We departed from Peru, NY and struck out going west to Cole Creek State Park in Waddington, NY. Despite our picking the specific site in advance from the Internet, we ended up in an absolutely beautiful campsite right on the south shore of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The site was very spacious and we backed up on the grass in such a way that all of the Barbarian’s windows looked out on a panoramic view of the Seaway. The site to camp is only $20 per night but the state of New York charges more for what they refer to as “amenities,” which, in our case, meant 30 amp power only. There is no wi-fi, no water, no sewer and no phone but the view was absolutely stunning. From our chairs behind the trailer our view was of a sliver of grass in the immediate foreground, mid-scene was the Seaway with big ships running upstream towards the Great Lakes and Canada on the opposite shore. We broke out a bit of porter and set up our chairs for an afternoon of loafing and staring into the great view. Peg popped up to look at something in the Seaway and noticed two little mink that were scurrying among the big boulders that provide shoreline protection below our viewing station. Local park staff tried to identify them as ferrets (which are not indigenous to NY), squirrels and raccoons. We elected to disregard their knowledge since we can identify ferrets, squirrels and raccoons and these critters were not any of those.
Our neighbors were a bit strange. The folks to the west of us never came out of their coach – ever. The neighbors to the east arrived about an hour after we set up pulling an enormous fifth wheel with a big one-ton Dodge pickup. They were quite unfriendly and very corpulent. The hubby was a fat ginger with an enormous round head and the wife had big rolls of gelatinous, quivering blubber liberally distributed on her ass and thighs. Our meek attempts to speak with them were soundly rebuffed with non-committal grunts and looks of disdain. Fortunately, we could easily ignore them because they were camped on the side of the Invader we do not use except for hooking up utilities.
Cole Creek State Park is a beautiful camp spot so we were quite happy despite the expensive (lack of) amenities and the grumpy and ugly neighbors. We have noted that despite our unremarkable appearance and advanced age, we are maybe some of the most attractive folks in the state. There are a lot of ugly people here in spite of this being The Big Apple and the most magnificent place in the universe with wonderful people according to the promotional literature available to tourists.

Today we woke up well rested after getting to sleep in a place that seems absolutely silent at night. Our explorations commenced with a fuel stop and then we proceeded directly into New York’s Adirondack Park. We drove south on I-87 where I gave Peg lousy directions and we missed the correct exit for the road west. After only about 8 miles of wasted fuel, we got onto either 9N or Hwy 86 headed toward Lake Placid, a region where NY has hosted two winter Olympic Games. It is a beautiful drive up what I think is the Ausable River through Clintonville, Au Sable Forks (funny spelling intentional), Jay, Wilmington (don’t eat at the A&W here) and finally into Lake Placid. The cascading river and all the towns along the way are really pretty, as is Lake Placid itself, but the town of Lake Placid is a tourist Mecca, even in the summer. The tourists seem quite happy shopping in myriad upscale boutiques, frequenting overpriced hotels with phony alpine architecture and otherwise getting fleeced. It is pretty dreadful.
We were finally able to emerge from the town’s series of roads that are almost completely blocked by morons attempting to find street-side parking where there was none and exited again on 86 for the drive on to Saranac Lake. Saranac has substantially wider roads clogged by substantially fewer morons and is quite pretty. It surrounds a scenic mountain lake and the views from the highway are very nice. There are a bunch of classic early 20th century buildings and the masonry Saranac Hotel dominates the skyline at the west end of the lake. I like this place much better than the town of Lake Placid but shoppers in an endless quest for Chinese and Malaysian garments offered at high prices may disagree with my assessment. On the way out of town, we found a gorgeous house built entirely of mortared cobbles that sits at the end of a street where we found the house of Robert Louis Stevenson. He wrote great books from inside a dinky little cottage that looks more like a place I would live than the residence of a famous author. Nice, but plain. No driveway.
We returned from this part of the world on NY Hwy 3 which ultimately delivered us to Plattsburgh, NY, which is a neat little city filled with gorgeous houses and more very impressive early 20th century era buildings. There is a statue of Sam Champlain and some really beautiful municipal buildings in town along with a great view of Lake Champlain and Vermont, across the lake. From Plattsburgh, we headed south down Hwy 9 to an attraction called Ausable Chasm. There are spectacular views of thundering waterfalls if you get out of your car and walk out on the stone Hwy 9 bridge over the chasm. If you cross to the other side of the bridge, you can look down the chasm and watch the river disappear through some formidable rapids down a rock gorge that is magnificent. This place is definitely one of those where getting out of the car and strolling out onto the bridge is worthwhile but it is not for those afflicted with any form of acrophobia. It is a long way down. Those with lots of time can pay to enter the adjacent privately-owned attraction site for whitewater rafting, tubing, bus rides and other touristy stuff on the rapids as long as they are willing to part with about $30 a head. We left $60 richer.

