Almost 3000 miles later we have arrived at my sister Diane’s home in Maine. This is the same place we stayed two years ago and we have really been looking forward to it. Lots of good sea food – lobsters, clams, and haddock – and lots of visiting, resting and relaxing. The trip was pretty easy – lots of ups and downs but nothing compared to the Appalacian Mountains in West Virginia and Maryland from last week – and the coach ran great, even got much better mileage than usual for some reason (slower?). We will be here for about a week before heading down to my family visit and high school reunion in Massachusetts. I will be taking some photos and posting between now and then so stay tuned.

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We left Lewisburg and headed straight north to the Elmira – Binghamton, NY area and then headed northeast through Albany and into Vermont. We made it to the Bennington, Vermont area. In spite of both being from the Northeast originally, those were areas we had never been to and they were beautiful. I am sure that the really nice weather had a lot to do with our perception but if you folks from the West have never been to the Northeast you have to see the scenery we saw today – and it keeps on getting better. We are spending the night in Woodford State Park in Woodford, Vermont – quiet and peaceful but uneven and no hookups. We are lucky to have cell phones and internet.

Tomorrow we plan to make it to my sister’s house in Friendship, Maine -about 50 miles north of Portland on the water. This will be real R&R for us.

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On Friday we returned to Lewisburg from Annapolis, had our last (late) lunch at “The Fence” – Carol’s favorite drive-in restaurant – with her brother “Buzz” and his wife Mary. A light dinner later and we crashed – need to rest up for a last visit with the grandkids.

On Saturday we went with Carol’s son Rick to the Sunbury River Fest and watched the Cardboard Regatta. Teams made boats from cardboard – seems it can have tape and be painted but other than that I don’t know the rules – and raced around a couple of pylons in the Susquehanna River. We ate some great hot sausage sandwiches (Carol had a hot dog) and fresh-cut french fries. There was a really nice car show at the River Fest too – only 3 pics but lots of cars. Later that evening we joined Carol’s daughter Laurie and her kids at the Winfield Fireman’s Carnival – a 45-year tradition. More hot sausage sandwiches and other bad food.

We said bye to the kids for another year – they are some great kids. We love them.

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Last time we were here – 2 years ago – visiting Barb we toured Annapolis. This time we decided that Baltimore’s Inner Harbor would be a good destination. The Inner Harbor area is actually an urban redevelopment area that her former husband Larry had a role in as an engineer for the local power company. There is an aquarium, lots of office space, and lots and lots of restaurants. Based on the number of people there I would say it is a huge success. The weather was wonderful. Tomorrow we will head back to Lewisburg where the GMC is parked to see the grandchildren one more day and attend the Winfield Fireman’s Carnival. Sunday we will head out to Maine to visit my sister and her husband.

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After lots of time with the grandkids we need a little rest so we came down to Annapolis, MD to visit Barb – a long-time friend of Carol’s – at her home on the water on the Chesapeake Bay (actually on the Magothy River just off the Chesapeake). Barb took us out for a light dinner at her club and we plan to just relax and watch the wild life – lots of ospreys and herons around here – for a couple of days before returning to Lewisburg for a final visit day for this trip.

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In Lewisburg, PA, Halfway Dam State Park – now called the R.B. Winter State Park – has always been the place to go to cool off in the summer. Halfway Lake is a spring-fed lake so the water is a constant 50 degrees F. (10 C) and is too cold for everyone except children of course. We went to Subway and bought a picnic lunch and headed for the lake as soon as Hunter was through with football practice at about 12:30. The lake is less than 20 miles west of Lewisburg so we had our picnic when we arrived.

As soon as we finished eating the kids headed for the water. Part way through the day we took the kids (they took us) for a walk to the dam at the other side of the lake where they played in the spillway and tried out the 4-person swing. At the end of the day the kids decided to build a bridge across one of the incoming spring fed streams.

When we returned to Lewisburg Harrison had football practice which we watched for a little while – practice is not a spectator sport.

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We are visiting Lewisburg because Carol’s family is here or in the local area. She was born here and graduated from high school here but spent some of the intervening years in Las Cruces, NM. Carol’s son Rick and his wife Kelly live in Lewisburg and have a large and very successful used car business in Mifflinburg – about 10 miles away. First thing Sunday morning he took us for a ride in his plane and then we had lunch with Carol’s uncle, and, then dinner in the evening with Rick’s son Landen and his girlfriend at Rick and Kelly’s house.

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Our first real destination on this trip was Pennsylvania for family visits. First, in the Harrisburg area, south of Lewisburg, we visited Carol’s cousin Janet and her husband George and went our for a late lunch at Duke’s which is just over the Susquehanna River from the state capitol. We spent the night in our preferred guest room – the GMC – in the street in front of their house. The next day we arrived in Lewisburg and got right into Carol’s daughter Laurie’s four great kids; Hunter (13), Kendall (11), Harrison (9), and Gracie (7). We went swimming at the local pool and saw lots of daring diving and got cooled off with a little swimming.  I don’t have time to do too much writing about what is going on but, with family – especially grandkids, pictures are all that is required I think.

