Category Archives: New York

20221000 – Miscellaneous Photos Taken by Linda

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Special Blog Post

At the end of September 2022, I was going through our photos (Sony SLT and two smartphones) to make sure they were backed up to our Western Digital Passport portable disc drive, as well as backing up the Word documents and processed photos for each blog post.  I try to keep up with this task on a daily basis, but sometimes I get behind.  In backing up the photos from Linda’s phone I came across some that I really liked but had not used in a blog post at the time they were taken.  We take a lot of photos, and only a small percentage of them end up in the blog.  Here are six previously unseen photos, all taken by Linda on her Google Pixel 6 smartphone.

Our Boondockers Welcome host, Rob (The Lake House) baked a loaf of bread (walnut & date) and some cookies for us.  He knew from our Facebook interactions that we were both vegan, so the break and cookies were too.

When we were trying to set up our travel trailer in site #24 at Hadley’s Point Campground in Bar-Harbor, Maine, a fellow Airstream  owner stopped and gave Bruce a small, pink flamingo.  Linda put it on the end of the cabinet by the door, just above our keys.

While we were camped in the Bar Harbor, Maine area we played a round of miniature golf at Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf.  This is Bruce lining up a shot.

While driving through Gorham, New Hampshire on US-2, we spotted this house.  We were camped in the area for four nights, so the next time we went past it headed east, Linda got this photo.  As the saying goes “our kids and (some of) our money went to U of M.”  (It was money well spent.)  It’s not our Alma Mater, but it was still neat to see this so prominently displayed so far from the center of the(ir) collegiate universe.

We had read reviews about the “camp store” at Brookwood RV Resort in Ticonderoga, New York.  Since we were camped at this RV park for two nights, we checked it out.  It was more like a general store than a camp store.  Linda made me try on the moose hat for this photo, but wouldn’t let me buy it.

I did a whole post on our visit to the Star Trek Experience – Original Series attraction in Ticonderoga, New York but did not include a photo of this partial mock-up of the NCC-1701/7 Shuttle.

 

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20220930 – Finger Lakes Wine Trails and Watkins Glen State Park, New York

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FRIDAY 30 September

(The wine trail photos were shot on a Google Pixel 6.  The Watkins Glen SP photos were shot on a SONY SLT a99v.  The sunset photos were shot on a Google Pixel 6 Pro.  All photos in this post shot by Bruce.)

I was still working on this post on Sunday evening, so some of the details had already faded.  As best I recall, our day started much like most other days, except possibly for the Just Egg scramble with potatoes that Linda made for breakfast.  Beyond that, our day was mostly about wine and related beverages, with a brief pause in the middle to visit Watkins Glen State Park.

We originally intended to venture as far as Ithaca and dine at the Moosewood Restaurant, but that didn’t happen for several reasons.  First, and foremost, was that they were only open for lunch and dinner but not in-between, when we would have been there.  Secondarily, it is primarily a vegetarian restaurant (not vegan) and it was a long drive to get there and back.  Ithaca is a lovely town, of course, and home to Cornell University, so we would have liked to visit there again, but it was far enough out of our way that we needed a compelling reason to go.  Linda looked online and found another vegan place, but it was carry-out only, and you had to order online.  Eh, no.  We decided we would just taste wine, and buy some if we liked what was on offer.

The rest of this post is mostly photos with captions.

The Earle Estates Meadery on the west arm of the Seneca Lake Wine Trail.  It was not crowded while we were there, and we had a wonderful interaction with the young man who waited on us.  We found several offerings here that were to our taste and bought them.

The Fruit Farm Winery had the broadest offering of “fruit” (100% non-grape) wines.  We would a few things that we liked and bought them.  It was the only winery / tasting room we visited where we felt the staff needed some training in how to deal with people looking to try, and possibly buy, expensive fermented fruit juice.

There are dozens of wineries just around Seneca Lake, and over 100 wineries / tasting rooms, as well as cideries and distilleries, in the Finger Lakes region.  But many (most) of them do not belong to the Wine Trail associations (one for each lake), so we did not have much information about most of them.  The meadery and winery mentioned in the two photos above were the only ones where we planned to stop, so from there we just enjoyed the drive down to the Village of Watkins Glen to visit the eponymously named State Park.

The entrance sign for Watkins Glen State Park in Watkins Glen at the southern tip of Seneca Lake in New York.  Admission was free and we were able to find free parking on the street just across from the sign.  There was also reasonably priced and convenient Park parking nearby.

Linda on the path into Watkins Glen State Park across from the Visitor Center and Gift Shop buildings.

This model of the park greeted us on entry.  From the website:  https://parks.ny.gov/parks/142/details.aspx  “Watkins Glen State Park is the most famous of the Finger Lakes State Parks, with a reputation for leaving visitors spellbound. Within two miles, the glen’s stream descends 400 feet past 200-foot cliffs, generating 19 waterfalls along its course. The gorge path winds over and under waterfalls and through the spray of Cavern Cascade. Rim trails overlook the gorge.”

Heading into the gorge, we first encountered this wonderful area, but a much less “refined” experience is just around the corner (or across the bridge or up on the bluff).

What appeared initially as the end of small canyon was in fact of outlet end of the two miles of gorge described in the caption about the model above.  A very sturdy bridge, accessed by stairs in a tunnel, eventually took us across to the Gorge Trail on the other side.

Linda’s white shirt is just visible in the lower left corner of this photo.  She is about to head into the tunnel that goes up and to the left to the bridge.

Our first real look at the Gorge from the Gorge Trail on the other side of the bridge.  This is as far as we went.  The full trail was a mile long, wet, and had over 800 steps.  We had not budgeted the time, nor brought the appropriate clothing, for such a hike, but were glad to see what we saw.We left Watkin’s Glen State Park and continued up the Seneca Lake Wine Trail on the east side of Seneca Lake.  We only stopped at one winery but enjoyed the drive.  “Wine country” has it own special look, with acres and acres of vineyards (and orchards) and a wonderful variety of winey tasting rooms.

We returned to Seneca Falls briefly so Linda could pick up a few things at the Women’s Rights NHP gift shop.  We were headed back to the KOA and decided to vector off to one last winery on the east leg of the Keuka Lake Wine Trail.

We stopped at the J. R. Dill winery on our way north along the east side of Seneca Lake after visiting Watkins Glen SP.  The information we had indicated that they made mostly dry red wines, including Cabernet Franc wines and some others grapes we were not familiar with.  I am not a fan of red wines, in general, but Linda likes them, and we are always on the lookout for ones that we can both enjoy.  By this time, we needed something to eat.  They had soft pretzels on the menu, so we each had one.  We did buy a few things from here.

The man at Earle Estates Meadery gave us a card for a free tasting at the Rooster Tail Winery on the east side of Keuka Lake.  He also mentioned that they made a port, so we made that our last wine trail stop for the day and, as it turned out, for our visit to the Finger Lakes region of New York State.  They also had several things that we like, and bought.

