Author Archives: Jill and Bud

Mount Washington is the Northeast’s highest peak at 6,288 feet. We are staying just a 30 minute ride from the base of the mountain so today we went there.

For only $55.00 we got this lovely bumper sticker (which Bud doesn’t want on the truck) and the chance to drive to the summit on the “Auto Road”. The road is eight miles long and except for a few hundred feet near the entrance it goes up! The steepest quarter mile is a 16% grade, and the steepest mile is a 13% grade. It averages a 12% grade. The road is so narrow we were asked to fold our diver’s side mirror in. There are no guard rails.

The road was finished in 1861 as a carriage road and has been operated by the same family company ever since. The Cog Railway, seen here from a stop near the summit of the road, was finished in 1868. It took a lot of business from the Carriage Road until automobiles became more common. The first mechanized vehicle to climb the road to the summit was a Stanley Steamer driven by Freelan Stanley in 1899. I wonder if the steam car rally going on here now includes the Auto Road, although I rather think they would be prohibited now for safety reasons. Surprisingly, the last bit of the Auto Road, the “five mile stretch” (less than a mile long at the five mile mark), was not paved until 2022.

At the top you are literally in the clouds. This was one view from the parking lot, looking down the mountain through a gap in the clouds.

There are a number of buildings on the summit, including this gift shop. Notice the chains.

I assume they are to hold it in place in the wind. If you can read the sign it says that in 1934 the weather observatory, that was on this site and manned, recorded a wind speed of 231 miles per hour. Mt. Washington still has a weather observatory where the extreme weather it experiences is recorded. It was 77 degrees at the campground and only 61 degrees on the mountain.

There is no problem with wind with the Tip Top House. It was built in 1853 as a guest house. It fell into disrepair, but the thick rock walls stood. Renovated in the 1980’s it is operated as a museum. Unfortunately, it was closed now for further renovation. To the right of the building is a cairn of stone that marks the summit.

Today was a mix of clouds and sun, but between the clouds we got some stunning views.

A lot of people hike up, or down the mountain. There is a hiker’s shuttle that operates on the Auto Road and you can buy a one-way ticket on the Cog Railroad. The Appalachian Trail crosses the summit, so some hardy souls go up and down.

I was pretty nervous about the ride down because of all the warnings about overheated brakes (some types of cars are prohibited because you can’t put them in a low gear). We only stopped for the stunning views.

We never had to stop, as numerous signs urged, to cool our brakes. With the truck in Tow/Haul mode, engine braking engaged and first gear selected we drove down at a sedate 20 mph and Bud had to use the brakes only occasionally.

And we all got to the summit.

We drove to Jefferson, New Hampshire today, to Jefferson Campground. We’re staying here over July 4th because it’s so hard to get a reservation at a public campground.

Not only is this a beautiful campground, but despite the dramatic sky and lousy forecast we had no rain here so far.

Matey and I checked out the place and found some of my favorite wildflowers, Indian Paintbrushes, which made a lovely display with the clover, daisies and buttercups.

But the bonus is they are having a steam car rally around here and several of the cars stopped by for water. (I talked to the driver of a 1923 model and he said he can go about 25 miles on a fill of water.)

This one was a 1914 Stanley Model 607 Touring Car.

All of them were from 1908 to 1923, so over a hundred years old.

The best thing is how they sound.

So be sure to turn your sound on when you watch these video clips.

Yesterday we arrived at Robert Moses State Park in the Thousand Islands area of the St. Lawrence River. This is the back of our lovely site. We are actually looking south here, as the campground is on an island that was made when they constructed the Wiley-Dondero Canal for the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Like the site at Darien Lake State Park, there is no pad and no water, but the site was level and the surroundings are nice.

This little guy kept Matey entertained while we set up camp. He’s a bit larger than the squirrels here, so I think he’s a groundhog.

