We woke up this morning without anything on our exploring agenda. Peggy was looking at the road atlas and noted we were camped right near the border between Massachusetts and Connecticut so we decided, since we had never been in Connecticut, to travel there so we could tell people we had actually been there. We hopped on a little, narrow, cratered Massachusetts highway called 131 and headed mostly south towards the Connecticut border.
Hwy 131 crosses directly into Connecticut with the same numerical designation but miraculously, as soon as we crossed the border, the roads immediately improved. The roadbed was wide enough to drive on and remain in one lane, the striping was excellent, the signage was completely clear about destinations and routes and traffic was actually scarce.
There must be some fundamental difference between the strategies each New England state has about roads because the differences between the quality of the roadway systems is so glaring. I know old Mitt Romney, multi-millionaire twerp and former Massachusetts governor, had a policy to slice taxes to the bone which, unfortunately, had a self-destructing effect on the state’s highways. We noted that Connecticut must collect ample road tax to adequately fund their highway maintenance program because fuel costs 70 cents per gallon more in Connecticut than in Massachusetts.
We moseyed along going mostly west in Connecticut on Highways 12, 44 and 74 where the scenery is quite beautiful. It is a mix of hardwood forests, small farms and rural villages which have a myriad of magnificent wood-framed and masonry buildings. Although most of the wood-framed buildings are basically the same style, they all have little architectural features that make them unique. Most of the masonry structures are municipal government buildings, churches and abandoned factories. They are quite stunning for an architecture fan like me.
Leaving the state highway, we turned onto I-84 which was a gorgeous, multi-lane, well-paved freeway until we crossed back into Massachusetts where the paving is pockmarked with the trademarks of poor design and inadequate maintenance. The change is quite drastic and easily noted by even the most spaced-out of cell phone operating swerving drivers. We rattled our way back to Sturbridge, where we found a seafood joint called Sturbridge Seafood. They had a great tap beer selection and tip-top chowder, fish and chips. It was a bit pricey but the food and drink was stellar so we are in no position to object. We also found an adjacent real discount liquor store which had a superb selection and much better prices than the Big Discount Liquor store in Southbridge we chickened out on yesterday. Our medicinal alcohol supply has been restored to a very robust state and we also have found quite a good bit of porter which blows up both our dresses.

We loaded up our stuff and departed Rondout Valley TT in Accord, NY and headed east into Massachusetts. Our ultimate destination today was Sturbridge TT in Sturbridge, MA, which looked considerably easier on the map than it turned out to be. Driving on the substandard NY roads was challenging but nothing compared to the roads in Massachusetts. Those of us who learned to drive in the west are extremely spoiled because we have roads that are at least as wide as the car and that also run in a relatively straight manner. Those western roads also had mostly uniform paving and are graded such that they do not go steeply uphill followed by going steeply downhill, all in less than 1/2 a mile.
Massachusetts does not suffer from the sound roadway engineering us crybabies from the west are accustomed to. They have designed their roads with what has resulted in highways that have all the paving hazards of I-95 coupled with steep hills, endless twisting low-speed corners, courses through the most difficult to follow paths through numerous municipalities all on roadbeds only slightly narrower than the vehicles that use them. However, the countryside you pass through in western Mass. is quite scenic if you ever get a chance to glance away from the road. On these Massachusetts highways it only took us around four hours to cover some 115 miles giving us an average speed of about…..uhhh….lemme see… less than 30 miles per hour. I may have to just bite the bullet and pay tolls to cross the remainder of the state on substandard but higher speed toll roads.
We finally arrived in our campground and were fortunate to select a site at the very end of the road about 65 feet above a pond. One side of our set-up trailer offers a good, sound walkway and road but the other side is not for the squeamish about heights. The view, however, is gorgeous and the site is very secluded. We don’t seem to be able to hear anybody else in the park and can only see two other sites in the distance. This place is great if you can get close to where we settled. We met a walking neighbor named William who let us play with his dog, Deke, and also let us give him some Pup-peronis that we haul along for canine bribery purposes. Deke is a big, black Lab mix and just as sweet as can be. He makes Peg and me both long for our doggles back at home in San Diego.