We had a nice drive back to the KOA, where Linda started preparing dinner and I reorganized the back seat of the F-150 to properly store/transport all of the wine/mead we had collected throughout our grand tour.  We were finishing dinner when an otherwise ordinary sky exploded with color.  I grabbed my phone to see what I could capture.

This is the view looking west from the empty site just across the road from our site at the Canandaigua-Rochester KOA Holiday.

The view looking south at our patio site (#18) with a pink-purple glow in the sky.

The sunset eventually went orange red.  I zoomed in on a portion of it to try and capture the color.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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20220929 – The Women’s Rights National Historic Park (NPS), Seneca Falls, New York

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THURSDAY 28 September

(There are 11 photos in this post, all related to the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, New York.  They are distributed throughout the text, with captions.  I have used the mnemonic ‘WRNHP’ in place of the full name of the park.  All of the photos were taken with a Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone.)

The National Park Service sign at the entrance to the WRNHP Visitors Center in downtown Seneca Falls, New York.

Our plan for today was to visit The Women’s Rights National Historical Park (WRNHP) in Seneca Falls, New York, and then visit a few wineries on the west side of Seneca Lake.  The morning was cool and cloudy, and Seneca Falls is near the north end of Cayuga Lake just a bit east of the north end of  Seneca Lake, so we figured we would start there and do the wineries in the afternoon, when the sun was supposed to make an appearance.  We ended up spending most of the day at the WRNHP.  The only winery we made it to was Belhurst Castle & Winery on the west side of Seneca Lake, just south of Geneva, New York., but we did not taste or by anything.

Linda on one of the benches outside the WRNHP Visitor Center.

We left around 11 AM and had a leisurely drive through the countryside, taking Canandaigaua Farmington Line Road east to County-28 north to Shortsville Road / County-13 and heading east.  We passed through Shortsville and Clifton Springs and then joined NY-96 east.  Just after joining NY-96, we stopped at the Byrne Dairy & Deli to fuel the truck, and then continued on through Phelps before getting to Waterloo, where we turned east on US-20 towards Seneca Falls.

 

All of these towns have a history, of course, and New York has a lot of these towns.  Clifton Springs, for instance, was once one of the many ‘health retreats’ that dotted the state.  Passing through downtown was like driving through a canyon whose walls were made of impressive hotels, now mostly re-purposed, but still very much in use and in decent condition.

The first (street level) floor of the WRNHP consisted of an information station, gift shop, theater and this installation of (approximately) life-sized bronze statues called The First Wave.  Some of the figures are likenesses of the key people who organized and/or were known to have attended the first Women’s Rights convention.  Other figures represent the general public, many of whom also attended the convention or were, symbolically and literally, ultimately affected by what started at this gathering.

In the 1840’s, the six nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy spanned across northern and western New York, including Seneca Falls.  Theirs’ was a matriarchal society in which women enjoyed all of the rights that were denied to American women at the time.  It is not recorded whether any members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy attended the 1st Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, but the organizers of the convention were acquainted with their culture and echoed those rights in their own resolutions (demands).

 

 

The WRNHP (National Park Service) consisted of four distinct properties in the Seneca Falls / Waterloo area.  The main site consisted of the Wesleyan Methodist Church and Chapel, with the Visitor Center building in-between, located on Fall St. (US-20) at Mynderse St., in the heart of the quaint downtown district along the north side of the Seneca River (Cayuga-Seneca Canal).  (The falls for which Seneca Falls disappeared underwater as a result of the canal construction from 1905 to 1918).  We found free street parking close to the Visitor Center.  The other three sites were the Elizabeth Cady (& Henry) Stanton Home, on the other side of the canal, and the Thomas (& Mary Ann) M’Clintock House and Richard (& Jane) Hunt House, both in Waterloo.

 

 

Linda at the entrance to the Wesleyan Chapel.  The WRNHP Visitor Center sits between the Church and the Chapel, which sits at the southwest corner of Fall St. and Mynderse St.  Only a portion of the two side walls and much of the roof structure is original and the Church is boarded up as it needs serious restoration.  The first Women’s Rights convention actually stated outside the Chapel at that street corner as the Chapel door was locked and no one had a key.  A young boy was enlisted to climb in through a window and unlock the doors from the inside.

 

The WRNHP was authorized in 1980 to preserve the key historical sites associated with one of the most significant events in American History, the beginning of the organized movement for women’s suffrage, which ultimately became the movement for universal suffrage.  The first Women’s Rights Convention was held in the Wesleyan Chapel on July 19-20, 1848, with some 300 people in attendance over the two days.  Notable attendees included Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This sign greets visitors as they enter the Wesleyan Chapel.

But the story begins well before that, of course, and is the reason that the Hunt and M’Clintock properties are part of the NHP.  On July 9, 1848 Jane Hunt hosted a social gathering at her home in Waterloo, just down the road from Seneca Falls,  in honor of a visit from Lucretia Mott, who had traveled to the area from Philadelphia to visit her sister in Rochester, New Yok.  In 1833 Mott, along with Mary Ann M’Clintock and nearly 30 other female abolitionists, organized the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.  By 1848, Mott was a nationally known figure, but she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had already crossed paths at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England; a significant event for both of them.  Thus, the abolitionist and suffrage threads that run though American history were intertwined early on, and the Visitor Center tells the story of the struggle for women’s rights in this larger context of the struggle for human rights for all people.

The inside of the Wesleyan Chapel.  The balconies along the sides were removed long, long ago, but the pockets for the supporting timbers were still visible in the original sections of the side walls.  In place of the balconies, the NPS hung murals depicting convention attendees.  The mural across the back wall depicts five of the key figures in the organization and operation of the convention.  The pews would have been more closely spaced and wider.  (The cost to fully restore the building to the way it existed in 1848 would be prohibitive.)

 

The central staircase in the house where Elizabeth Cady Stanton resided with her family and carried on much of the work that followed the first Women’s Rights Convention.  The house was modified over the years after the Stanton family lived there.  It has not been restored or “furnished” for display, and there are no plans to do so, so the interior was not particularly interesting, photographically.  But how it looked was not important; what happened here was.

 

Over the course of two days, over 300 people attended and participated in the convention, so this building was packed with people.  The Declaration of Sentiments, patterned after the Declaration of Independence, was read, amended, and adopted.  Eleven resolutions were then introduced, discussed, and voted on.  All of them were adopted, with only one having less than 100% support.

Besides the Wesleyan Chapel (and Church), the NHP includes three residential properties.  The Elizabeth Cady Stanton House is also in Seneca Falls, while the homes of  Mary Ann M’Clintock and Jane Hunt are in nearby Waterloo.  (Neither of these houses were open to the public during our visit.)  It was through M’Clintock that Lucretia Mott came to be involved in the convention.  At a social gathering (tea) at the Hunt home on July 9, 1848 that the idea of a convention was discussed and the decision made to organize it.  The dates, July 19 and 20, 1848 were selected because the Wesleyan Chapel was available, and so was Lucretia Mott.

