The mission for today was democratically decided to be a short road trip to Falmouth with a return along the eastern shore of Buzzard’s Bay which is the body of water between New Bedford and the Cape of Cod.
Our first segment was a freeway drive down to Falmouth and off onto basically city streets into Woods Hole. Woods Hole itself is a tiny little village with beautiful wood-framed houses and a downtown tourist area which, blissfully, only runs for about 2 blocks. Even the tourist area is pretty but once you wander off the main drag you enter almost a little wonderland of New England architecture which is almost magical. The roads are narrow but the traffic was very sparse when we were there.
A good portion of the town of Woods Hole is Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute which must occupy about 60 percent of the available real estate but quite a few of their assets seem to be old buildings and houses which they have done an excellent job of maintaining. It is a great drive through this area and a trip I would gladly repeat.
From Woods Hole we continued north (mostly) up the east shore of Buzzard’s Bay through Falmouth, Quissett, West Falmouth, Sippawisset and North Falmouth before becoming convinced that some comedian named the places and, once he settled on a name, he would use all permutations of the names before quitting. We stopped at a neat little city park named Wooden Neck Beach and Sippawisset Marsh. There were lots of birds to scope out and the parking lot bisects the marsh from the ocean. Peg and I watched as a large, fat gull did battle with a crab that was a dead heat for a minute or two but once the gull ate most of the crab’s legs, things became sort of one-sided with the crab yielding right before the rest of him was devoured. On the marsh side, there are beautiful dark blue backed tree sparrows doing aerobatics over the marsh in their pursuit of tasty flying insects. Their ability to maneuver is amazing. Human pilots following their antics would squirt right out of their shoes due to excessive Gs.
On our way back to Gateway to the Gateway to Cape Cod campground, we stopped in Bourne and picked up some seafood at a place called Sandy’s Seafood. It is a bit difficult to get into the place from the highway but well worth the challenge. Everything is fresh. I had lobster bisque and pub fish and chips and Peg had the clam chowder and clam strips special. I give the bisque a B and Peg gives the chowder an A. The clam strips and fish were tip-top and the best part was the bill was only $22.
From there we had the Garmin find our route home and returned to the GTTGTCC where we did a bit of truck maintenance before our departure from Massachusetts tomorrow. I would conclude my Massachusetts entries with an idiot’s conclusion: This is an interesting state to visit because of the wonderful building architecture, historical attractions and abundant seashore views. On the bad side – the roads are terrible, stuff is expensive, Federal freeways that are better maintained in other states and free require the payment of a toll here for a shit road surface, liquor and tobacco is expensive and a good portion of the folks we encountered seem to be miserable and unsociable. Perhaps none of them smile because they are toothless, but I doubt it. They just seem to be uncomfortable, like prison inmates.
The Gateway to Cape Cod campground is quite nice but there does not seem to be the big gatherings of campers at one trailer we observe in other locales. The folks seem to be sort of skittish about talking with each other. Maybe it is the proximity to so many mega-cities in this part of the world. It is a very short drive from Boston to Philly to New York City to D.C. We have congratulated ourselves and rewarded ourselves for our savvy navigation, cleverly avoiding these loathsome and turgid masses of humanity and remaining in mostly rural environments. We may be becoming hicks.