We woke up at our usual reasonable time of about 8:45 and performed our preparations for departure. We were fed, packed up and exiting the park before 11:00. Vermont is pretty rustic with few roads going anywhere other than directly between towns, most of them single lane each way, but they are wide enough to accommodate our Charlotte towing the enormous Barbarian Invader without terrifying the driver or his passenger, Peg. The roads are well maintained and we made pretty good time despite the unnaturally low speed limits. Very few places have speed limits above 45 miles per hour but we were happy to trudge along and admire the spectacular scenery of this state.
Someone told us that Charles Kuralt, who used to have a segment on a Sunday morning news show, stated that the U.S. interstate system was a network of roads where you could drive coast-to-coast without seeing anything on the way. In most cases, we would have to agree but we found a spectacular exception. Approaching Rutland, VT, we entered U.S. Highway 4 which is the most stunningly gorgeous freeway drive either of us has ever traveled. It is a two lane each way road with a median so wide you frequently cannot see the traffic going the other way. The road has ever-changing vistas, gently rolling emerald green hills, nice wide lanes and very limited access making for a very pleasant drive into New York.
However, as soon as you cross into New York state at Whitehall, the roads immediately turn to potholed, narrow tracks with signage that would confuse even the locals. We turned north on either Hwy 22 or 9N (we could not tell which) that snakes along the east side of Lake Champlain. This route, although marked as RV friendly in our handy Good Sam Club atlas, is a terrifying assortment of narrow, twisting alleys liberally punctuated with sunken grades, oncoming drivers unaccustomed to driving in their lane and sinuous pathways through riverside communities that consider road maintenance bothersome so they leave it undone. After more of this than either of us wanted, we finally emerged from the zone of horror onto I-87, a well-maintained, excellent freeway quite unlike any roads we have experienced in our NY travels. We picked up I-87 at exit 35 and only followed it to exit 37 where we exited to our new campsite in Peru, NY. The new place is called Iroquois Campground and it is really quite nice. It has full hook-ups but there is no TV and the wi-fi is extremely shaky. The campground, however, is very pretty and situated in a nice grove of trees with good roads although they have some nasty intentional speed bumps so drivers are obliged to slow down from 3 mph to 2 mph. It is very quiet. The silence was a panacea for our shattered nerves from NY rural transit.

