She played on the beach...

Our 9 year old lab, Bear, died in the night last evening. As we think about it, there have been some signs over the past few weeks that something was wrong.

 Our grandson, Eliott, joined us on the road two days ago and we picked up camp yesterday and headed to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for our last three weeks until we go home for the holidays. It was a warm, maybe even hot day. We set up our new camp and then about 4:00 headed to the beach. The last time Bear had been there was about 4 years ago with her mother, Millie. Bear played with Mollie in the surf as she had many years ago with Millie. Watching Eliott and two dogs enjoying one another will be our last memories of Bear.

When we went to bed last night Bear was showing signs of discomfort. At 1:00 A.M. she woke us up and Rob took her outside. He could tell she was seriously ill, I tended to her outside while he got online and tried to find an emergency Vet out here on the Banks, the closest one was three hours away. Bear layed her head in my hands at one point and we looked one another in the eyes, and I knew. I told her I loved her and to tell Millie hello for us. Rob said his good byes.

Sometime in the night she went on to where ever it is our beloved companions go. And now there are two. Our hearts are heavy, but she had a wonderful life and gave and got, so much love.

Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Pecans

We settled into this campground last Friday. We are in Williamsburg, Virginia and we picked a spot that was just a few miles from everything. When you are picking campgrounds on-line you really never know what you are going to get. All we needed was water,sewer and electricity and that is really all we got. This place was probably quite a campground about 30 years ago. Everything is extremely run down. I thought I might go to the laundry and do some blankets in bigger machines than we have. Out of the 12 washer and dryers, which were about 30 years old, only two didn't have an" out of order" sign on them. Oh well, we didn't come to this historic city to spend time at the campground. Here is one big plus! We are parked underneath a big Pecan tree and they are dropping off the tree quite consistently. So far we have picked up a whole bowl full and they taste delicious!! Now that's special.

As soon as Rob felt well enough (suffering from the "pushed the boat to far" flu) we started seeing the historical areas. We visited the Jamestown Settlement, you know, where John Smith came, and later Poccahontus. Fascinating. Then over to the Jametown  reconstruction area. The next two days we spent in Colonial Williamsburg. Now this place in unbeleivable. They have done and are doing an exceptional job restoring this area to an authentic replication of what it would have been like to live here in the 1700's. History, history, history, so much history. We did not see it all, but we put a good dent in it. That's kind of what do everywhere we go.

 Hey I just remembered that I forgot something in our last blog. When we were in Maryland we went to Rob's nephew, Tinker and his wife's (Annie)  house for dinner one night. It was so good to see them for it had been  way to long!

Now for some exciting news! Rob left three hours ago to drive to Raleigh, NC to meet our son Jim and our 3 year old grandson, Eliott. He is bringing him back here tommorrow and he'll be spending the next two weeks with us while we are at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And yes we will be taking him Trick or Treating!!  Yea!! We are so excited! Funny little story, Eliott asked his mother today if he was coming to see Mimi and Pop (Rob and I) today. She told him no, not until tommorrow. He said, "not tommorrow, Mimi said she can't wait to see me".    Obviously I told him I couldn't wait to see him, he thought we would leave without him.  SOOOOOOOOOO cute. Anyway, these next two weeks should be very special and we so happy his mom and dad let us do this.

A Trip down Memory Lane

We spent some time in Edgewood, Maryland. Rob took me  to the neighborhood of his boyhood home that he lived in with his ten brothers and sisters from third grade until he graduated from high school. He pointed out all the homes of his friends that I have heard so much about thru the years. We drove by the grade school, junior high and high school they all  attended. We drove over the culvert that Rob and some of his buddies blew up with some kind of homemade explosive device.  He pointed out first, second, and third jobs, bars he use to stumble out of, and places he used to hunt.

We connected up with a friend of Rob's that he hadn't seen or spoken to in over 30 years, Steve Upton. This was a guy he used to spend endless amounts of time with hunting and carrousing. Steve and his wife, Lorraine had us over for a dinner of freshly caught blue crabs. We spent hours connecting or as in Steve and Rob's case, reconnecting as they told old stories looking  over old photographs and caught up on each other lives. It was pretty cool  to be a part of. These two people turned out to be pretty special and  I am convinced we will be spending time together in the near future.
By now you have probably already read  Rob's account of their duck hunting expedition the following day. A pretty harrowing experience that  seems to get funnier every time I hear it.