Uh-oh. Day of dread. Today was laundry day which is probably my least favorite activity that cuts into our crowded schedule of doing nothing except what we want to do. It sucks.
We started by gathering up all the stuff that needed to be washed and dropped into the campground laundromat where Peggy delightfully agreed to handle the clothes while sending me off to deal by phone with the contractor back home working on our pool and with the Good Sam Club Insurance. The part dealing with the contractor went very well. The part about the insurance company did not go as well.
Back on April 15, 2015, the electrically operated shade canopy on the side of our beloved trailer and home failed in the midst of a storm in King’s Mountain State Park in South Carolina. One minute there was a nice canopy. The next minute there was an expensive-sounding noise outside the trailer despite the fact we were almost alone in the campground. When we wandered out into the inclement weather to see what caused the ruckus, we were presented with a tangle of support arms and torn canopy cloth where there had been a nice shady thing before.
We sort of re-attached the canopy to the side of the trailer through an unorthodox use of stainless steel kitchen table knives and plastic zip-ties. It looked as if the failed canopy cloth and support arms were adequately secured for travel so we departed on April 16 for Charlotte, NC, to get to a repair facility that could replace what was necessary. The outfit, GGT, was quite cooperative after I gave them $500 to get things started. They indicated that parts would have to be ordered and delivered but they were nice enough to have a mechanic remove the carcass of the former canopy from the side of the trailer so we could continue on our journeys while we waited for parts. We traveled for two weeks and returned to Charlotte on May 1.
Unfortunately, at that time we found out that the replacement canopy and support structures ordered were not really the right parts but we had GGT install the new stuff even though the canopy was now a bit smaller and draped at a different angle such that our door brushes the canopy fabric when we extend it all the way. They only took another $1301 to install the new, not improved canopy because we were unwilling to spend another 3 weeks hanging around NC awaiting parts. At the time, I figured I would just be required to eat the cost. Alas, I was wrong, maybe.
When I happened to check out our Good Sam RV Insurance policy, I found canopy self-destruction was a covered loss and phoned the insurance company to file a reimbursement claim. It was at that time that the underwriting insurance company, National General, started their strategy of ignoring me and shuttling me through various persons, none of whom was any help whatsoever. They were quite nice about it – they were merely useless about getting my claim processed. Initially, they assigned me an adjuster named Andrea Crews who I believe may not exist. She was to contact me within 48 hours but 48 days later I had still not heard from the phantom. I made several calls to find out the status of my claim but was unable to speak with anybody possessing a brain so my efforts were for naught. Finally, I spoke with one of the drones at National General on June 24 and was assigned another adjuster named, of all things, Mileygha Wofford, who was to contact me within 24 hours. Of course, that did not happen. So today, I contacted the Good Sam organization who were quite nice about connecting me to another useless person at National General who tried fruitlessly to contact either one of their own adjusters or one of their own managers, all of whom are also phantoms because they were all “either on the phone or away from their desks.” I asked the nice, helpless person I was speaking with if she had ever actually spoken with anyone from her claims department and she dutifully lied that she had. I stated that I believed she was quite fortunate because I had been unable to speak with a human in the claims department in two months
I also tried National Substandard’s line again and was told by about the 50th moron that she was sending an email to the managers to get them to respond to me within two hours. At this time I went to help Peggy with the wash, which was almost completed. The laundry is located under the office facility in a dungeon so, sure enough, when somebody finally called back within about two hours, the call went to voice mail and my seven return calls within two hours to the person, Jennifer Birch, went unanswered because she was “either on the phone or away from her desk” despite a further recorded allegation that her office hours were from 8:30 to 5:30 eastern time Monday through Friday. My last desperate call to her was at 5:20 but it went to the phantom’s voice mail, just like the rest.
I can give my extremely small group of dedicated readers the following advice: Never use Sprint as your phone service provider because it only works where you don’t need it to and never buy insurance from National General unless you want to feel abused.

Today was another day with no fixed agenda so we started out the day guzzling coffee and Irish Cream before settling down for a nap. When we both decided we might actually want to do something we selected a trip to New Bedford (which the locals call newBEDfud in their charming, heavily-accented speech) where we wanted to check out the Whaling Museum.
After about a 15 minute drive on mysteriously rough back roads, we arrived in newBEDfud and the Garmin took us right to the museum. We were fortunate enough to find a metered parking spot across the street from the museum and stuffed 2 hours worth of quarters into the little bandit and entered the beautiful building housing this facility. After parting with $14 a head, we wandered into the museum where we got to see all kinds of neat whaling memorabilia. They have all kinds of whaling equipment, good interpretive exhibits, scrimshaw, artwork, re-created whaling ships, stuff made from whale bones and baleen, a nice 2nd floor viewing platform overlooking newBEDfud and all kinds of other things made from whale and seal parts. They also have some skinny little boats that men actually went out and killed whales from which is a testament to these folks’ bravery because the boats look like they would capsize in a calm lake. They must have had enormous cajones to go out into the sea, particularly those parts of the sea where whales exist, in these tiny, narrow, flat rowboats with some harpoons and a big store of rope.
We learned that New Bedford is the largest seafood production port in the world and the view from the second floor viewing platform gives you a good impression as to why. The port is filled with thousands of fishing vessels of all sizes and types. New Bedford is also a pretty little town with magnificent buildings, even in the grimy slums down near the waterfront factories. The streets are made from little rectangular stones laid side-by-side so they are bumpy and most of the streets we went on are one way, possibly due to their narrow width. Nevertheless, this was a neat place to visit and I would go back again as long as I wasn’t required to drive on the challenging Massachusetts roads.

Another day arrived without us having a fixed agenda so we mutually decided to leave the Gateway to Cape Cod campground and go north to see what might be interesting in that direction. Prior to our departure, though, we drove across the campground to what they call Leonard’s Pond which adjoins the campsite. It is a very nice pond with a little floating dock where Peg and I got out to check for wildlife. There are tons of birds you can hear, some birds that we actually saw along with the usual water creatures like frogs and ducks. There is a small picnic area at the end which is beautiful. The pond is down a skinny dirt road leading from the campground on which we were fortunate enough to not meet any oncoming traffic because the road is too narrow for two cars and maybe even two motorcycles to pass. The pond, however, is gorgeous and we felt we had a good start to the day by beginning here.
From the campsite we drove up County Road 58 for a bit and then turned east and we came out in Plymouth, where the Pilgrims landed. We drove by a temple-looking structure where they have placed a boulder with “1620” cut into one surface but there really is no “Plymouth Rock” other than this inscribed piece of granite. Plymouth is a gorgeous little town with a bunch of really neat old buildings lining the streets. It is quite a nice little bay where all this wonderfulness is located and I feel it is much more attractive than, say, Provincetown.
On our way back home we stopped in another seafood joint in Onset that some guy had told us was better than Lindsey’s, where we ate yesterday. He was a liar. The fare was much cheaper and there is no mystery as to why. The clam chowder was quite good but the clams seem to have more sand in them than the beach. Wear your disposable false teeth if dining here because they will be pretty scuffed up when you are done. The clam cakes are doo-doo, but cheap.