A view of the exterior of the Elizbeth Cady Stanton house with the NPS sign indicating is part of a National Historical Park.  The house sits on four acres on the other side of the canal from downtown Seneca Falls.

 

The whole story of the fight for women’s suffrage in the U.S. has been documented and written about extensively, and the WRNHP Visitor Center gift shop had an excellent selection of books on the subject.  I will simply end with these facts, followed by a few more photographs:  The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by Congress on June 5, 1919 and finally ratified by enough States on August 18, 1920.  Michigan was the second State to ratify the amendment.

 

 

 

Most of the artifacts and information displays were located on the 2nd floor of the WRNHP Visitor Center.  It was all very well done, as expected, but light levels were low and there was no way to get an overview photo.  Instead, I selected this on, showing a connection to Ypsilanti, Michigan to the events that subsequently unfolded as a result of the convention, and the decades of hard work that followed.

 

Some of the artifacts in the WRNHP Visitor Center were works of art and craft related to theme of the NHP, which goes beyond the convention and the struggle to secure the vote for women.  That struggle was ultimately about universal suffrage, and was wrapped up in the abolition of slavery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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20220928 – A visit to the Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York and lunch at the Red Fern nearby

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WEDNESDAY 28 September

(All photos taken with a Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone.)

I was in bed before midnight last night, unusual for me, so I was up this morning just after 7 AM.  Linda did not go to bed until 11 PM and got up around 7:30.  We had our usual two cups of coffee, but Linda made pancakes for breakfast, with a side of fresh bananas, blueberries, and strawberries.  A special treat, and a nice way to start the day.

The weather forecast for today was for cool, overcast conditions, with small possibility of rain, but was much nicer for the following three days.  We thought we would visit some of the wineries on Canandaigua Lake as we are camped just north of it, so we spent some time researching the six establishments on the Canandaigua Lake Wine Trail.

The conservatory as seen from the dining room.  The console for the pipe organ is at the far end and some of the pipes are installed in the 1st and 2nd floor walls beyond that.  Most of the house was dimly lit, but the conservatory was full of light even on this overcast day.  Like many wealthy individuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, George Eastman liked to hunt and had two hunting lodges.  George Eastman House / Museum, Rochester, New York.

One of them was not open today, one was basically a wine store in Canandaigua, one had what appeared to be fruit juice infused wines that could be used to make spritzers, and one was a “boutique” winery that required reservations, and all of them appeared to be tasting rooms, not the actual wineries.  So that was:  no go, no, no way, and not interested.  Most of them indicated what grapes were used to make each wine but some didn’t, an absolute non-starter for us, and most of them were based on grapes that fairly commonly used in the products we can buy at good wine stores at home.

It didn’t seem worth the time and fuel to drive down just for the other two wineries, so we scraped the wine trail idea for today and decided instead to visit the Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, just a 30-minute drive northwest of our campground.  I took up photography as a serious hobby when I was 16, so I’ve been trying to be a photographer for some 54 years now and the Eastman Museum seemed like a good place to spend an otherwise dreary day.  We left the KOA around 11:30 AM and were at the museum by noon.

Part of the stair case between the 1st and 2nd floors of the George Eastman House.  This is the view from the landing.  The stairs to the 3rd floor are visible, but were closed to public access.

The Eastman Museum is located on the grounds of George Eastman’s Rochester, New York 10-acre estate on East Avenue.  East Avenue was obviously the place where the wealthy of late 19th-century Rochester built their magnificent homes and mansions.  A trip to that area just to look at the architecture would have been worth the time, but we were they to visit the museum.

The museum complex included his magnificent home and gardens which are open to tour with paid admission.  Indeed, the museum (galleries, archives, offices, and labs), theater, gift shop, café, and lobby are joined to the house to form a single building.  The collection, small pieces of which are periodically rotated into the publicly accessible galleries, contains over 400,000 photographs and 28,000 motion pictures, including the original negatives for Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.  The museum also has an extensive collection of photographic technology going back to the earliest days of photography in the 19th century.  It’s an excellent museum, and we spent about 2-1/2 hours going through the house and all of the galleries.

The East Garden at the George Eastman House as seen from his mother Maria’s bedroom window.  Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York.

When we arrived at the Canandaigua-Rochester KOA yesterday, Linda research vegan dining options and discovered that Veg News had rated Rochester, New York “the best small city in America for vegans.”  That did not automatically translate into lots of vegan dining options, but she did locate the Red Fern, just 0.4 miles from the museum, so we went there for lunch.

The Red Fern was a small place in a half-basement (the upper half of the dinning room was above grade level), in a nice neighborhood, with a nice selection of items on the menu.  Linda had the ABLT (Avocado Bacon Lettuce Tomato) sandwich with a salad on the side, and I had the Buffalo Blue Cheese Focaccia sandwich, also with a salad on the side.  My sandwich was huge, so I only ate half of it and got a to-go box for the other half.  Linda had a chocolate brownie for dessert, and I had a crumb-top apple cider jam bar thingy.  The brownie was huge, so she only ate half of it and got a to-go box for the rest.  Everything was very tasty and reasonably priced (in our opinion).

The ‘modern’ 4-manual organ console.  This console replaced the original 30-manual console after the organ was enlarged.  It was, and probably still is, the largest pipe organ installed in a residence in the U.S.  George Eastman House / Museum, Rochester, New York.

From the Red Fern we set our navigation system for the Wegman’s supermarket in Canandaigua.  It took about 45 minutes to get there, including long slow rolls through the town of Victor and then Canandaigua itself.

This was our first ever visit to a Wegman’s and all I can say is “Wow!”  The store was very large and the variety of items they stocked, including some we had never seen before, was almost overwhelming.  Their whole-foo, plant-based (vegan) offerings were as good or better than we had ever seen anywhere else.  They also had a restaurant (drinks and live music on the weekends), a sub sandwich shop, and extensive deli section that included a “burger bar”, an “Asian bar”, and a “Sushi bar.”  You could even order Food to Go and drop by to pick up your prepared meal.  We didn’t actually need anything, but we found a vegan parmesan cheese, and picked up a container of Just Egg, some vegan butter, and a pack of paper bowls.  We will probably go back on Saturday and restock the refrigerator and panty before heading to Hershey, Pennsylvania on Sunday.

This opening is in the ceiling of the 2nd floor just above where the staircase from the first floor reaches the 2nd floor.  George Eastman House at the Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York.

What we did not find was the specific Dr. Elsey’s cat liter than Linda likes.  There was a Petco across the street, so we went there and, voila!, there was the specific liter that we had not seen since leaving home in mid-June.  Our shopping done, we returned to camp.