We also spent time with other old friends in that area and when we went  Houston, Delaware. One of Rob's best friends, John Evans and his wife Faye entertained us  for three days. It was great to to finally meet people I had been sending Christmas cards to for 22 years.

Crabs and Duck hunting in Maryland

It was an experience being back in the area that I grew up in. For those of you who don't know, I moved to Edgewood, MD at the age of 9 and stayed until I was 21, so I guess that you could really call this a visit to my "hometown". We stayed at Elk Neck State Park the first 4 days and hen moved over to Long Bar Harbor RV Park and Marina to park next to my sister Jeanne and her husband John.

Before arriving, I had contacted some friends and family to advise them that we were on our way. We made plans to see people, most of which fell thru (keep reading, you'll find out why) and had great  expectations to reconnect with people from my past.

While in Lancaster the week before, I found a good friend (Steve Upton) whom I have not seen or talked to for 35 years. Of all the people who I contacted, he was the most enthusiastic about getting together and we made plans to go crabbing and then duck hunting on Saturday, which was the opening day of the MD duck season.

Deb and I went to Steve's on Friday, met

 his wife Lorraine, and drank a few Miller Lites while we caught up on old times as well as the last three decades of our lives. Steve and Lorraine have a great place on the Gunpowder River with a "crab shack" right on the water. We met some of their friends and one of their daughters and although it was quite blustery , we hung out in the crab shack while Steve used his secret recipe in the home made steamer that he made out of a beer keg. When the bushel was done we all piled into the house and picked crabs for the next couple of hours. It was one experience which had been just as I remember it from my youth, the only difference being the fact hat we used to do it at Steve's parents house back in the old days.

Saturday morning I rose at 4:45 and headed to Steve's to duck hunt with him and his friends, Jeff and Kent. We headed across the river in the dark, set out the decoys and drove the boat up on shore. As soon as I stepped into the water, my borrowed waders filled up with water. I should have known, nobody buys a second pair of waders unless the first one is leaking, duh! That one thing set the tone for the day.

Five minutes before the legal shooting time, the ducks started buzzing the decoy spread. Back in the 70's we would have shot a dozen times but this day, everyone waited for the legal time and the shooting began.

By 10:00 the tide was going out and the water was quickly disappearing. Another group of hunters came out of the creek behind us at about 10:30 struggling to push their boat thru the 4" deep water (see picture) and all three of my companions discussed getting out of there but decided to stick it out and hunt until the tide came back in because nobody wanted to "mud walk" out of there. We were in a little sheltered area and what we had not noticed was that the wind had picked up, blowing about 40mph out of the NW which meant that all the water was being blown down river into the Chesapeake Bay which left us staring at a mud flat which stretched out 100yds in front of us. High tide came and went at 3:30pm without one inch of rise in the river level. The wind continued to blow while the river retreated even farther.

At mid afternoon, I was forced to call the friends and family who were going to congregate at our campsite for a campfire and visit. I am sorry that I missed you all while we were there.

By nightfall, the wind had died down but since we were on a retreating tide, we all figured that the water would not return until it turned around and started coming in. Since high tide was not until 4am, we figured that we would not see enough water to float the boat until close to 2:30 and none of us wanted to wait. We had all brought just enough food and drink for the morning hunt since we had made plans to go out for lunch.

As we started to slide the boat into the creek bed, it seemed that the job was not going to be as difficult as we had imagined. Forty yards later when the boat was stuck solid in the mud at the mouth of the creek we realized that we were wrong. After moving the boat just 1/2" in 4 attempts to push it, we changed direction slightly to try to take advantage of the small pockets of puddles which were spaced out across the mud.

Pushing was not only very difficult because we had very little water, it was compounded by the fact that we were in knee deep muck but we got the boat moving. With Jeff and Steve on the left of the motor and me and Kent on the right, we trudged along with Jeff shouting "don't stop!, don't stop!". About 40yds later, Kent fell and the three of us continued until Jeff and Steve were laughing so hard that they couldn't continue.

I looked back to see Kent laying flat in the mud trying to pull himself along on all fours, all the while whining " I can't get up, I can't get my legs up under me, I can't get up". As the three of us stood there laughing our asses off, Kent made his way to the boat's stern but, by now with panic in his voice, could not even pull himself up so Jeff and I lifted him and helped him drag himself into the boat. For he next 100yds Steve, Jeff and I pushed 20 steps and rested, repeating the grueling process over and over until Steve could go no farther so he ended up in the boat. Steve had a push pole in the boat so he and Kent took turns pushing while Jeff and I continued on.

