Storm Ready

It’s been an interesting week – seems like we’ve been back from vacation a long time! We headed back to work on Wednesday, so that made for what seemed like a quick work week. Like everyone else, we’ve been watching the updates on Sandy. Although it doesn’t look like we’re going to get the main thrust of the storm, it still looks like it could be an interesting few days. It’s cloudy right now, but the rain is supposed to start here tomorrow morning.

Yesterday we were excited to find out that we were going to have a showing today. So we picked up all of our stuff, did our pre-showing house cleaning and moved everything out to the fiver this morning.

 

Then we headed off to my sister’s for our family Thanksgiving get-together. A few years ago, we started having our dinner earlier in the season. Living up here in upstate NY, it’s always a crap shoot whether the weather is going to cooperate for several hours of traveling. More often than not, an early snow storm would put the dampers on our day, when someone would have to stay home due to the forecast. Plus it makes the holiday season a little more spread out, which is nice. (It will also work out well for us when Harry and I are traveling – hopefully we can plan our dinners before it is time for us to head south.)

 

It’s always great to get together. Even though we all live in NY, we usually only manage to get together once a year. The rest of the year we keep up through facebook and emails.

 

The kitchen always turns into the congregating place. My sister tried to get us into the living room, and it worked for awhile but gradually we all made our way back into the kitchen.

 

After we arrived home, we started making our preparations for the storm, just in case we should lose power. Harry is putting some water in the fresh water tank,

 

 

and we pulled the slides in, since wind appears to be one of the biggest threats that we are facing.

 

 

 

Later we will fill the bathtubs with water, so we can flush the toilets if we lose power. We have plenty of food and drinking water. We should be all set.

 

 

We are thinking about all of our friends and family who are more directly in Sandy’s path! Be safe everyone!!

Rally Days Baby!

It’s been a whirlwind few days, and a great weekend!

We had an absolutely wonderful weekend. Our friends Beth, Greg, Betty and Don arrived on Friday and we headed out to find a nice place for lunch.

 

There were about 27 rigs at the Heartland rally. The timetable was pretty flexible, so we just got together on our own and explored the area. On Saturday we went to Wildwood, which turned out to be pretty deserted.

 

 

But we did find a great place to have lunch, and they had some fall drink specials. I had a green apple daiquiri, which was SO good!

 

 

On Sunday many of the rigs headed out, but our friends were sticking around until Monday. So we headed back down to Cape May and enjoyed walking around the beach. I had one more time to get my toes in the water while the others looked for treasures in the sand.

 

On the way back to our truck, we happened upon a Halloween parade.

 

 

 

 

Cape May takes celebrating Halloween seriously!

 

 

 

 

 

 

That evening we enjoyed sitting around a campfire and we all pooled our leftover food to come up with a delicious dinner of bbq’d hamburgers, chips, salad…lots of good stuff!

On Monday morning we pulled out bright and early, heading for NY. It was our first time traveling in a group, and we really enjoyed it. There’s something really nice about looking ahead and seeing people traveling along with you. Unfortunately, the other rigs were heading to Western NY, and so all too soon it was time for our paths to separate. I am already looking forward to seeing everyone again next camping season.

This morning we took the rig over to Deiderich’s RV again. We are getting too used to the roads to that place! (Although we are glad to have them so close by). They took one look at the back of the refrigerator, and said, you definitely need a new cooling unit. They called Dometic while we were there, and we are all set. A new one is being shipped out and sometime next week we will be bringing her back over to have that replaced. We are just glad it is being taken care of now while we are still in the house.

And, one more update – we had our open house on Sunday, and it seemed to be a success. There were four interested parties checking out the house – and a lot of positive feedback. Our realtor had the pellet stove running, and the house was toasty warm. We haven’t heard anything more yet, but we are still keeping the hope! We know the house will sell, when the time is right, so we are staying the course.

Tomorrow we both head back to work. ho hum.

But it sure was a great trip!

A Low Key Day

Yesterday was a more low key day.

We did a load of laundry, relaxed, took a walk around the campground. It was so great to be walking around in shorts in late October.

The day started out sunny, but the clouds started coming in during the afternoon. By the time we headed down to the village, there was definitely a change in the air.

 

 

There seemed to be a few more people around, coming in for the weekend maybe.

 

 

We stopped for a frozen custard. That has been one of my favorite finds of the week.

 

 

We did get bummer news last night. The showing was cancelled for tomorrow, the reason given was that the buyer had to go out of town. We are hoping that it will be rescheduled. And we have the open house on Sunday, so at least something is happening this weekend. <sigh> We felt discouraged last night though.

 

Overnight it rained, pretty hard at times, and it’s cloudy, but still warm out – in the 70s today. And, we actually slept in until 8 am today!! I wish it didn’t take all of vacation for us to get to that point.

 

 

So far today has been another low key day. In a little while, people should start coming in for the rally, so we will be out and about chatting, I’m sure.