We left the park for a short trip to the store and we promptly got lost and ended up going to a town called Southbridge, not Sturbridge. Fortunately, the town had a supermarket with a good grocery selection and we augmented our ample supplies with meat, milk, fresh produce and some ice cream which I have not seen again after purchase. Peg may have done me a favor and concealed this stuff which is probably bad for me but tasty nevertheless. We also popped into a liquor store called Big Discount Liquor but they had a very skimpy inventory of booze and no discounts so we bailed. Maybe we will be successful in our medicinal liquor resupply efforts tomorrow. We are happy to see Massachusetts has liquor stores – most of the states we have passed through since April 1 have almost no liquor stores despite being the region of the moonshiners. It’s bizarre that those who manufactured so much bathtub alcohol have enacted laws which make it extremely difficult to actually acquire booze of any sort. These are the very same states where we observed Baptist churches tucked between a gun store and a strip club or a tobacco discount outlet and a cathouse.

Our exploration of the Shawengunk ridge would not be complete without making a full circuit so today we decided to try the north end of the ridge. We drove again by the Accord Speedway and continued on back roads through gorgeous countryside until we ultimately arrived in Woodstock.
Woodstock had a famous concert over three days back in the 60’s (I think) but now there does not seem to be any acknowledgement of that pivotal musical event. Woodstock is now a small town with lots of shops that sell candles, give massages, sell crystals and other hippie-era stuff.
We passed on the hippie shit and continued our drive down mysteriously labelled roads into the town of Saugerties where we found the Barclay Heights Diner and stopped for some grub. Peg got a cheeseburger that was nominal but I ordered the seafood combo plate which was really pretty good. They gave me some scallops, some shrimp, some fish and a stuffed clam which were all pretty tasty. Thrown in with my meal was a salad bar pass and fries which were good, as was the salad bar. The diner looks like an old-style diner with funny chrome trim and strange lights but the food’s good and the meals, with drinks, cost about $30 which seemed reasonable for the amount of food we received.
We headed out of Saugerties through a circuitous detour around some non-construction and onto some more mysteriously numbered and entitled roads and found our way back to our campground without getting lost even once.
This part of the world is very nice to visit although I am a bit handicapped on finding my way around. The scenery is so fascinating that being lost is only mildly irritating because there are such spectacular vistas, massive rock formations, beautiful countryside, thick hardwood and pine forests and magnificent buildings to enjoy as one attempts to find his or her way from one place to another. I would not mind spending some more time here but we are scheduled in Massachusetts tomorrow and we want to stay on schedule. I hope we can find our way outta here.

Another day of exploration for your dedicated narrator and his faithful wife, Peggy. We went again over Mohonk Road / County Roads 1 & 6 / 44 and/or 55 around the south end of a range of hills they call the Shawengunks (no kidding).
We initially passed from Accord over the Shawengunk ridge to New Paltz, NY, where we stopped to wander about in an area known as Water Street. There are some nice little shops and an antiques store in addition to a restroom facility which was of great importance by the time we arrived in town. We were bad because we didn’t buy anything but we did enjoy browsing in this little town.
Departing New Paltz we tried to go to a place called the Mohonk Mountain Home where we were promptly stopped at a gatehouse. We were greeted by an adolescent girl with a squeaky little voice who told us we could not come in because it was private property and we were ferners restricted from entry. We left there and drove on some more highways with many names and numbers to a gorgeous park atop the Shawengunk Ridge called Minnewaska State Park Preserve where our wallet was lightened by $10 for entry. It has a winding road that takes visitors to the top of the Shawengunk ridge where there is a very nice lake, spectacular views of countryside on the east and west sides of the ridge and poorly maintained portable outhouse style restrooms. The views of the lake and countryside are beautiful but the outhouses were not.
We departed Minnewaska and drove the rest of the way around the southern end of the Shawengunk ridge passing through Wallkill, NY. We stopped at a deli to get some food but of course they were not serving food with the exception of mystery wraps and muffins. Peggy bought a chicken mystery wrap and I got a chocolate chip muffin. The mystery wrap had unidentifiable material inside which we split until I indicated I had eaten enough which ended up being around four bites. The chocolate chip muffin tasted nominal. We asked the two people working in the deli if they could tell us how to get to county road 18 but they were not aware of any road by that name so we cut our visit short and departed for the parking lot. It was only after we arrived in the parking lot that we noted there was a sign indicating county road 18 passed by one side of the deli.