We were awakened to the light drumming of rain on the Invader and democratically decided to lay low and limit our activities to lounging near the campsite. After a few cups of coffee laced with Irish Creme, however, we decided to do a little exploring of the Springfield area. We hopped into Charlotte for a spin about the area and started our explorations by driving all the way to North Springfield which looks a lot like Springfield except that it has no interesting buildings, no interesting houses and ordinary roads with secret identification signs so tourists like us will be unable to find their way to all the uninteresting stuff North Springfield possesses. We did find a back road which would lead us back to a highway giving us an alternate route back to Springfield that almost instantly turned to dirt or gravel. It was hard to tell which it might be since it was raining and, when wet, appeared to be mud. It was a nice drive through unexplored territory on the west side of Springfield with neat little farms surrounding decrepit residences with ample junk in their yards. Very snazzy.
On our way back from this short foray into rural Vermont, we stopped at a grocery store called Shaw’s which had prices that may make one appreciate the benefits of competition because normally cheap items like potatoes and apples had prices that are normally found only in upscale neighborhoods like Beverly Hills or La Jolla, CA. After parting with more money than we should have for fewer items than we wanted, we consoled ourselves by returning to the Shanghai Gardens restaurant for more very reasonably priced Chinese food served by folks wearing the same shorts, wife beaters and cheap zories they were sporting yesterday. Although their attire may not be spiffy, the food is very tasty and the prices were dirt cheap – appetizers and two meals with egg rolls, wonton soup, fried rice, pineapple chunks and fortune cookies for $26.
Mutually deciding to curtail our exciting activities for the day, we drove back to the Tree Farm campground to steel ourselves for tomorrow’s drive into upstate New York. Tree Farm is a gem of a campground with all the stuff you might want in an RV camping venue and without any interference from your neighbors who you can hardly see since the place has big sites with timber between spaces. We found out they had adequate security when we elected to take a drive around the entire campground to see how many folks were in the campground and were followed home by one of the campground operators. He was very nice and explained that he only followed us around to make sure we were registered guests and not merely casing the joint for easy pickings. Whatta guy.

Our days in New Hampshire are at an end for this trip. We got up this morning, ate some breakfast and then drove my sister Julie an hour down the road to Manchester where she got a flight out to Newark and on to LAX. We returned from the airport, hooked the Invader to Charlotte and took off going west. The first bit of the road was I-89 which is a good road with beautiful scenery on each side. Up by New London, NH, we left I-89 and struck out on Hwy 11 through the New Hampshire countryside.
Although Hwy 11 is predominately a good road, the route takes travelers through towns with amazingly circuitous courses around roundabouts that are actually square, up skinny roads and through overtaxed signals that back up traffic for blocks. Fortunately, this is a pretty scenic part of the country and looking out the windows as you putt along at 30 miles per hour or while stopped is pleasant. It does take a long time to get anywhere because speed limits are ridiculously low and roundabouts fool the Garmin, possibly due to changes made to roads unknown to entities that do mapping.
We ultimately emerged in Springfield, Vermont, where we took some very strange turns up quite steep residential streets before arriving at a delightful campground called Tree Farm. It has a dirt entry road that may fool some but should not deter those who want to stay in a great place. Elizabeth and Ben, the campground operators, met us at the office and answered every question we put to them before taking me on a ride around the place to show me the way into my site. The site is nestled in a mature grove of conifers with a few hardwoods, gorgeous flowers, blooming hostas, full hook-ups, CATV and good wi-fi. The campground is not affiliated with any of the big campground groups like TT or Encore but they are hooked up with Good Sam which ended up giving us a nightly rate of $30, dirt cheap compared with anything in Maine.
Peg and I had both entered a withdrawal period from lack of Chinese food on this trip so we asked our hosts about the availability of Chinese food in this locale. They directed us back into town to a place called Shanghai Garden which is located in an ugly little diner building but which has great Chinese food. My cashew chicken was very tasty and delivered along with an egg roll, fried rice, pineapple chunks after dinner along with the usual fortune cookie for less than $9. Peg got something called General Gau chicken which she also received with all the trimmings and she stated it was also really good. We also got an appetizer called Crab Dragoons which were very tasty. Altogether, the bill was around $25 which we thought was very inexpensive. The only drawback to the place was the staff may be recent immigrants from China and have pronounced accents such that Crab Dragoons are clab dlagoos and one of the waitstaff only grinned and grunted as her form of communication. Regardless of the communication flaw, we received exactly what we ordered, it was delivered very quickly, it was quite tasty and we left very satisfied.
We returned to our Invader and promptly fell asleep. It was a big day with lots of driving and good food at the end.

