper Falls and ate lunch on a rock cutout. We were famished and the sandwiches were delicious. Needless to say, the hike “whooped us” and when we returned to Inspiration Point, we didn’t have the energy to hike to the Lower Falls. We’ll see them next time.

We followed the park road out to the North entrance (we had entered via the South entrance) and stopped at numerous overlooks along the way. This is a must see State Park and we enjoyed every bit of it.

  • The Gorge
  • Beth at the Middle Falls
  • Beth on the Stairs to the Middle Falls
  • The Upper Falls
  • Inspiration Point – Overlooking the Middle and Upper Falls
  • Humphrey’s Overlook
  • Hogback Overlook
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2019 Road Trip – Mount Morris, NY

Having groan up with my childhood bedroom literally feet from US-20 (Mom & Dad’s bedroom is even closer) I wanted to travel across US-20 from Albany to our campsite at The Ridge Campground near Letchworth State Park just west of the Finger Lakes. This not only provided us with great scenery as we traversed across the state of New York, but it also avoided the heavy tolls required to use I-90. So today we left Beth’s sister Kathy’s house in East Greenbush, NY (suburb across the river from Albany) and took I-90 west until the US-20 exit just prior to the toll booths.

Although it rained a good portion of the trip, the scenery was great and we got to see a lot of beautiful homes as we passed through the towns that bordered each of the Finger Lakes. US-20 traverses some fairly serious hills as it crosses the state prior to the Finger Lakes. There were several occasions where I had to downshift the RV clear to second gear just to maintain 25 to 30 MPH. That was a first and it really made the Caterpillar C7 snort (probably a good test for the mountains out West). Beth discovered that there was a Rest/Parking Area right on Cazenovia Lake. This was a perfect place to stop for lunch although we had to remain in the camper because it was raining.

We pulled into the campground around 4PM. This is a nice campground close to the State Park. We opted for full hookups which restricted us to 30 Amp power. Fortunately we can get both air conditioners running on 30 Amps if we restrict the refrigerator and water heater to propane gas instead of electricity. This was necessary as the temperature climbed into the 90’s on our last day. Initially we didn’t have good internet access from our Verizon Mi-Fi, but after connecting an antenna and testing several spots in the camper we were able to achieve 5 Mbs upload/download speeds. There were no trees near our site (#3) so we were able access all three satellites on the Dish Western Arc. Although our site looked fairly level, it wasn’t. We moved the RV several times on the site to find the spot that was closest to level, but our passenger front tire ended up several inches off the ground once “Bubbles” leveled the RV. If we were staying longer I would have driven the right side up on ramps.

  • Site #3
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2019 Road Trip – Hiking the Huyck Preserve – Rensselaerville, NY

Today Beth, her sister Lori, and I hiked the trail around Lake Myosotis in Rensselaerville, NY (Albany County) at the Hucyk Preserve. It was a beautiful day with low humidity and temperatures in the mid 70’s. There are dams at both the northern and southern ends of the lake. The dam at the southern end leads to a series of beautiful waterfalls. Lori brought along some delicious chicken sandwiches and we stopped at the top of the falls and enjoyed them along with the beautiful view. The hikes up and down the inclines next to the falls were fairly steep and by the time we finished our day we had 3.7 miles under our belts and were fairly whooped. We stopped at a Stewart’s Shop on the way home to to refuel with ice cream which we felt we had definitely earned.

  • Beth & Lori Hiking Along the Lake
  • Lori & Beth at the Top of the Falls
  • Top of the Falls
  • Middle Falls Looking Back Up at the Upper Falls
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2019 Road Trip – Hiking the Sacandaga River Pathway – Speculator, NY

Today Beth, her sister Donna, and I celebrated Independence Day by hiking from their family homestead down to the fire station where the Sacandaga River Pathway begins. This is a nice wide hiking trail with quite a bit of boardwalk. There were a lot of mosquitoes, but it was not quite as bad as Fawn Lake Trail. The total round trip hike from the house was 2.3 miles.

  • Sacandaga River Pathway
  • The Sacandaga River with Speculator Mountain in the Background
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2019 Road Trip – Hiking at Hannacroix Creek Preserve – New Baltimore, NY

Beth’s sisters Lori and Donna took us hiking at Hannacroix Creek Preserve. The preserve lies between Hannacrois Creek and the Hudson River. We took the path along the creek which leads to a water fall. It started with a fairly steep uphill climb which quickly reminded us that we don’t have hills in Florida. After returning to the parking lot, we followed a trail across the road that led to the Hudson River. The trails were nice and we logged just under three miles.