We continued our trip around the Shawengunk ridge by passing down Hwy 18 and through Ellensburg where we picked up Hwy 209 for our trip back to the campsite. I was outside the trailer cooking steaks on the barbecue when I thought I could hear the sound of powerful gas engines off in the distance. I initially ignored it thinking it was just some New York hot-rodder buzzing around on country roads. Later in the evening, when I went outside to put the barbecue away for the night, I thought I could hear the sound of multiple gas engines accelerating and decelerating which I thought might be the sound of racing. Soon, I had convinced myself it was indeed the sound of auto racing so we consulted Peg’s phone and found there is a racetrack nearby. We decided to look for it and after passing over some more unnamed roads we arrived at Accord Speedway which is a quarter-mile dirt track where some of the locals were squirrelling around in sprint cars, midgets, modifieds and one class I could not identify because the cars were so tiny and powered by motorcycle engines. There was no admission fee so we went in and watched some guys spin around the track practicing. We inquired about regular racing and found they have racing every Friday night with multiple classes of cars. Regrettably, we are departing Friday and will miss the racing but it was fun to watch them practice anyway.

A day of discovery for us today. We decided we would start our day by heading for the Hudson River and driving up the east side and returning back to our campsite down the west side. We had acquired some maps in the campsite office when we arrived and elected to use them for today’s journey. This concept may not have been entirely sound because we soon found that virtually every entity refers to each road by a different name. While the local authorities call a road Mohonk Road, our map indicated it was county roads 1 and 6 and the state refers to the road as 44 or 55, depending on which signs were still standing after protracted neglect. I believe this method of ambiguous nomenclature was designed to confuse even the smartest folks, a classification to which I do not apparently belong. Signage here lends challenges to navigation which must be similar to those encountered by explorers prior to compasses or maps existing.
We wandered around on the Roads With Many Names and ultimately made it to Highland, NY, where we crossed the Hudson to the eastern shore. We strangely found our way onto Hwy 9 running up the east shore although we also noted there was a Hwy 9 on the western shore. Anyway, we drove north up the eastern shore Hwy 9 passing by a mansion owned by the Vanderbilts, which was very spiffy. We also went by FDR’s tiny little estate in Hyde Park which was also very nice. It only occupies about 50 or more acres right alongside the Hudson and has a very nice view for a house owned by a Democrat.
After continuing north for a while, we found ourselves on Hwy 9G (another Hwy 9) which continued north until we crossed back to the western shore at Catskill, NY, which is not really in the Catskills. From there we went south on Hwy 9 on the western shore through a town called High Falls. High Falls has a little waterfall that is not really very high – maybe 30 feet in a couple of different cascades but the water passing over the falls is pretty neat anyway. The water seems to have a nice tan color, probably due to the recent rains. We stopped in High Falls parking along the town’s main drag and bailed out of Charlotte to take what they refer to as “The 5 Locks Trail.” This is a gorgeous little gravel path that passes five locks which used to be a part of the D & H canal system that connected the Delaware River with the Hudson River. This canal system was about 100 miles long, had 102 locks and was dug by men using picks, shovels, horses and cheap labor. It is nominally 20 feet wide and at least four feet deep. The barges that traveled on the canal were pulled by mules that had children guiding them. The system operated 9 months out of the year so most of the poorly paid munchkins that guided the mules ended up being uneducated because folks at that time thought orphans and runaways were not suitable for anything other than indentured servitude. Must have been a pretty miserable life for the kids although the canal owners made quite a bit of money.
All of the roads we traveled today passed through exquisitely beautiful countryside. Most of the roads are pretty narrow and the road surfaces were paved such that the suspension gets quite a workout but the scenery more than makes up for the lousy highways. The Hudson River Valley, at least this section, is just spectacular with beautiful buildings with many architectural styles, gorgeous vistas and lush forests with abundant wildlife.