There are two locks on the Wiley-Dondero Canal, one on either end of the eight nautical mile canal. Our site looks out at the upstream end of the canal and the entrance to the Eisenhower Lock. This sailboat was tied up at a floating dock on the outside of the entrance/exit to the canal and lock last evening. I think they may have spent the night there after coming up through the lock. In the morning they were gone.

This morning we went to look at the lock. An ocean going ship was just entering from the downstream side. This is a panoramic picture of the ship in the lock before the water was raised. On the far left you can see the white superstructure and on the far right you can make out the navigation lights on a tower at the bow.

And here’s the ship sitting 42 feet higher.

This gives you a sense of just how big it was.

And here she is, the Algoma Harvester, through the lock and heading up to her home port of St. Catherines.

In the afternoon it quit raining, so even though it was still cloudy and only about sixty degrees out, we decided to take a walk.

We walked about a mile and a half on a nice loop trail.

This view of the river was pretty, even without sun.

As we finished our walk it started drizzling again. We drove over and saw the marina, then came back to our nice warm camper.

Not a bad day in a pretty nice place.

We have been staying at Darien Lake State Park in Western New York. No pads, no real driveways and no water. We used our portable graywater tank to drain our shower water twice and then had to break camp and tow the trailer to empty the waste water tanks and refill the freshwater tank after a week. And today we had to add about 15 more gallons to our freshwater tank to get us through until tomorrow.

The park does have a lot of nice lawns,

a pretty little lake…

with a decent beach,

and a couple of very big snapping turtles!

There is a disc golf course that looks nice but the brush on the edges of the fairways is so thick it is unplayable. If your disc misses the fairway by a foot you spend 15 minutes beating back the brush to find it.

All in all it’s been a nice park, but we didn’t come here for the park.

We came for the people, especially my Mom and my siblings. Here we are in the only picture I have of us. Clockwise from the front left, Goody, me, Bud, Joan, Mom, Jim, and Judy.

I got to spend a good deal of time with my friend Erin, and never took her picture. I did take a picture of her back yard where she hosted her third annual garden party with me and my family.

The other people we visited with but got no pictures of are: Suzie, Marilyn and Don, Rob, Cousin Dale and Sally, Eric and Eleanor, Randy, Gayle, Scooter, Sue and Gary and Dick and Sue, Uncle Al and Fran, Susan and Nancy, Kathy and Mike and Emily and Keith. Phew! I know I should have taken more pictures, but I was just enjoying all the visits.

It was great to see everyone and now it’s time to go wandering again.

On Saturday we left Kentucky, crossing the Ohio River on this lovely bridge into Ironton, Ohio.

We stayed one night at Oak Hill Campground in Wayne National Forest. Happily, we were able to level the camper by putting the rear wheels of the truck up on blocks, so we didn’t have to unhitch.

Sometimes we come to a place and stay a night or two and we wish we could stay longer. Sometimes we are booked for several days and after a couple of days we are ready to leave, but our itinerary has us staying longer.

This was a pretty area. The understory of the woods was full of redbuds.

And there was a lot of sassafras, one of my favorites that’s not too common. Notice this single plant has leaves that are entire, mitten shaped, and three lobed. The root of the sassafras is the original source of root beer. Although I would not dig one up, if you do the roots are very aromatic and do smell like root beer.

Early Sunday morning Matey and I hiked down the hill to the Rock House trail. We walked the length of this paved trail. Signs along the way explained how in the early 1800’s iron ore was dug out of the exposed ledges, the trees were cut down to make charcoal for furnaces and iron was produced from the ore. The slag was dumped in the ravines. In typical European fashion, once the ore was gone and the trees were all cut the area was abandoned. It has healed now and the trail was nice. The trail ended with this wooden walkway leading in to…

a huge overhang of rock, the “Rock House”.

It was pretty and rather dramatic.

Since the campground host told me this was the only trail from the campground that was not overgrown, I was glad to have been there and ready to move on. A one night stay was just right.