At this point, I was not feeling confident. Jeff, I thought, was the one person who was in the wors

t shape out of all of us. He had just survived a bout of cancer and had spent 6 days in a coma and lost 60 pounds during the ordeal. He is still a big man and I thought for sure that this would be his last experience.

Jeff and I pushed the boat another 100yds. By now the muck was crotch deep but at least we had gotten to the point in which there was 2” of water on top of it so the boat was moving just a little easier. That was until another couple hundred pounds was added to the boat when Jeff announced that he could go no more.

And then there was one! For the last hundred yards or so I did all that I could until we finally had just barely enough water under the boat that the push pole was all that was needed to move the boat the last 50yds to open water.

Back on the dock we were met by Steve’s and Jeff’s wives along with Steve’s daughter. I looked up at Kent who looked just like The Creature From the Black Lagoon and after pointing it out o everyone else, collapsed on the dock while laughing so hard I nearly wet myself.

Intercourse is not how I remember it

Intercourse is not what it used to be. For quite a while I was telling Deb all about how unique and special Intercourse was. She was definitely looking forward to it and was also really excited about visiting Paradise, Bird-in-hand, Virginville, and all the other Amish communities just east of Lancaster, PA so we set our sights on visiting the area on our way to northern, MD where I grew up.

We stayed in a park near Paradise just off of Hwy 30 southwest of Intercourse. Our first day in the area we traveled about 30 miles west to Hershey, PA to visit the chocolate factory. I have some great childhood memories of the area and it was our family trip to Hershey in 1970 when the photographers from Life Magazine followed my family around to do the story in their August 1970 magazine. Adjacent to the chocolate factory, there is also “Hershey Park” which is a theme park with roller coasters and all the other features to make kids happy. It was closed for the season but a huge car show was taking place in the parking lot for the theme park so traffic was heavier than we expected.

We toured the chocolate factory on a little ride which reminded me of “It’s a small world” at Walt Disney World. The ride with the singing dairy cows was not at all like the walk thru tour that I remember from my youth but it was informative. It ended at, of all places, the gift shop which was chocked full of everything chocolate plus chocolate themed t-shirts, hats, pajamas, etc. We walked out with only six bags of stuff, all of it edible which, at first, did not help alleviate the overloading problem that we have in our trailer.

On day two we decided to drive the roads from town to town in the Amish area east of Lancaster intending to do a little shopping as well as sampling all of the goodies that we could find . In bumper to bumper traffic, we drove to Bird-in-Hand and stopped at a very busy market. At the first shop that we stopped in, Deb turned something over uncovering a “made in China” sticker. Everything in the shop was the same crap that you could find in any gift shop in any tourist area in the country. Having been turned off by the experience, we hopped in the truck and headed towards Intercourse (still bumper to bumper). Several miles down the road, there were signs for a huge yard sale and we noticed smoke billowing across the road up ahead. When we got to the yard sale, we saw that it was an Amish family who not only had their “junk” for sale but barbequed chicken (hence the smoke), baked goods and cold drinks so we decided to stop.

Of all the things that we did in that area, that was the highlight of our trip. We visited with various family members, watched the boys play catch, ate the best chicken that we’ve tasted in years, purchased fresh produce to take home and learned a little bit about the people that we really came to see.

Sunday we drove a lot of back roads, took pictures of some cool old barns, houses, and covered bridges and at one point came upon a home that had about 40 carriages in the yard along with a stable of horses that could pull a dozen Budweiser wagons. It was obviously the local Sunday meeting place and I would have loved to have stopped and taken pictures but there was a man in the yard tending to the horses and, besides the fact that they don’t want their pictures taken, I didn’t want to be an interruption or distraction on their day of prayer.

Some things change for the better but one thing that I know for certain is that the Amish area, as well as the beautiful people who made the area both famous and unique in Lancaster County has been irreparably harmed by tourism that grew up around, and now within their community.