Today was a travel day so we departed Scotrun, PA, crossed into New York state on Hwy 209 and continued until we made it to Accord, NY. It was mostly an uneventful drive through gorgeous countryside with the exception of a little scare in Port Jervis, NY, where they have cleverly neglected to inform motorists that as you depart town on Hwy 209 you will be required to pass through an underpass that has a clearance sign indicating 12′-6″ maximum height. The low bridge is located in a depression where backing up is virtually impossible due to heavy traffic and the sign is located on the bridge itself.
Unfortunately, the height of the Barbarian Invader is 12′-10″ so we got down in the depression and slammed on the brakes because I was afraid we would scrape the air conditioners off the roof of our portable home. Peg hopped out, directed some traffic around us and got herself into a place where she could see whether we were two-blocked or not. It seems that the sign understates the actual clearance by a few inches and we squeaked through but only after I almost soiled my trousers.
We scampered out of Port Jervis and continued up 209 until we arrived in Accord and found our TT site – Rondout Valley Resort. This is a nice campground with full hookups and large campsites surrounded by grass meadows. I was delighted we still had air conditioners atop the Invader and had passed unscathed over the crummy NY roads. The first thing the lady at the resort desk asked us was what did we think of NY roads and we were obliged to tell her that they were not too terrific, at least the part we had traveled to get to Accord. Signage is not too good in this part of the world, either. There are quite a few places where the folks responsible for maintaining wayfinding signs have allowed the arrows that inform ignorant drivers, like me, where to go to fall off the post to which they were mounted. In some other strategic locations they have cleverly failed to put up signs where you should turn such that you continue for some distance before realizing you are going the wrong way and that you should have turned in some unknown location known only to the personnel who don’t put up proper signage. These folks are quite clever if their intent was to confuse drivers from locations other than where they are responsible for signage.

Today turned out to be a day for loafing although is was not shown on our agenda if we actually had an agenda. I did some research on places we wanted to make reservations in July because the summer months are a time when reservations are problematic because everybody vacations in the summer, specifically the middle of June to the time school fires up again in September. Holiday weekends are really tough and are right out unless you reserve about 3 months in advance.
There are some alternatives to making timely reservations. Poor planners may be able to find a place to park their oversized camping vehicles in most Wal-Mart stores if the facility manager says it is okay. Casinos also frequently allow the poorly prepared to park in their parking lots as long as you are going to patronize the casino to leave them some of your hard-earned dollars. Unfortunately, we are not the type of people that enjoy snoozing in Wal-Mart lots or being unable to sleep due to the nature of casino operations while parked in their ample parking facilities. These restrictions compel us to be a little more forward thinking in our arrangements although we really hate having to schedule anything. Being responsible on this issue tends to really limit our ability to go wherever we want whenever we want to but it does certainly improve the location of our accommodations.
Through extensive research today, I have found that RVers do not go anywhere in Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine because they do not have very many places to pull in with a coach or fifth-wheel trailer like our Barbarian Invader model. I was able to find some sites in the parts of these states that I have no desire to visit but have much more research to perform before failing and electing to disregard these nice New England destinations. Perhaps I will find something in the future but I’m not holding my breath. If I was smarter, I might be able to find someone else to do this mundane work for us but I doubt it.

Peg and I awakened early this morning but made no efforts to do anything productive until we mutually decided to make somebody else cook breakfast. We climbed into Charlotte and drove into Scotrun to eat at a local restaurant that had a big mobile barbecue apparatus mounted on a trailer out front. The actual barbecue cooker was shaped like a very large pink pig and was fabricated from pink metal. They had a sign indicating they had the best breakfasts in the Poconos.
Although the breakfast was okay I suppose this must be a deprived part of the world if this was the best breakfast available in this area. I ordered the combo which was advertised as kielbasa, link sausage, bacon and ham with two eggs. It had some longitudinally sliced kielbasa fragments, one skinny link sausage, one strip of unremarkable bacon and two slivers of perfectly ordinary ham along with two eggs they cooked as ordered. Nothing special. Peg ordered the soup of the day which was called Italian Wedding which she didn’t get to try because the soup of the day was gone despite it only being 10:00 AM. She alternatively selected broccoli cheese which she said was good.