We’ve moved on to central Kentucky.

We’re camped at Dog Creek Campground, which is a Corps of Engineers campground on Nolan River Lake and is just north of Mammoth Cave National Park.

Today we took a tour of Wondering Woods Cave, which starts with a short bus ride from the visitor’s center to the cave area. Wondering Woods was a theme park that operated into the 60’s. The land was acquired by the National Park in 1970. The cave was never developed as part of the theme park, in fact the entrance was blocked.

Recently a pavilion was built along with this broad path…

with a wooden bridge over a gully. The cave was opened for tours in 2022.

Metal steps take you down to the widened entrance…

where a bit of stooping gets you inside. (This is actually looking back on our way out, on the way in I was too busy stooping to get a picture.)

Once inside there are more stairs down into a fairly large room.

Mammoth Cave is the longest cave in the world with 400 miles of passages. Wondering Woods cave is small, the part you can visit is just this one large room, but it is very ornate. This is looking back towards the entrance.

And this is looking forward towards the far end of the cave where a double stairway takes you up for a closer look.

This is looking up. It seems like the cave is as high as it is long.

As we climbed the stairs back out…

Kelly, our trailing guide, turned out the lights,

leaving the cave behind us in darkness.

This was a short tour in a small cave, but still required about a mile of walking and 194 stair steps. Bud had no problems and we both enjoyed it. His new knee definitely works!

We’re traveling again. We didn’t forget how, the truck was fine, the trailer was fine and Bud was fine. Yea!

We left at 9 AM, drove northeast through Arkansas and the southeast part of Missouri. Here we are about to cross the Mississippi into Tennessee.

The Mississippi still looks low to me.

We came to Reelfoot Lake State Park where we were able to level the camper without unhitching.

Reelfoot is a shallow, pretty little lake with an interesting origin. It was formed by the four strong earthquakes of 1811-1812 that occurred along the Madrid Fault. These quakes were so strong they were felt in Quebec and were said to make the Mississippi run backwards for over 10 hours. In the upheaval the Reelfoot River, which was a tributary of the Mississippi, was blocked and formed Reelfoot Lake. Most of the shoreline now belongs to the state of Tennessee.

We are enjoying the state lands. I love the oak and cypress trees, Bud enjoys the peace and quiet and Matey likes the squirrels. There is a trail to another area of the park for us to explore tomorrow.

It’s great to see the sunset in a new place.

We’ve been here a long time, but we’ve taken care of a lot of things.

The truck has a new 40 gallon auxiliary fuel tank that feeds diesel into the main tank 5 gallons at a time at the push of a button.

We also had a new brush guard installed on the front.

We sorted and repacked our stuff so we could fit everything in the shorter available truck bed. The old step ladder wouldn’t fit, so I got this new 12 foot telescoping step ladder, very pricey, but very nice.

It made the job of washing and waxing the trailer almost fun.

We removed the old bumper hitch luggage carrier and instead I installed a rack for our portable gray water tank and a round carrier for sewer hoses. With the hollow square bumper below it we can now carry three sewer hoses. The elbow and “Y” fittings go in a small tote that will fit in our pass through cubby. (The white thing in the hanging plastic bag is our outdoor temperature sensor, wrapped in a paper towel. We deploy that at each stop where it will be out of the sun. The towel is to absorb any condensation.)

We also got a replacement door for our fresh water fill. The old door was missing the knob. They sent us the whole box, but I didn’t want to unseal the existing one. The knob assembly looked like it might break if you tried to remove it, but the little door was easy to take off from the back. Of course I couldn’t get at the back of the old one but I managed to cut off the old door and the new one was easy to put on from the front.