Eating, eating, and more eating

I have decided a better name for this blog would be 'Eating Our Way Across America'. Here we are in Pennsylvania, Amish Country to be exact. You can't go one city block without finding some delectable thing to eat. I did not care for their Shoo Fly Pie or Whoopie Pies. But I did like the cinnnamon rolls, caramel rolls,peanut butter cookies,custard filled things,the bar-be-que chicken ( the best), and homemade rootbeer.
Rob will blog about how much things have changed in this area since he was here 30 some years ago, but I was surprised at how many tourists came to this area. We were in bumper to bumper traffic all day Saturday which took quaintness right out of the picture. It was a little strange to go into a supposed Amish gift shop and pick up items that said "made in China" on the bottom. ?!?  The best time we had was attending a  several family yard sale (Amish). That's where we had the absolutely best bar-be-qued chicken. I bought a huge beautiful head of cauliflower and some homemade rootbeer. We did drive around on back roads and got a lot of great pictures of covered bridges, old buildings and horse and buggies

Back to the eating subject, right before we came here we went to Hershey, PA. Yes,where all the Hershey chocolate is made. We did the factory tour and of course spent a lot of time in their great shopping area. Corbin, Grace and Elliot, wait until you see what we bought for Christmas!! (If I don't eat it first)
The city of Hershey is so cute with their Hershey Kisses street lights and the street names all so candy oriented.  Had to do it.

South Maine coast and Boston, MA

We picked up Jack and Laura at the airport in Portland, Maine on Sept. 30th at noon. We were camped 30 miles away in Wells. Before we left Portland we made a trip to the wharf to pick up a dozen 1 pound lobsters to go with the clams Rob and I had harvested for this occasion. The rest of our first glorious day together was spent cooking and eating, having cocktails and playing our favorite game, Uker. Always guys against the girls, Laura and I should have stopped after the first two games. Just a little sidebar, Rob and I dug up way too many clams, the first batch we cooked of about 4 dozen would have been more than enough, but we had to cook all of them, which was probably another 7 dozen and none of us wanted to eat them because we were stuffed to the brim , I just wanted to throw them away but Rob insisted that we make good use of them so they were shucked and are currently in the freezer. I don't care if I ever see another clam.

Day two was the rainy day, but we didn't let that stop us. We headed south of Wells and went to the Kittery Trading Post and the little seaside town of York, where we went to an absolutely beautiful light house on Cape Neddick nicknamed the Nubbles Lighthouse. We then went on to Portsmouth in New Hampshire. All along the way stopping and shopping, we found an unbelievable pastry shop and picked up the best seafood chowder for dinner at the Maine diner in Wells.

Day three we went north to Kennebuck, Kennebunkport (the Bushes were not in town),Saco, Old Orchard Beach, Scarborough and then to Portland for dinner. We had all been told to have dinner at DeMillo's Restauant which is an Italian restaurant on a retired car ferry in the harbor. The food was mediocre but we still had a big time. There was a big yacht parked right next door called "Casino Royale" and decked out in all kinds of James Bond decor. When we went outside the entire crew of the yacht were standing on the upper deck taking pictures and waving up to the sky. We turned around to see and it was a 727 coming in for a landing at the nearby airport. Boy did we ever want to know who was on that airplane. Course we later googled it, and it was someone we had never heard of. The man apparently has the largest car dealership in the country as well as a dozen others. I was convinced it was John Travolta, you know, flying his own plane, doing a fly by of his yacht and his adoring crew enthusiastically awaiting his arrival. Our fantasy was far better than the reality.

Day four was a trip to Boston. Jack was particularily excited about this leg of the trip. We all would have liked to see the Red Sox play at Fenway but it wasn't to be. First we went to brunch and then did a two hour walking tour which was led by a young woman who was extraordinary at her job. She was dressed in 1700 period attire and had the accent and attitude to match. We got the REAL scoop on  our nations history and got to see some pretty amazing landmarks. Paul Revere's home, the oldest  running tavern  in America "The Bell in Hand", Old North Church (where they signaled the British are coming) and so many other little tidbits. It was  great!  Then on to Little Italy with our Italian friends, Jack and Laura. Here we sampled all kinds of Italian fare and drink and it was all mighty fine.

 Day 5 was hitting all the shops we missed on the way back to the airport for Jack and Laura's 6:00 p.m. flight. Laura went home with all kinds of goodies. We had such a wonderful time with our dear friends and I am positive we all gained several pounds. Thank you Jack and Laura for spending some time with us out here on the trail, it gave Rob and I a much needed break from each other.We do love you guys.