Back at camp there was another airstream travel trailer in our row, in addition to the one three rows back.  Another one came later, making four in our section of the RV park, including ours.  There was another one in the far west section when we arrived yesterday.  We didn’t notice if it was still here, so there might be five of them here.  That would be a surprisingly high percentage of the total occupancy at the moment.

For dinner, I finished my sandwich from lunch while Linda had a cheese sandwich and finished her brownie from lunch.  After dinner, she read while I worked on the blog posts and photos for yesterday and today.  At 8:30 PM, we streamed the next episode of The Great British Baking Show.  Linda headed off to bed at here usual 10 o’clock hour.  I stayed up long enough to finish and publish the blog posts for yesterday and today and made it to bed just after midnight.

The West Garden at the George Eastman House as seen from the  parking lot entrance at the Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York.

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20220927 – A travel day; Verona, NY (TVaTSRvPk) to Canandaigua-Rochester KOA Holiday, Farmington, NY

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TUESDAY 27 September

Linda was up this morning around 7:15 and I got up at 7:45.  Since it was a travel day, we each had a cup of half-caff coffee as soon as we got up, and a slice of toast with Mango-Peach jam for breakfast.  Check-out time was 11 AM, and the check-in time at our next location, the Canandaigua-Rochester KOA Holiday in Farmington, New York, was 1 PM.  We had less than 100 miles to travel, and all but ~5 miles would be on the New York State Thruway (I-90) at 65 mph.  Linda called the KOA to see if we could arrive early.  There was someone in the site, but they were required to be gone by 11 AM, so no problem arriving after that.  We targeted a 10:30 AM departure in order to be there by 12:15 – 12:30, and started breaking camp around 9 AM.

I often do not have too many photos (if any) for travel days, and we rarely venture out after we arrive and set up camp, other than a quick grocery and/or fuel run.  That affords me the time (luxury) of being able to wax philosophical, to contemplate and reflect on the more general experience of being extended-time RVers.  Thus, I seem to have the most to say on the days where we have had the least to do.

This was our second of two, two-night stays in a row.  We had a very nice stay at The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park in Verona/Oneida, New York.  It was an attractive, and well-maintained park, and we were able to do our laundry in their nice laundry room.  There wasn’t much for us to do here, however, as we had no intention of visiting the casino, the resort restaurant, or the live music venue.  Still, we could have sat here another day, especially if the rain let up and the sun re-appeared.  But also, because a two-night stay is actually more work than a one-night layover.

We go through the same process, and the same amount of work, for a two-night stay as for one of much longer duration.  For a one-night stay, we can often leave the truck and trailer hitched together and just plug in the shorepower cord.  We always travel with enough water in the fresh water tank that we can easily run off of that for a night or more (depending on how full the fresh water tank is, of course).  We also do not need to dump waste water before we pull out the next day.  That’s not a complaint, just the reasons we prefer to stay three or more nights wherever we stop.  It helps if there are also interesting/accessible things to see and do in the area.

The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park was on a municipal water supply, so I did not hook-up our freshwater pressure regulator, filter, and water softener when we arrived.  I also did not hook up the sewer hose because it was raining, and it wasn’t necessary that it be done right then.  But the tanks needed to be dumped before we pulled out, and that was my second departure task.  (My first one was to pack up my laptop computer and move our technology to the truck.)  We had prepared the trailer/truck for departure enough times by now that we had a good handle on how much time it would take; 1-1/2 hours allowed for a deliberate, but leisurely pace.

It took me quite a few small adjustments to line up the truck/stinger with the trailer/hitch, but I got it done.  The problem was the way the site curved out, restricting how far I could pull straight forward in front of the trailer.  I do better when I can start from farther away.  Even so, we were ready to go by 10:30, but decided to walk over to the office building and use the restrooms, as much to stretch our legs as anything else.  We pulled out of our site at 10:45 AM.

The drive on I-90 was smooth and uneventful, just the way we like it.  We took exit 43 at Manchester and dropped down onto NY-96, headed west to County 28 / Macedon Road, and then south to Canandaigua Farmington Town Line Road, which only ran west from there.  It was just over a mile to the KOA.  I was disappointed in our fuel economy, 10.5 mpg average, but we did travel at 65 mph for most of the trip, and the transmission shifted down frequently as we climbed grades.

Our rig, slightly left of center frame, as seen from the other side of the pond at the Canandaigua Rochester KOA in Farmington, New York.

We pulled into the KOA at 12:30 PM.  As usual, Linda got us registered while I sync’d my phone app to the LevelMatePro+ in the trailer.  We were assigned site 18, a 50A/FHU pull-through with a patio (W3W=”hottest.sesame.dishing“).  (This was the second time we had site #18 on our trip.)  It was clear how to get to it and pull in, but a man from the campground insisted on leading us there and directing us in.  Neither service was necessary, but the escort to the site was appreciated, and he was helpful in getting me on the gravel with the truck somewhat aligned with the trailer.  He was surprised, however, that our trailer door was towards the rear and positioned us in the site where he thought we would want to be, with the door/stairs opening onto the patio.  He was wrong, but that was OK.  Sometimes the best/only thing you can do is say “thank you.”  I indicated that I needed to reposition the rig slightly, both to level, side-to-side, and position it so the truck would fit in front of it.  He returned to the office to help the next arrival.

As it turned out, I was able to back the trailer up to a position where it was level, side-to-side without having to use any of our leveling components.  And it was only 3.75” low in the front, so that was easily adjusted after we secured the trailer tires and unhitched.  As a bonus, this location put our shore connections exactly opposite the utility hook-ups.  Winner, winner, tofu dinner.  I plugged in the shorepower while Linda moved Juniper-the-Cat to the trailer.  This is always a necessary first step, as I have to lift the rear seat in the truck to get to the tools we use to for the hitching/unhitching process.

There was rain in the forecast for later in the afternoon, but for now, it was sunny with a breeze, so I went ahead and hooked up the water and sewer hose.  We had seen fire hydrants along the road, so Linda had asked in the office if the park was on a municipal water supply.  It was, so once again I did not hook up the fresh water pressure regulator, filter, and water softener.  I powered up our Verizon Jetpack Mi-Fi and moved it around the rig to find the best signal.  It ended up on the nightstand in the bedroom this time, with the Netgear flat panel antenna attached looking north towards Farmington, and the Thruway.  All told, it took us about an hour to “make camp.”

For lunch, Linda reheated the leftover risotto from Sunday night’s dinner, and served it with a banana and a slice of Italian bread.  Yum.  We went for a stroll around the campground after lunch, and watched as additional RVs rolled in every now and then.  The park was far from full, but also far from empty.