On our first day in Lewisburg it was hot and humid – I’ve seen worse days here though – and Carol’s daughter Laurie and the kids were at the pool so I put on my bathing suit and we headed there. We had a blast with the kids both in and out of the pool. They really are great kids – very respectful of us and each other. I shot a lot of movies of them diving and playing and below is a sample of each of the kids.

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  We drove out of that state park near Charleston, WV the short way and it only took about a half hour. That state park was very remote but the night was very dark and quiet. The road out was about 5 miles long, very twisty, very narrow, and mostly gravel. We drove the rest of the way across West Virginia – very pretty country by the way – and into Maryland. The drive was in the Appalachian Mountains and even though they don’t really compare to the mountains in the West the roads have a lot of ups and downs. There is one section where a sign warns about 13 miles of 5% downhill and there was lots of corresponding climbing to get there. We drove over Donner Pass in California in May and I would compare some of the hills here to that but fortunately it was nowhere near as hot here as it was there.

I am, of course, paranoid about how the engine sounds and behaves but for the most part it was perfect. The only bad behavior was just as we stopped for the day. We were driving in Maryland and talking about going to a KOA resort – read “expensive ” – about an hour more down the road when we saw a sign for a state park with camping that was not on our map (Streets&Trips). We pulled off and idled while Carol looked it up and called for prices etc. We decided to go for it and when I started driving again I had a little stumbling happen but it went away pretty quickly. I think I must have gotten an extra dose of crapahol at the last fillup just prior to the stop. We’ll see tomorrow.

We went to the state park – Rock Gap State Park – there were only two spots left with electricity – need the A/C for a while at least – but they didn’t have a laundry and we needed one. The guy gave us a card for a campground about 2 miles farther down the road so we called them. They had decent rates, lots of space and a laundry. So we are at Hidden Springs Campground. They list their location as Flintstone, Maryland but they are actually in Pennsylvania – hence the title of this entry.

We did our laundry – planned and unplanned. The unplanned laundry was from our rear air conditioner leaking on the bed. It is so humid here that the A/C unit produces a lot of water. The boneheads in Tucson that installed our A/C unit about 4 years ago moved the old Duo-Therm from front position to the back and didn’t seal it right. It leaked once during our 2010 trip in Memphis with high humidity but this is the second time that it has happened on this trip. I soaked a spot on the bed so we had to dry the mattress pad, sheets and blankets.

Dinner was a repeat of a previous night – pasta that I made myself and fresh veggies. The photo does not do it justice – it was delicious.

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We made it to West Virgina and we are wondering about camping in Kentucky and West Virginia. Last night we stayed at the Elizabethtown Country Crossroads and had a less than satisfying accommodations. The sites were very haphazardly laid out in what used to be a nut orchard I think. The surface of the roadways and the sites was made from large pieces of crushed rock and I doubt that there were more than 3 or 4 level sites. We were faced so steeply downhill that even lowering the rear end all the way was not enough to get level.

One thing that made that worse was that it rained very heavily for a good half hour right after we got there and, being faced downhill (which is very unusual), we found several new leaks. We used a bunch of towels and paper towels but no huge problem. A couple of the leaks were from windows but most seemed to come from the roof somewhere. I already knew about a couple of them but they are not usually a problem in Arizona and California so I have ignored them up until now.

The reason we picked that place to stop was that there were not a lot of choices in the area – no others? We don’t plan ahead – we just don’t like the stress of being on a schedule. The stress of finding a place on the fly is far less because we, if we have to, can spend the night in a parking lot – we are self-contained. We like to see how the day is going and then set a target destination and then search for camping.

Traveling through eastern Kentucky was very pretty. The hills and fields were all green and there were lots of white board fences but we didn’t see many horses.

We stopped at the West Virginia welcome center about 10 miles into the state to verify what Carol had already figured out using Streets & Trips and the internet: there were only 3 campgrounds in that part of the state. West Virginia has almost no camping in the first 2 hours after entering the state from Kentucky.The first two were private; a KOA, and Jim’s Campground and both of them were very pricy – $45-$50 per night and all we wanted was electricity in case we needed A/C (cooling off here a little). When we saw those prices we decided to try the state park that was the third alternative so we headed for that.

The directions to the Kanawha State Forest Campground said that they did not recommend RVs longer than 26 feet. Carol called them and they said “don’t worry, bigger ones than that come here all the time” so we decided to go for it because we love state parks.

You cannot believe the road that we took in here – by far the hairiest drive ever in the GMC including US-1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) down the Big Sur coast from Carmel to Cambria – it makes that seem like nothing. It would be real fun in my (long-ago-sold) Porsche but not in a “12,000 pound antique hotrod with plumbing”. It took a long time to get here and it will take a long time to get out – at least the way out will be easier now that we know where this is.

The campsites come in ‘standard’ and ‘primitive’ for $26 and $20 respectively. The standard site has water and electricity. The water has super-high pressure but tastes good and the electricity looks like a 20amp circuit but has no specs and it is not obvious where the breaker is located. Fortunately, we won’t need A/C tonight – so why didn’t we try a WalMart you might ask. I don’t know would be my answer – we should have considered it but we didn’t. Topping it all off, once we got here we found that we had no cell service – both AT&T and Verizon do not get in here at all. So I am writing this tonight and will upload sometime tomorrow (Tuesday).

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