From the pig-decorated restaurant we decided to go south into New Jersey because our Gas Buddy noted that diesel was a buck cheaper in New Jersey than in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania must be collecting the extra money on fuel to augment their road repair budgets which they apparently squander on things other than paving, engineering or common sense. After only getting lost a couple times, we arrived at a tourist information center on I-80 some 5 miles into NJ. There was a nice lady who plainly explained where we had screwed up and then gave us some hints on scenic drives we could take within the area, known as the Delaware Water Gap NWR where the Delaware River divides PA from NJ.
The lady at the VIC was quite thorough in her descriptions of how to get from place to place which was very nice until she decided to actually write down the exact route we were to take including the number of traffic signals we were going to encounter, where there was construction and where to turn to stay on path. In her admirable attempts to give us directions, she soon needed more than one piece of paper and was proceeding nicely until I noted we were burning quite a bit of time without seeing anything other than the attractive facility where she worked. I was afraid she may consider writing down instuctions on how to drive back to San Diego so I mentioned to her that we probably had enough and she could quit. The long queue of other people who had come into the info center gave me the fisheye as I left even though I never asked her to write down anything about tourism.
The lady also told us that since we were going to follow the route inscribed on her lengthy manuscript, we could take a well-deserved side-trip to a town called Buttsville (no kidding) where we should stop at Johnny’s Hot Dogs for a culinary delight. We took her suggestion and soon arrived at Johnny’s where we were to encounter a big lineup of NJ hot dog experts preparing to feast on the fabled hot dogs. Strangely, about the best thing I can say about Johnny’s Hot Dogs is that the fare (exclusively hot dogs and fries – no polish dogs) is nominal, at best. My dog was a wrinkled little thing resembling…uhh…a long tubular fried raisin which had been embellished with a packet of Hunt’s ketchup. Peg’s had all the fixins on it. All together, this culinary feast of two substandard wrinkle dogs, a small fries and two small drinks only set us back $13.50. I suggest that folks pass on Johnny’s if hunting for food unless they are unable to curb their desire for substandard fare at an unreasonable price. Apparently, none of these seemingly faithful customers have ever been to Costco where you can purchase a top-notch hot dog with a 16 ounce beverage for $1.50. Even the concept of this place is weird – having a hot dog in Buttsville sounds like it might be pornographic if photographed.
The NJ side of the Water Gap was very scenic as we drove about 25 miles up the gorge before crossing back into PA for the trip down the other side on our way back to the campsite. The Water Gap is truly a gap in the mountains where the river can go south. From a distance, it looks like somebody removed the mountains for a bit so the river could get through so it could finally make it to Chesapeake Bay instead of going toward the Shenandoah some 400 miles distant. We navigated exclusively by the maps we had after making it to the visitor information center because our other devices (the Garmin & Peg’s phone) kept misleading us to places we did not want to go.

We departed Hershey TT destined today for Scotrun TT in Scotrun, PA. From the Hershey TT park the route initially took us north across farmland with gorgeous, extremely well-tended individual farms that look like they do not have animals on them because there is no visual evidence of cow plop and no rich smells normally associated with husbandry operations. Shortly thereafter we made it to I-78 eastbound for just a few miles before splitting off to I-81 northbound to the area around Hazleton, PA, where we turned east on I-80 to Scotrun.
This drive takes you across the ridges of the Pocono Mountains which are very scenic but it is hard to really gaze at the surrounding countryside because the interstate surface is very similar to the highways in Virginia. In all fairness, we did pass over some sections of I-80 that were relatively smooth but they were quite rare. Like Virginia, the interstates are liberally pockmarked with cavernous potholes, very poorly performed repairs that are worse than the initial problem and jarring bridge approaches that jeopardize dental adhesives and the expensive stuff they bond to the remains of my teeth.
The higher altitude sections of the Poconos that we passed through have pretty tiny trees. I have seen similar sections of timber before but mostly in areas where there has been forest fires. Quite a few of the conifers in the areas near the road are either dead or dying from some cause. The hardwoods, however, seem to be quite healthy although they were little spindly units.
We exited the freeway at exit 299 and took one-lane roads to the Scotrun TT site. Peggy and I both have a seemingly strange visual anomaly that makes us see the word “Scotrun” as “scrotum” which may just mean we are dyslexic but I’d need more research before making any conclusive statements. I do not mean to say this place is a scrotum because the campground is nice enough although there seems to be more folks actually living here and not camping than there is travelers merely passing through.