The center of the rear section of the park was clearly seasonal sites, with a variety of RVs that had obviously not been moved in a long time.  Most of them had wood patio decks, and the usual paraphernalia that clearly identifies a seasonal (permanent) RV/site.  But we understand that seasonal/permanent RVs provide an important and reliable income stream for an RV park, while requiring minimal park employee labor.  Also, seasonal sites almost always have metered electric, so the RV park does not have to be concerned with how much power they use.  They do, however, have to read the meter (usually once a month) and collect payment from the customer.

Our walk took us by the office, where we chatted with the woman on duty (presumed to be the owner).  She gave us a variety of pamphlets and brochures on things to see and do in the area, especially wineries, as we expressed an interest in those.

Back at our rig, we both set up our computers.  I checked e-mail and then started working on today’s blog post while Linda checked her e-mail and then worked on entering and reconciling our financial transactions.

For dinner, Linda made black beans & rice in the Instant Pot.  (She also used this for the risotto on Sunday.)  I always find beans & rice a tad bland, but Linda had anticipated that and put the Chipotle Tabasco sauce on the table.  She put a little on hers too, and agreed that it “kicked it up a notch” (‘props’ to Emeril Lagasse).  After dinner we relaxed for a bit with our iPads until our Tuesday evening FBI programs on CBS started at 8 PM.  Linda was off to bed as soon as the shows ended at 11 PM, and I was in bed before midnight.

We are not in “vacation” mode, because we don’t take vacations, but we have migrated into a kind of “tourist” mode, and a “returning-to-life-at-home” mode as we have approached the end of our summer/fall 2022 grand tour.  (I think this started with the Pirate Cove Adventure Mini-Golf in Bar Harbor, Maine.)  Indeed, one of our main foci in the Finger Lakes region of New York will be visiting wineries/meaderies.  This region is known for its Riesling wines, and related wines like Gewürztraminer, so we will certainly be on the lookout for those, but probably won’t buy very many bottles of either as they are common wines easily found at good wine shops.  We will be looking for wines that are a bit different from our everyday choices, but still to our taste and within the price range we are willing to pay for fermented fruit juice.  This will include “fruit” (non-grape) wines, meads, and grape wines like Cabernet Franc and Rivaner.  (Black Tower Rivaner is supposedly available at the State Liquor Store in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, so I hope to buy some there if we don’t find another Rivaner wine before then.)

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20220925&26 – Brookwood RV Resort (Ticonderoga) to The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park (Verona/Oneida), New York

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SUNDAY 25 September

(The six photos in this post were all taken on September 26, under better weather and light conditions, with a Google Pixel 6 Pro phone.  Some of them are inserted into the post for the 25th because that’s where they apply.)

Today was another travel day for us, so we had one cup of half-caff coffee and a Kashi Honey Almond bar for breakfast.  This is only the third time we have had back-to-back two-night stays, but our next two destinations are five nights each.  Only twice have we stayed somewhere for just one night, but they were followed by longer stays.  We have one more one-night stay, followed by a two-night stay, just before we get home.

The camp ground we just left, Brookwood RV Resort, was selected as one of two convenient waypoints between Stowe, Vermont and the west end of New York’s Finger Lakes region, but we made good use of our one full day there, and it was simply a nice place to camp with wonderful owners.  Clearly there was much more to do in the area, including the Fort at Ticonderoga (which we have visited before) and the whole Lake George area.  For that matter, Lake Placid was about an hour’s drive northwest of the RV Resort, and we have not ever explored the enormous Adirondack State Park.  But we have a target date for being home, and there is only so much you can see if a 4-month trip through six provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland & Labrador) and six states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio), not including our home state of Michigan on each end of the trip.

Today’s destination, The Villages at Turning Stone, was also a convenient waypoint enroute to the Finger Lakes region of New York.  But we had also stayed here at least twice before, so we knew it was a very nice RV park, and very convenient to the New York Thruway (I-90) while being far enough away to not hear any noise.  It’s part of the Turning Stone Casino & Resort complex, an Enterprise of the Oneida Nation.

This is the view of the office from the arrival lane at The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park.  It sets the tone for the entire park.

Our next destination had a 1 PM check-in time, so we targeted a 10 AM departure and set about getting ready to leave around 8:30 AM.  Because the service attachments were so conveniently located near the driver side tires of the trailer, we decided to use the black tank flush feature and fill the black tank to 85% of full (~30 gallons) and give it a good flush before dumping the grey tank.  The last couple of times we have dumped the black tank, the level sensor system went down to 10% and then jumped back up to 35%, and then went down to 5% and jumped back up to 55%.  RV tank sensors are notorious for giving erroneous readings (and then eventually failing altogether), but that is mostly due (I think) to the tanks never getting full before dumping and/or never getting cleaned.  While we would rather not “waste” 30 gallons of potable water, we would also prefer to have a correctly functioning tank level monitoring system.  And the only way to do that, without having a tank cleaning service or installing an aftermarket whirligig, is to fill it with clean water and then drain it, multiple times if needed.

Even with a bit of neighborly chatting, we were packed and ready go in time to pull out of our site at 10:15 AM.  We set the destination in the F-150 navigation system and selected “fastest” route, knowing that we were going to immediately not go the way it plotted, and that it was going to persistently try to put us on its calculated route.

Rather than head south on NY-9N we headed north, back through Ticonderoga, all the way to NY-74, and took that west to its terminus at I-87 in Severance; 21.1 miles with an estimated travel time of 29 minutes.  It was a beautiful, winding road through a valley with Eagle Lake and Pharaoh Lake to the north and the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness Area to the south.  It was mostly posted 45 mph, but got us through/over the mountains and was also the shortest way to get from our RV park to I-87.

From there we took I-87 south all the way to the interchange with I-90 just northwest of Albany; 87.76 miles with an estimated travel time of 1 hour 29 minutes.  The GPS was fine with that until we didn’t leave I-87 for the more direct (and presumably faster) route(s) it wanted us to take.  It tried to take us off I-87 at every southwest road option that we passed, and turn us around when we “missed” it.  (It eventually occurred to us that we had the navigation system configured to “Avoid Toll Roads,” and it was doing everything it could to keep us off of I-90 (the New York Thruway), which is how we planned to go.)

I-87 was posted 65 mph most of the way, with an occasional slow down to 55 mph, so I set the cruise control at 65 mph, and only backed off as traffic or speed limits dictated.  Although counter-intuitive, we get good fuel economy at this speed because the transmission can shift up into 9th gear and drop the engine rpm back.  (Except when climbing hills, where it downshifts and raises the engine rpm.)  Southbound traffic continued to increase the farther south we traveled, and was heavy, but manageable, by the time we came into the Albany area.  (We presumed that a lot of the southbound traffic was probably folks booking it back to civilization after a weekend “up north” in the Adirondacks.)  The transition onto I-90 west involved a keep-right, keep-right, keep-left in fairly quick succession, but we knew about it ahead of time and I was able to maneuver the rig without any issues.  (We study maps before making routing decisions, and zoom in to make sure we can see details such as interchanges.)