All my life I have heard folks expound on the magnificence of Cape Cod. To see if they were liars, we piled into Charlotte and departed the Gateway to Cape Cod, hustled down about 20 miles of I-195 and ultimately crossed the Cape Cod Channel onto the Cape. Travelers are required to pass through a Mecca of south Cape communities like Hyannis before actually turning north onto the real Cape. The roads are a bit better here but speed limits of about 45 miles per hour increase transit time to go anywhere. Eventually, you cross into the Cape Cod National Seashore which is almost completely inaccessible with the exception of about 4 or 5 spots where the Feds have little booths set up to charge idiots to park. The beach is free but the only available parking is not. Places we drove into wanted either $15 or $20 to park but we were again saved by our Federal Lands Access Pass we bought in Gold Beach, Oregon, last year allowing us to drive through the parking lots without cost.
We continued up the Cape until we reached Race Point Beach up near the very northern tip. We piled out of the truck and strolled down to the beach. Peg stuck her toes into the Atlantic and I took pictures and played with the dogs other folks had been considerate enough to bring along. From this beach, we continued on to Provincetown, the village at the end of the Cape. Provincetown is a quite scenic little burg with narrow streets, gorgeous buildings, quaint little alleys, thousands of tourists and virtually no parking where needed. We drove down onto Water Street which runs along the sea and were directed by Gestapo-looking cops to drive very slowly since the streets were clogged with ample tourists all trying to acquire Chinese-made knick-knacks with Cape Cod motifs. It was ugly.
We headed away from the waterfront and drove through the Provincetown graveyard where they have interred thousands of folks who croaked a long time ago. We spotted quite a number of formerly living who had died back in the mid-and early-19th century and that was kind of interesting. We skedaddled from Provincetown, happily without any Chinese merchandise, and headed back down the Cape to Truro, where we checked out the Truro Museum. It had a lot of pictures of old Cape natives and some oral history from each of them which was pretty neat. They also had a lot of stuff that appeared to have come out of locals’ houses when they cleaned out their attics. Some of the stuff is interesting but they charge too much for the entry fee when you consider what they have on exhibit.
In conclusion, I would have to surmise that those who say that the Cape is truly wondrous are suffering from a lack of experience traveling because we have found other places that are more scenic, easier to access, not infested with tourists and altogether more attractive than Cape Cod. It is nice to see once but I’m not sure I would travel again over the horrible Massachusetts roads for so little.
On the way home, we stopped to eat in a restaurant in Onset called Lindsey’s Seafood which was pretty good. I had crab-stuffed haddock which was tip-top and Peg had fried shrimp, which she stated was merely okay. The price was a bit high but the beer selection was okay so we left happy.

We had a travel day today. We departed Sturbridge and drove to another TT campground called Gateway to Cape Cod in Rochester, Mass. It is interesting that they have selected this name because to the end of Cape Cod is better than 80 miles from the campground. It should probably be the Gateway to the Gateway to Cape Cod or A Campground That Only Requires 20 Minutes of Driving to Reach the Cape Cod Channel Where Cape Cod Actually Begins. Regardless of the name, the campground is a big Jose with full hookups and amenities other than Sprint phone service and viable wi-fi. It is situated in a big grove of conifers that offer mottled shade for almost the entire day. The access road is ugly but, other than that, it is a nice place to set up for the week.
We arrived early in the day, thanks to the Mass Turnpike which is a toll road crossing the whole state from west to east. The road was wider than Hwy 20 that we entered Sturbridge on but the paving was almost as bad as the rest of the roads in Massachusetts. I would be pissed off if the government collected taxes for the roads and spent it elsewhere because the roads are in quite bad shape.
Our early arrival allowed us the afternoon with no commitments so we decided to wander over into Rhode Island to see what it looked like and to allow ourselves the ability to say we had been in that state. One thing is immediately clear when you enter Rhode Island: they have much better roads. The countryside we drove through was quite nice with mostly hardwood forests along with some farmland and some big estates. Rhode Island much be the rich brother to Massachusetts because it appears they live in better houses, have more acreage and the roads are properly designed and built. Rhode Island is also extraordinarily puny – you could probably cross the entire state west-to-east in less than an hour and cover it north-to-south in just a bit longer. We cleverly avoided going into the capital, Hartford.

It was a day for lounging for us. We drove into town to get diesel but other than that, we accomplished nothing during the day.
William, our neighbor in the park, came by in the evening with Deke who I suckered in with some Pup-peronis. William and Deke hung out at our trailer until about 11:45 when we wished them a goodnight and crapped out. William seemed to be having a pretty good time by the time he left. We had introduced him to porter which he eagerly drank until he was pretty blotto.

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.