  • Hannacrois Creek Falls
  • Lori, Beth, & Donna
  • Us
  • Lori Mountain Climbing
  • The Hudson River
  • Lori and Beth on the Hudson River
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2019 Road Trip – Albany, NY

We started the day with breakfast at Cracker Barrel (Yay!). As always, it was delicious. Today’s drive was 245 miles and we arrived at Beth’s sister Kathy’s house near Albany at 2PM. The traffic through Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York was the heaviest we have encountered on this trip and it rained most of the way. We will have to consider another route the next time we come to Albany because the roads we took today were in very bad shape. We came over the top of a hill on I-287 in New York and had to slow for flashing lights and quite a few vehicles pulled off on the right side of the road ahead. It’s a good thing we were slowing down, because we had no way around some major potholes in the road. We hit a huge one that had rebar exposed that hit so hard it yanked the steering wheel hard left. I thought sure we would have damage, but we appear to have survived it. Needless to say, all of the cars on the side of the road had flat tires (probably bent rims too).

The weather in Albany is perfect and we are looking forward to more of the same. We went to the local Cracker Barrel and picked up a takeout order of their new Fried Chicken and some mashed potatoes and green beans to eat with the family back at the house. Terry stopped by before her shift started at 4PM and both Lori and Donna came by after work and joined us for dinner.

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2019 Road Trip – Cabela’s – Hamburg, PA

We had a short drive today (168 miles) to the HUGE Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA. Cabela’s has an RV section in their parking lot and allows overnight stays. They even have a free dump station. We are parked here in in the back of the parking lot. It’s warm enough that we are running our generator (for air conditioning) so for safety I hooked up our exhaust Gen-Turi which has only been used once. I brought it along in case we get to do some serious boondocking out west.

Once we got setup and waited for a heavy rainstorm to pass through we headed into the store to see if we could contribute to the local economy. Unfortunately, most of the things we wanted to purchase were big enough that we didn’t want to haul them across the country for 4 months. So we bought a moon pie and a small pack of red licorice (big spenders). We’ll make a bigger contribution on some future shorter trip.

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2019 Road Trip – Candy Hill Campground – Winchester, VA

We traveled 237 miles today and are staying here at Candy Hill Campground. This is a very nice, clean, well manicured campground. There is decent space between each site. The only potential negative is that we are located right next to VA-37 which is a 4 lane limited access highway (speed limit 65 MPH), so there’s a bit of traffic noise, but that’s not going to bother someone who grew up on US-20.

Winchester is a very historic town, so after we parked the camper, we unhooked the Tahoe and headed into town (approximately 2 miles) and toured the George Washington Office Museum. He served here for the Virginia regiment during the French and Indian War planning Fort Loudoun and supervising it’s construction (1755 – 1756).

Old Town Winchester, a restaurant and shopping district, was only a block away, so we walked through it and stopped at Brewbakers Restaurant for dinner. Beth had a Roast Beef sandwich smothered in beer cheese and I had a Philly Cheesesteak that was delicious.

  • Candy Hill Campground – Site H3
  • Candy Hill Campground – Site H3
  • Old Town Winchester
  • George Washington’s Office Museum
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2019 Road Trip – Ft Chiswell RV Park – Max Meadows, VA

We knocked out another 230 miles today and are staying here at Ft Chiswell RV Park. I can certainly get used to this retirement 250 mile 9AM to 2PM driving. We had originally planned to stay at Pioneer Village RV Park just up the road, but we decided to see what spontaneity is like and refused to commit to reservations on the home to Albany leg of our trip. Depending on how you look at it, that backfired today and tomorrow as neither today’s planned campground nor tomorrow’s has any sites available. On the positive side, this campground is very nice, only a few miles from our original destination, surrounded by cows and sheep, and large enough for us to sneak in a 2 mile walk by doing several laps up and down each lane just prior to the heavy rains arriving in the late afternoon.

The rain has stopped and we are now enjoying mid 60’s temperatures with our windows open and sheep baa’ing in the background. The cats are excited!

Phoebe Posing on the Dash – Site #30