I-90 is the New York Thruway, and uses EZ-Pass for electronic toll collection.  (Indeed, we never saw any evidence of toll actual booths.)  We had our EZ-Pass stuck to the windshield and sailed through the full speed overhead readers.  (Before we left home, Linda had put money in the account and made sure it was linked to a valid credit card.)  From where we got on I-90 to the entrance to The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park was 112.7 miles, with an estimated travel time of 1 hour 49 minutes.  The total mileage for our drive today was 221 miles and the estimated travel time was 3 hours 47 minutes.  We arrived at 2 PM with an actual travel time of 3 hours 45 minutes, and we averaged over 12 miles per gallon.  Not bad.

This is the view that greeted us as we pulled away from the check-in lane into the RV Park.

The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park is a really nice RV park, and you see/sense that as soon as you turn in to the entrance road and pull up to the office building.  As usual, Linda went in to register us and I popped into the trailer to turn on the LevelMatePro+ and sync my phone app to it.  This was the first place on our trip where they offered discounts for membership in several RV groups.  Linda said we were members of FMCA and Escapees, but didn’t have cards in her wallet for either one.  They applied the discount, but said she needed to return with a valid membership card.

Just before the turn into the River Birch Village section of the park.  Our trailer is in site 102, center left.  The sites here were spacious pull-throughs with 50A/FHU services.

We were assigned Site 102, a paved, 50A/FHU, pull-through (W3W=”opened.delights.carries“).  The site was long enough, but had a curved entry from, and curved exit to, the roads.  This made it difficult to get the truck lined up with the trailer (it’s a hitch thing) AND get the combination position nicely on the pavement.  In the end, I opted for aligned over perfect position. (If the truck and trailer are not aligned fairly well we cannot lower the trailer tongue jack.)

We drove through off-and-on rain the last hour before reaching The Villages, but quit by the time we got there.  We started setting up without precipitation, but it started to drizzle lightly as I was hooking up the utilities.  I got the shorepower connected and just made a direct water connection (no filter or water softener).  (I left the sewer hose for the morning of our departure.)

We got set up inside (it was raining outside) and were glad to see that we had a decent cellular signal for our phones and Verizon Jetpack Mi-Fi.  Linda checked our travel wallet, and it turned out that we didn’t have printed cards with us for either FMCA or Escapees.  We were able to log in to both websites and “print” them to PDFs, which I then e-mailed to our phones.

Linda walked over to the office only to find that it had closed on 5 PM.  Indeed, that was when it closes Sunday through Thursday, staying open later on Friday and Saturday.  No problem, we would just deal with it in the morning.

For dinner, Linda made mushroom risotto with greens and we had a little wine to go with it.  After dinner I worked on the blog post a bit.  We then spent the evening watching a couple of shows on PBS, the new seasons of:  “Lucy Worsley Investigates – The Black Death” and “Van der Valk.”

 

MONDAY 26 September

Since this was just a layover stop for us, we had no plans to do any sightseeing or visit any attractions in the area.  We also had no plans to visit the casino, even though they run a free shuttle between the RV park and the Casino.  As such, we were in no hurry this morning.  We did, however, have chores and errands to attend to.

First up was laundry.  Check-out time was 11 AM and check-in time was 1 PM, so Linda figured morning would be the ideal time to do the laundry.  We both got showers and then gathered up the laundry, including towels and such.  We had enough for two baskets, but only had one basket with us, so we sorted the laundry into two loads.  We don’t normally bother, but I wanted to run a ‘hot’ load.

The front view of the office building at The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park.  The office and store are to the right, the laundry, TV room, and meeting room are to the left.  Linda is sitting on the bench in front of the laundry room door.

We carried one basket over to the laundry room in the main office building, which is relatively close to our site.  The laundry room was spacious, and had four washing machines, four dryers, and a large table for sorting and folding.  None of the machine were in use, so we split the first load into two washing machines and started them.  We then walked back (with the empty basket), got the second basket full and returned to the laundry room and split it between the other two washing machines.

In-between baskets, I opened up two windows and the ceiling/exhaust fan in the trailer to let it air out and some of the humidity.  The weather here has been rainy and cool, requiring us to keep the trailer closed up and run the furnace or one of the heat-pumps.  Somewhere in there I took some photos and we brought our iPads along to use while we waited.

As we were walking back to the trailer with all of the clean/folded laundry it started to rain.  It was light, but it was still rain.  I took the basket and made for the trailer, as I could move faster by myself than with both of us carrying it.  We made it back without getting the laundry wet (we had the dish drying mat on top).  The vent/fan had already closed (automagically) and I closed the two open windows.

This is a composite of four images showing some of the amenities located behind the main office building at The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park.

We also needed to do some shopping, but wanted to wait until we had a break in the rain, which had gotten heavy at times. Linda made ham and cheese sandwiches, with mustard and greens, a potato chips on the side.  I my case, however, it was also potato chips on the sandwich.  I’ve eaten ham sandwiches that way since I was a kid, and that is still the way I prefer to have them.

The rain had stopped (temporarily) by 2 PM, and we headed out.  Our first stop was the Walmart on the west end of Oneida for groceries.  Their organic produce was limited, but Linda picked what she could and got most of what she was after.  The one thing they did have was wine.

We have found the different way that each state and province handled the sale of alcoholic beverages very interesting.  In some places, just like in Michigan, we could buy anything in a grocery store.  I other places we could only buy alcoholic beverages in the official state/province store.  In other states, like New Hampshire and New York, we could only buy beer in the grocery store; anything with a higher alcohol content had to purchased at a Wine and Liquor store, but these were not official state-run outlets.  Finally, there were places where we could buy beer and wine at a grocery store, but anything stronger could only be acquired at a liquor store.

Linda stopped an older gentleman in the store and asked if knew where we could buy some wine.  He directed us to go east on NY-5 and look for the store on the left side near Main St.  We were headed that way when I spotted a Byrne Dairy & Deli filling station and pulled in.  We had passed on Lenox St. on our way to Walmart, so I knew what they looked like.  I intended to stop there until we took a different route back.

The rain quit and the sun came in to light up this scene behind our RV site at The Villages at Turning Stone RV Park.

Tomorrow is another travel day and, like always, I wanted to pull out of the RV park with a full tank of fuel in the F-150.  I had problems with the credit card reader, as three of them were “no read” or “chip not detected.”  I knew that wasn’t possible, so I figured it was a problem with the card reader at the pump and went inside to pay.  That resulted in the whole “how much” (gallons or dollars, I’m not sure) conversation, to which I could only answer, “I don’t know, I want to fill it up.”  But the clerk had to put in a number, so I figured 20 gallons at $5 per gallon.  “So, you want a hundred dollars?”  “Well, no, not really; I want to fill the tank whatever that takes.”  “$120 then?  If you don’t use that much it will only charge your card for what you actually purchase.”  “Oh, OK.  Make it $130.  I don’t want to have to do a small top up; it messes with the miles-to-empty calculation on the display screen.”