Just to make things interesting, our hosts elected to make the meal of the day brunch today. So with their extraordinary flair for this kind of stuff, they served up baked French toast, a couple kinds of quiche, fruit skewers, ham and other breakfasty stuff in a big buffet along with an ample supply of mimosas to wash it down. Another success for Amy, Brad, Barb, Riley, Kathy and Steve. Walt and Cassie and Candace had departed for home in Florida and missed out on the food-fest but I’m pretty sure they left happy.
After me pigging out on breakfast, we had a great day lounging around the lake with the remaining 40 or 50 folks (and dogs Moose and Zach) until late afternoon. Zach spent quite a bit of time fishing by trying to bite minnows foolish enough to stray into his shallows but I don’t think he had much luck. He seemed to enjoy it, anyway. We begged off late in the afternoon for the return to the Invader. We gave all ours hugs and sullenly walked away.
I didn’t know I had such great relatives living across the country from me and I regret that I did not make the effort to meet them sooner. Just going to their parties is enough to make me want to hang with them. After having this chance to truly get acquainted, I hope to have more chances to chat and party with these wonderful folks. I’m surprised they are my relatives because they are such good people. Having to leave was shitty.

Today was the big day. This day was the day that was selected to celebrate my aunt Elly’s birthday despite her real birthday being in September. Elly had been quite specific about directing the revelers to omit bringing birthday presents because she alleged she had nowhere to put them although I noted ample space in the Lakeshore Drive property. Some apparently hard-of-hearing or possibly illiterate types did bring gifts, damn them. Elly’s husband, my uncle Walt, was an affluent guy and it would seem there is little Elly might need for her birthday but she was nice enough to have us all up to New Hampshire for a rollicking five-day party anyway. I am not used to sustained, high quality partying but I am pretty sure I could get used to it. Peggy seems to be having a great time as well.
For today’s version of the party, we (all 60 or 70 of us) were all invited to the Lake Sunapee Country Club for dinner and drinks. As usual, I was the proud winner of the most poorly dressed award and I am quite proud of that. Most folks had on what they call “country club casual” which means about $450 worth of clothes per person but some were really gussied up with pretty near formal attire, none of which I wear or own. The food selection was pretty nice with chicken breasts stuffed with some green and red stuff unidentifiable to me along with some great beef tenderloin. I was puzzled about which meat selection I should make so I selected both. They had an open bar and wine was served to all participants except those obviously below drinking age, which in this group seems to be about 13 years old.
The whole thing ended up about 10:30 PM, which I have found is pretty early for these confirmed, hard-core partiers. I understand some were headed back to the lakefront house for more fun but we chickened out and returned to Contoocook where Julie and I stayed up way too late drinking until it was useless anymore.
Elly may not be quite 90 yet but she holds her ground better than most. I am glad I got to come to her party because even if it was only her at this event, I would have considered it a good trip. She is very sharp, absolutely unoffensive and very welcoming, even to wayward relatives from afar. I hope I get to do life as well as she is.

After a very late wake-up, we moseyed into the local municipality which may have been called Hopkinton or Contoocook or something and found the Everyday Cafe for breakfast which they were nice enough to serve us at 1:30 in the afternoon. After dining and returning to the Invader for some extended loafing, we finally got on the ball and returned to Elkins for more partying with the relatives. My relatives, unknown to me until the day before yesterday, are journeyman partiers and don’t miss much when it comes to putting on a good show.
Tonight they served up a lobster boil which was very tasty. I am having little difficulty getting used to Atlantic lobster since they are quite savory and, unlike Pacific spiny lobsters, they have moby claws with big chunks of meat which promptly found their way to my grocery hole. After our long day recuperating from yesterday’s partying, we had arrived late and missed the big family picture which we did not know was scheduled but since I am not very attractive, I figure all those who will gaze upon the pix in the future will be saved from the misery of having my doofus face sticking up in the midst of the other handsome folks. Despite missing the picture, the remainder of the evening was a gas with tons of good stuff to eat, ample beverages of all types, great hob-nobbing with formerly distant relatives and a good feeling about things as a whole.
I feel extremely fortunate in that all the folks I have met have been great to be with and they have welcomed us into the group like real pals. The place we go each day is a great venue for really big parties, the people have been great to chat with, the dog is terrific and sits on my foot when worried, the drive is short and I have additionally had an opportunity to loaf around with my sister who I normally only get to see once a year. I’m glad I came.