Inside the trailer we got a new mattress. If it looks like one side of the bed is higher than the other, it is. That’s because the new mattress with our latex mattress topper is perfect for me, but Bud felt like he was sleeping in a hole. We took the topper off and Bud was happy with just the mattress, but I woke up with a backache. So I cut the topper in half. Matey must not have liked the height change across the foot of the bed where he sleeps, so I took some of the spare latex and made him a cushion for the floor next to my bed where he ended up. Last night he slept on the floor in front of the cushion, there’s no pleasing everyone!

Bud had been using my seat cushion from the truck to make his chair higher, so I used some of the latex to make him his own seat cushion and a little lumbar pillow. I think they all came out pretty good and the only casualty was my left thumb; I managed to run Jamie’s sewing machine needle through it. She’s going to give me a tetanus shot tomorrow.

So I have been pretty busy. I also had a root canal on one of my teeth ( I have to wait until we’re back in November to get the crown, for now the tooth is just built up with composite.) And I got new prescription sunglasses which I’ve been without for a couple of years.

Most importantly, Bud has learned to walk with two straight legs the same length! We took a short hike on a mostly level trail at the top of Hot Springs Mountain. He took the walking stick (which he is holding in his left hand with the repaired carpel tunnel) but didn’t need it. He’s now driving again, and, most wonderfully, cooking!

Yep, we’re almost ready to travel.

The surgery on Bud’s knee went well, but the surgeon did have to mess around in there a bit as Bud had not only worn through the cartilage but quite a bit of bone, too. The surgeon added 10mm of metal to one side of the bone.

Here he is, 8 days post surgery in the camper with our dinette converted into a convalescent couch. The big contraption his leg is resting in is a Continuous Passive Motion machine. He uses it 6 hours a day for three weeks and every day he increases the angle to which it bends his knee. I think he’s around 95 degrees now, he goes up to 120. The white thing on his calf is not a dressing, he has one on each calf and it’s an inflation cuff to prevent blood clots. We call them the puffers. He’s supposed to wear them 22 hours a day (read all the time) for two weeks. The small white cords hanging off the bed are leads from an electric massage device. I stick four little pads to the part of his back that seems to be constantly aching and it sends a small current to massage those muscles. Jamie lent that to us. I might have to get him one for Father’s Day. It takes about 10 minutes to get him set up like this, with the TV remotes and a drink in easy reach. Oh, and off to the left you can just see his walker. Because of the extra messing about and a strange and painful “pop” Bud felt the second night in the hospital, he is supposed to use the walker for 2 weeks.

But, all in all, he’s doing well. He can move around in the camper pretty well. He gets in and out of the camper and in and out of the truck on his own (I just need to move the walker and a small step stool we are using for the truck). He’s gone to physical therapy twice now and today we had a visit at the office of the surgeon who will fix his carpel tunnel problem. The very good news is her scheduler was able to slot him into a cancellation so the surgery is scheduled for May 15 with the follow-up visit on May 25th and we can hopefully be on our way as scheduled on June 5th.

I’m ready for some disc golf!

Friday we moved to a commercial campground, The Vista at the Lake.

This is part of an old resort along the upper part of Lake Hamilton.

It still has a small boat launch and some rather cramped sites on a little inlet off the lake.

It’s an odd mix, with some sites that used to be for permanent residents,

and a row of single wide trailers. There are also some apartments and some cabins.

Down this dirt driveway…

is this old building which Sean says used to be quite a popular restaurant.

We chose a site on the top of a hill.

It’s a ways down to the lake on one side (past these huge pipes that will be part of a new water main for Hot Springs).

Down the other direction are the trailers and some long term residents,

and the pool, which is supposed to open in May.

With only one other neighbor here

we have plenty of privacy.

The people who own this place now seem nice. I think it may take them a while to get the place anywhere near what it used to be but it gives us a nice place to hang out with plenty of places to walk Matey. Bud has his knee replacement surgery tomorrow, so we’re stuck here until the first part of June. It’s nice enough, the price was reasonable and it’s just 20 minutes from Jamie. It’ll do.