Back at the pump I realized that I had needed to insert the cards “upside down” with the stripe and chip (on the back) facing up.  Who designs and builds a machine like that?  I splurged and got 20.086 gallons of premium, NO Ethanol, fuel for $4.58/gallon; only $92/.38, and it was only 90-octane at that, but I wanted to get some in the tank.  Only time will tell if that’s what hits my Amex card or not.

Our next/final stop was the Oneida Wine & Liquor store a little farther east on NY-5.  We were at the top of a hill with a warmed-up engine when we left Byrne’s, and I basically coasted to down to the bottom.  At its highest, the information display showed a 78+ mpg average!  That was the first time I recall seeing a number at or above 30 mpg (average), and probably the last time I will see a number anywhere near that (unless I reset the display at the top of mountain with a 10-mile downgrade).

All we wanted from the wine & liquor store was bottle of wine so we could have some with dinner for the next couple of nights.  Linda had checked the weather/radar and we had more rain headed our way, soon      and possibly heavy, so we did not linger in the store.  We were looking at white wines and noticed shelf with a small selection of Gewürztraminer.  I was considering labels and prices when Linda said “get one with a screw top.”  Right.  That’s actually important; much easier to open and much easier to reseal and store in trailer’s refrigerator.  We selected a relatively inexpensive one, that happened to come from the Finger Lakes region, where we are headed next.

Back at the RV park, we unloaded and stored the groceries and settled in to work, read, or play games before dinner.  The rains came, as expected, which kept us inside.  But that was OK.  We needed a day to sit and relax, and I needed the time to work on the blog.

For dinner, Linda made Gardein ‘turkey cutlets’ that we had just bought at Walmart.  She uses a variety of Gardein products, but had never seen this one before.  She baked a few small potatoes as a side.

Now that we are back in areas where we can get over-the-air TV, Monday night is one of our two nights for CBS programs, the other being Tuesday.  (Saturday and Sunday are PBS nights.)

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20220924(b) – Crown Point State Historic Site, New York

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SATURDAY 24 September

This is the second of two posts for this date, the “B side” so to speak.  The ‘A’  post was about our very enjoyable morning visit to the amazing Original Series Star Trek Experience in Ticonderoga, New York.  We returned to the trailer afterwards to open it up and let it air/dry out as the forecast for temperatures in the upper 60’s and no threat of rain.  We then headed back up NY-9N all the way to the Crown Point State Historic Site (SHS) at the Lake Champlain Bridge to Vermont.

Crown Point SHS is both a historical landmark and archeological site that was gifted to New York State in 1910 for preservation.  Based on the brochure/map we received, it is jointly managed by New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

The main reason the site exists is the presence of the ruins of two military fortifications:  Fort St. Frédéric (French; construction 1734–1737; occupation 1737–1759; destroyed and abandoned 1759), and His Majesty’s Fort of Crown Point (British; construction 1759–1763; occupation 1763–1775, 1776–

1783).  The site has a trail system that leads visitors to some of the outlying features, or just provides nice walking paths.  There is also a small museum building.  The site was free to enter, but the museum was $4 admission per person.  We skipped the museum, but not because of the cost.  The historical significance of this site, however, was older than just European powers vying for control of northeastern North America.  From the brochure/map:

“The Landscape before you has served as a boundary between cultures for hundreds of years.  It delineated territories between the Kanien Kehaka (Mohawk) Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy to the West and the Abenaki Nation of the Algonquian peoples to the East.

Samuel de Champlain was the first known European to travel this vast lake in 1609.  Waterways were the dominant transport routes in the seventeenth century, and command of this narrow channel could control trade and settlement between Montreal and New York City.  Since 1731, this area has been occupied by Indigenous, French, British, and Colonial forces all competing for strategic and commercial control of this corridor.”

I would add that the site occupies the northern tip of small peninsula with nice views of Lake Champlain, New York and Vermont.

Following are eight photos from our visit, all shot with the SONY SLT a99v (DSLR).  They are not a complete visual documentation, just a few photos that I liked.

Remnants of the double wall that outlined the French fort.  The grassy area in-between was a walkway known as a terreplein (pronounced ‘tear-a-plane’).

The circular brickworks were the bases of four bee hive bread ovens.  They had the capacity bake 900 loaves of bread every day.  The modern Lake Champlain Bridge in the background on the right.

Linda looks at a pile of rubble and the remains of walls that were the Tower Redoubt / Citadel in the north bastion of the French fort.  It had 12-foot-thick walls that were six stories high.

The west Bastion of the French fort.

Looking south through the entry to His Majesty’s Fort of Crown Point on the north wall of the fort.  The stone building on the far side of the parade ground was the ‘soldiers’ barracks (as opposed to the ‘officers’ barracks).

The soldiers’ barracks on the right (in shade) and the officers’ barracks (distant, in light).  The entry to the fort is to the left of the officers’ barracks.  The fort enclosed over seven acres, making it one of the largest forts built by the British in North America.

The stonework was very impressive.    According to the brochure/map, “It took more than 3,000 carpenters, masons, and soldiers four years to complete construction of the British fort.  Walls were constructed of squared logs that rose twenty-seven feet above the stone foundation.

The two stone columns and rubble lying along the west wall of the fort are the remnants of a second soldiers’ barracks that was never completed.  Part of Lake Champlain is visible, with some of New York’s Adirondack mountains beyond.  Crown Point is at the southernmost extent of the ‘wide’ portion of the Lake, which narrows at this point but extends farther south for a considerable distance to Whitehall, New York.  The Lake drains to the north via the Richelieu River which flows into the St. Lawrence River at Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, northeast and downstream of Montreal, Quebec.  The Champlain Canal connects the lake to the Hudson River to the south.

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20220924(a) – Star Trek Experience, Ticonderoga, New York

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SATURDAY 24 September

We had two very different things on our agenda for today.  The first one was the Start Trek Experience in Ticonderoga, New York.  The other was a visit to Crown Point State Historic Site on the New York side of the Lake Champlain Bridge.  This post only covers our visit to the Star Trek Experience.  There will be a second post for today’s date about the State Historic Site.

Most of this post is photos with captions.  All 30 of the photos were taken on my Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone and processed with Faststone Image Viewer.  By way of introduction, however, the Star Trek Experience is a full-scale reproduction of the permanent set at Desi Studios that was used to film all the scenes that took place aboard the Starship Enterprise in the 79 episodes of the Original Series.  The reproduction was built from copies of the original blueprints for the set.  A second soundstage was used for all of the scenes that took place off of the ship.  As these were different for each episode, the were disassembled and replace for each one.