We started out the day driving to Manchester, NH, to pick up my favorite sister at the airport who was arriving after a red-eye from Los Angeles to Newark to Manchester. As usual, when we were a bit tardy picking her up, she was grinning away standing in front of the airport where I could easily spot her. We trundled her small bag into Charlotte’s back seat and zipped back up the road to Contoocook. We dropped her luggage at the Invader and continued on to Elkins where even more relatives had materialized for a big dinner at the house Barb and her hubby Riley had set up camp across the road from the main party site. I don’t know the folks who own the house where we went but it was a good ‘un.
Barbara and Riley had us all over to their ample place for Texas barbecue along with a wide selection of other great eats coupled with enough good alcohol for all. It was a tip-top get together without lacking any of the good stuff that makes for great parties. The house is located quite a ways up a steep road and offers a superb view of the lake below. It is my understanding that most of the remainder of the festivities will take place at the lakeshore house which is also a big joint with more bedrooms than I ever needed, two kitchens, a great boat, a handsome and very friendly Doberman named Zach, great shade trees and some very tenacious bugs of a type I could not identify but who found me to be quite tasty. Not surprisingly, the party hosts (and there were a bunch of them) had the foresight to provided an ample supply of bug repellants for common use but the bugs in this area are very tough little buggers and could probably be quite happy dining in a gas chamber.
We got back to Sandy Beach at about 1:00 AM and soon found our way into bed after only a couple more drinks.

Today we gathered up our stuff and left Maine, albeit with some regret. Our journey today took us out of Maine going west into New Hampshire. New Hampshire is another state we have never seen before and the drive there took us through some more really scenic country to our next destination, Sandy Beach Resort in Contoocook. We have no idea who or what a “Contoocook” might be other than a funny-sounding word.
On our way to the campground from I-89, we noticed some very healthy looking wild turkeys lurking in a hayfield of a place called Breakwind Farm. No kidding. Our Garmin then directed us a little bit further up the road and instructed us to turn right over a listing, closed covered wooden bridge with a maximum overhead clearance of 9′-9″, substantially less than required for our 12′-10″ high Barbarian Invader by Forest River. Phone service with our lousy Sprint provider was not available according to the number of bars on the display but we were able to contact the campground with it anyway and given a detour which promptly got us to our destination. We pulled into Sandy Beach, which really does not have much of a sandy beach, and found we had been assigned a campsite which was graded in such a way that setting up our Invader level would have been almost impossible. Peg hopped out and walked back to the office where they stated that we could take any available site we wanted so we moved into G-16 and set up for a 5 day stay. Despite our initial difficulties, we found the campground to be quite pleasant with full hook-ups, nice interior roads, cable TV but crummy wi-fi. Campsites are located quite a ways apart from each other in a large stand of mixed conifer and hardwood mature timber.
We very possibly would not have come to this place at all if it had not been for my aunt’s 90th birthday celebration scheduled by her relatives for July 11 in Elkins, NH, about 25 miles up the road from our campground. Her birthday is actually September 13 but nobody seemed to notice. I think they chose this weekend because all possible participants could arrange to be here in the summer more easily than in September after the kids go back to school. We got the Barbarian Invader all squared away and re-boarded Charlotte to head to Elkins. I have only seen my aunt and one (or maybe more) of her offspring once previously – Elly the aunt (and maybe some others who my defective memory has disregarded) in San Diego in about 1985 and Kathy my cousin in San Francisco in about 1983.
There were a bunch of relatives either already here or soon to arrive. In addition to Elly, all four of her kids (Kathy, Barbara, Walt and Amy) were at the party venue along with their spouses, children, children of children and assorted other cronies. These folks, much to our delight, love to party. They serve excellent food of many varieties and they attach no stigma to drinking. What a great crowd. Were we ever glad we were fortunate enough to be invited to this four day event which provides not only great food and drink but also ample opportunity to hob-nob with folks we wish we had been introduced to much sooner in life.