A Great Day in Cape May

Yesterday was another wonderful day. It also was my birthday, and what a great place to spend it.

We did have a little unexpected challenge first thing in the morning. For the past week and a half or so, we’ve been having some issues with our fridge cooling while on electric. We’ve played around with settings, tried switching it back and forth, and on Tuesday we came to the conclusion that it just was not working on electric. Harry went out and took a look behind the vent cover on the outside of the rig. He observed some kind of yellow powdery discharge that was all over inside the compartment. So yesterday he called the place where we’ve had all our previous service done, and as soon as he described what he was seeing, they said right away, sounds like the cooling unit has failed. They were not sure why it was still working on propane, but strongly recommended that we turn it off, as they have heard of fires starting when the unit is run after that yellow powder appears. So….time for bags of ice. Luckily, we do have a good sized cooler, so we were able to fit all of our perishables into it. We had to throw out a little ice cream. And we’ll be “roughing it” for the rest of the week. We have an appointment to bring the rig over next Tuesday, and then they will order the part. In a couple weeks we should be good as new. And, the best part is, we’re still under warranty until next June (and have an extended warranty after that).

So that took up the beginning of our morning and then after that, it was time to get about the business of enjoying my birthday.

Right across the road from the campground is a bike path, so we decided to check it out. It’s a nice path, but I would like it to be a little longer. We went all the way in one direction and then came back and went all the way to the other end. Altogether, its maybe three miles long. Ten or twenty would be even better.

It was a nice little ride though, and afterwards it was time to find a place for my birthday lunch. We went to a place called the Mad Batter.

 

 

We had a great table right on the porch looking out at the sidewalk. The nice thing about being here in the offseason is that it’s easy to get a table anywhere. I had a delicious drink called “Shipwreck Punch”. Yum.

 

 

After lunch, we walked around some more, and back to the beach. I love walking in the sand where the waves are coming in.

 

 

We had one more stop to make – the Cape May lighthouse.

There’s also a bird sanctuary there, which is very nice and peaceful.

 

 

 

We had a great day, just walking around and enjoying nature. I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday.

 

Oh, and last evening I got a nice birthday present! A text from the agency letting us know that we have a showing scheduled for Saturday! So that was a great way to end the day.

Looking forward to more of the same today…

Exploring West Cape May

 

Yesterday was a picture perfect day.

There is nothing better than walking barefoot on the beach.

 

 

I found the village to be very picturesque. Victorian homes everywhere we looked…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry and I spent the afternoon exploring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I walked where the waves were coming in – that water is cold!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found Harry’s restaurant…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today the sun is shining and it’s supposed to be warmer. Another beautiful picture perfect day looks to be in store.

Settled in Cape May

We left our house on Sunday for a short jaunt to Black Bear Campground in Florida, NY. We had not yet visited this campground, but its location about 2 hours south of the capital region made it a strong candidate for one of our stopping points on our trips to and from upstate NY. Well….let’s just say that it’s probably not going to be our first choice if we have options.

Good points first…they have some nice pull through sites.

They are working to angle them, and we can see signs of improvement all through the campground. It’s obvious that the owners are putting some work into the place.

But unfortunately, there are a couple BIG negatives, as far as we’re concerned. The campground is about 15 miles off the highway, and for the most part, the roads are great. But once we got to the town of Florida, there was a right hand turn at a light that was very tight. We were lucky that there weren’t any cars parked in the spaces on the street. I don’t know that we could have made that turn if there had been. The second negative is actually in the campground. After check-in, the route to the sites takes all rigs up a HUGE, and I do mean HUGE, hill – about a half mile, all climbing, and starting from a standstill. We made it, but it’s not something we would choose to do if we had another option. 

 

Once we were settled, we did have a nice overnight stop. We didn’t take out very much, since we were just leaving in the morning. We had a relaxing afternoon, and watched some football.

 

Yesterday morning, we left around 10 am for Cape May, NJ. The forecast was for rain and storms in the afternoon so we were hoping to arrive and get set up before the rain started.

 

We were lucky! All hooked up, settled in, and ready to relax for the rest of the week before the first drops fell. And it poured! No real storms though, so I was happy about that.

 

We have a great pull through site (our favorite kind so far) AND our satellite works, so we have Directv. It was a little funky yesterday, and I was hoping it was because of the storm clouds. Checked it this morning, and yes! we have our satellite tv. Ahhh, I am a happy camper. Oh, that’s the other thing about this campground, they don’t have free wifi. Well, one hour a day free…but that wouldn’t work for us. The service they have charges $4.95 for a day and $14.95 for a week. We had saved $25 when we checked in because they were having a “3 night, get one night free special” so we almost broke even after we paid for the internet for both our computers. On the positive side, the internet seems to be pretty good.

It’s a bit breezy out today (AKA windy), so won’t be doing any bike rides, but we are definitely going for a “walkabout”. I am looking forward to checking out the area.