We had reservations for the 10 AM tour.  As you will see in some of the photos, our tour guide, whose name I failed to get, resembled and older William Shatner.  As a disclaimer, not being a Trekkie, I might have a few details wrong in the captions.  If so, feel free leave a comment with the needed correction(s).  According to our tour guide, there are about 200 things (devices, etc.) that were created for the series that did not exist at the time, and were considered very futuristic, but have since come to exist.  Think cellular communications and iPads.  We also found it interesting that William Shatner comes to this venue about twice each year.  As a final comment, the Reproduction was very well done, our tour guide was excellent (knowledgeable and funny), and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

This display was in the entrance foyer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Transporter.  The room also contained the operating consoles and devices on the walls.  While it was no doubt hard work in the props department, it must also have been quite fascinating place to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main operating console for the transporter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linda prepares to be transported somewhere off-ship.  We learned that the special visual effect used when transporting people was glitter poured into a tube of water.  No CGI/FX back then; all of the special effects were done “old school” using established techniques or whatever they could invent and make work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Starship Enterprise had three decks, but this large circular hallway was used for all of them.  Note that none of the rooms on the set had ceilings, and ceilings never appear in any of the episode.  The open ceiling spaces were used for lights and other equipment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sick bay featured remote sensing and display of vital signs and other things that would become reality some years later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The crew had “tablets” that they could write on and have the information transmitted wirelessly to the ship’s computers.  We were still in the sick bay for this photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The conference room where Captain Kirk would meet with the Department Heads (Engineering, Science, Medical, and others).  Note the 3-D chess set.  3-D chess did not exist at this time, but 3-D checkers and another 3-D game did.  Both of them are also on the conference table.

Spock’s Vulcan Harp was just a prop on the show.  This one was built many years later to match the show prop, but actually works.  The back side was heavily autographed by various cast members.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We think this was Dr. McCoy’s office, but are not sure if that is correct.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The science lab.  What is hard to tell from many of these photos is just how large (or small) these rooms are.  They seemed rather spacious to us, but by the time they were filled with actors, directors, and production equipment and crew, they probably felt small.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bedroom portion of Captain Kirk’s quarters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The office portion of Captain  Kirk’s quarters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The access tube for one of the engine pods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A view inside the engine access tube with all of the tools stored on the wall of the tube.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hyper-Drive in the engineering bay.  Very impressive use of perspective and lighting.  The actual drive space is only about 5 feet deep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the control panels in the engineering bay / engine control room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tour concluded in the best room of all, the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

The navigation section of the bridge (I think).

Linda on the bridge listening to our tour guide, who was very knowledgeable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The engineering section of the bridge (I think).

A view of the bridge looking forward from just behind the Captain’s seat.

A closer view of the helm station, just in front of the Captain’s seat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruce takes a turn in the Captain’s seat on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.  (Photo by Linda.)

Linda takes a turn in the Captain’s seat on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.  The reason she’s smiling is her left hand.  (I can’t do that, and she knows it.)

Looking aft towards the helm from the front of the bridge.  This is what you might see if communicating with the bridge via the large screen at the front.

The lobby area had multiple display cases with costumes and props as well as a gift shop area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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20220923 – Gold Brook Campground (Stowe, VT) to Brookwood RV Resort (Ticonderoga, NY)

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FRIDAY 23 September

Today was a relocation day for us.  Our next campground was the Brookwood RV Resort in/near Ticonderoga, New York.  We decided to take the faster/easier route, with an estimated travel time of about 2 hours.  Check-in time was 1 PM, so we planned to pull out of our current site at 11 AM.

Our F-150 and Airstream Flying Cloud in site T6 at Brookwood RV Resort in/near Ticonderoga, New York.  The sites here were very nice.

The temperature dropped overnight and we still had rain in the area, so we had the trailer closed up and one of the heat-pumps running in heat mode.  The rain had paused during the morning, so we did not have to contend with that while breaking camp, but it was cold enough to be uncomfortable handling all of the equipment, and we both commented that we needed to get some warm work gloves for this kind of situation.

We pulled out on time, and headed south on VT-100 towards Waterbury, where we picked up I-89 north towards Burlington.  This stretch of I-89 actually ran WWN until it got close to the Burlington area, where it turned north.  We exited at that point onto I-189 which ran west for a short way and ended at US-7.  We turned south on US-7 and took it as far as Vergennes, Vermont where we picked up VT-22a towards Addison.  At Addison, we turned right/west on VT-17 and followed that to the Lake Champlain Bridge.  The bridge connects Chimney Point, Vermont to Crown Point, New York.  At the border (on the bridge) the road became NY-185, which ran a short way and ended at NY-9N/NY-22.  We headed south on 9N and just stayed on it to Brookwood RV Resort.  Before getting there, however, we drove through the small town of Crown Point, and the larger town of Ticonderoga.

When we pulled in, Linda went to office to register and I got out of the truck to turn on the LevelMatePro+ and sync the app on my phone.  When I returned to the truck a man was waiting there.  It was Mark, one of the owners, and he was there to help us get into our site (T6).  The other owner is Buffy, who runs the office (they’re married).

We had the 50A full-hookup pull-through (W3W=”postings.universe.horsepower”) site we had requested.  It was easy to get in and the truck and trailer aligned.  We were actually completely level, side-to-side and front-to-rear.  I was pretty sure that was the first time that had every happened, and would have been perfect for a one-night stay, but we planned to do some things in the area tomorrow so we still had to unhitch the truck and re-level.  We ended up having to use our Andersen rocker levelers on the driver side of the trailer to raise it an inch.

One review we read said the camp store at Brookwood RV Resort was “the best camp store they had every seen.”  It had a “north woods” cabin interior, and was very well stocked.

Mark was friendly as well as helpful, and we chatted with him for about 30 minutes before we finished setting up camp.  He had some suggestions for things to do in the area, which we appreciated.  It was a sunny, but chilly afternoon, so our only activity was to go for a walk through the campground.  There were 85 sites on 28 acres, and few rental cabins.  Over half of the RV sites were in use as seasonal or permanent sites, but they were mostly in the back part of the property.    We met and chatted with several of the “residents,” and they were all very friendly.  Still, Mark and Buffy have been thoughtful about not arbitrarily mixing “residents” with “transients,” which we appreciated.

Nadeau’s Market on NY-9N.  We passed this Country Market just before arriving at Brookwood RV Resort and passed it again driving back into Ticonderoga the next day.  We finally stopped on our way back to camp to check it out.  We bought a couple of cider donuts because … cider donuts.

One of Mark’s suggestions was the Star Trek Experience in Ticonderoga.  Linda and I are not “Trekkies,” but were certainly fans of the original TV series as well as the movies and subsequent series.  We look it up online to find out more about it.  It looked interesting, and was certainly close by.  Reservations appeared to be required for the guided tour, so Linda bought two tickets for the 10 AM tour.

The weather forecast for tonight was for temperatures to drop to 41 (F), so we had another night ahead of us with the trailer closed up and one of the heat-pumps running.

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