Our Gettysburg visit was between the week in which the 150th
anniversary of the battle had been observed and re-enacted and the upcoming motorcycle-rally
weekend – sort of Sturgis East. Our
campground was adjacent to the battlefield and one evening I got pictures of
two Pennsylvania memorials.
And a nearby barn.
I did get into the Civil War remembrance, though, by attending “Road From Appomattox” one evening. This is a dramatization of the meeting between Grant and Lee the day after Lee’s surrender to Grant. The play was a half-hour conversation between the two men. This meeting actually happened, but we don’t have records. The playwright took what was known and built a compelling conversation. The emotions depicted ranged across respect, regret, honor, and anger. Grant and Lincoln very much did not want Lee and his troops to be humiliated or punished and the civility the officers and soldiers displayed was remarkable. Grant also wanted Lee to pressure Confederate troops still fighting to surrender. Lee said he wouldn't. After the presentation, the two actors came out and took audience questions and that was informative and entertaining, too.
After we had made our Gettysburg reservations, we had called
Joyce and Jay Rush, who have appeared so often in these journals that they need
no introduction,FYI Manny's youngest sister) to see if they might want to meet us in Gettysburg (they live
in State College). Turned out that they
had plans that weekend to be in nearby York for a national Fairlane rally
so we drove over there to have lunch and visit with them. Jay’s restored ’69 Fairlane was in its trailer,
so I didn’t get a picture of it, but a couple of days later we found he had won a prize - best in category - and this picture was on Facebook.
Jay and Joyce lived in York from 1982 to 2002. After lunch they took us on a tour of the area. Did you know York is a center for snack
food production? We stopped at the
Snyder pretzel factory store and stocked up – provisions for our grueling trip.
Next day’s trip had some gruelsomeness. Our goal for the weekend was the Hilltop Farm
Campsites near Mountain Dale, NY, on the southern edge of the Catskills. I had picked this campground out of our Guide
primarily for location. It was about 100
miles from NYC and we had thought we might drive in to the city to visit
daughter Mandi and husband Paul, and granddaughter Kaci. We didn’t want to get Tuzigoot any closer to
NYC traffic and this campground would be both cheap and reasonably
convenient. Closer locales were mostly
state parks and these didn’t have sites large enough to fit us.
Now for the grueling part.
PA interstate highways, as we’ve found previously, are not in very good
condition. A lot of rough pavement. To add insult to injury they have mileage markers every
ONE-TENTH of a mile in long stretches of rural regions (vs. the .2 mile-markers
we observed in MO). Money that should
have been spent on the roads themselves!
Things got worse in NY.
Just after crossing the state line, I took the exit dictated
by the nice GPS lady. But, at the first
intersection, a Y, I was in the wrong lane and had to turn right when I should
have turned left. This led to a 10-mile
U-turn. So, I was a little tensed up
when we got back to where we had been and I turned left.
Just after that turn, Miss GPS said turn right on
Maple. Maple didn’t look like a highway
through the town of Port Jervis, NY, but I followed instructions. Oops. Immediately,
I saw a sign saying Low Clearance: 9 ft and just past that I could see an old,
arched RR underpass! Tuzi is about 12
ft. high. Luckily, there was a spacious shoulder on my left and I was able to pull over there and get off the road. Only problem was that the hitch between Tuzi
and the pick-up was in a twisted position that made the hitch impossible to
un-hitch. Susie got in the pick-up, with
the motor running, and with a little back and forth we got things straightened
out and then unhitched. Plan was that, with Susie directing me and holding back any traffic, I
would turn Tuzi around and Susie would follow me through town until we found a
place we could re-hitch. Also, we were
looking for a grocery store, so thought surely we’d find one with a large
parking lot. Again, very fortunately,
there was room to pull into a parking lot where we were, then, with Susie
directing traffic, back out in the road, then point ourselves back toward the
road from whence we had come. (Later Susie complimented me on how calmly I had handled this difficult situation. Mostly, I was just relieved the situation wasn't much worse - I could imagine needing the help of police to extricate ourselves from this mess.)
Just after I started down that road, another Low Clearance
sign – this one 12’ 4.” I ducked my head
and kept on driving, fully expecting to hear a rooftop air conditioner being
scraped or removed, but it didn’t happen!
We did soon see signs for route 209, which I knew we wanted, and
followed it through town until I found a place to pull over and re-hitch. No grocery stores, no Wal-Mart, though, so we
proceeded toward Mountain Dale.
We had programmed the address, 75 Forest Road, into the GPS,
but I no longer trusted Miss GPS (though she can’t be faulted for not knowing
Tuzigoot is 12 ft. tall) to plot our route through forests and around lakes and
mountains, so I stopped and called for instructions (which turned out to be different
from those Miss GPS had laid out), which we followed with no problems.
However, trepidations resurfaced as we turned into the driveway
to Hilltop Farm. It was a steep, narrow,
uphill lane with overhanging trees that slapped and scraped us as we drove
in. At the top we turned in to a fairly
decrepit looking campground. I
could sense tenseness in the passenger chair to my right. This is where you made a five-night
reservation? This is where Mandi and
Paul are going to join us for the weekend?!?
(Tentative plans for us to drive in to the city had been changed. Mandi and Paul would be joining us for a
weekend in the Catskills. Which had
seemed so promising. I pointed out that
we would spend a lot of our time touring the area, not hanging around the Hill
Top Farm, maybe watching a strange kid play the banjo- that’s a reference to
Deliverance, a long way from here.)
The campground owner led us to our site – apparently the only
pull-through site here. Ground was
fairly soggy, so I went looking for some boards that I could put under the
levelers. Owner suggested I talk to his
son, who was staying in the campground.
The son sort of explained things: Taxes are high, we don’t get the
visitors we once did, hard to keep this place going, my Dad’s health worries
me, I’m just here for a few days to help out, …
He found some boards and we set up.
Good thing, too, because it rained most of the night and is still
raining Saturday morning as this is written.
During the night I heard Susie say something about being mired in a sea
of mud.
After setting up we drove back to NY-17, from which we exited to
find our way here. Susie had noticed a campground sign at a previous exit. We were going back to Rock Hill, our exit,
for groceries and dinner, so she suggested we try to find another
campground. We looked, but couldn’t find
anything – I think maybe the sign was for our campground, because that is where
Miss GPS had directed us to exit, but we never found the sign to confirm that or not.
Besides, since Mandi and Paul are looking for some time away from the
City, what could be more different from the City than where we are right this
very minute! That was not a winning argument. Further drawbacks: only 30 amps, no wifi, no TV. That's more than roughing it!
I did a little research that evening and found a very highly-rated RV park about a 3-hr. drive to the NE, east of the Hudson River, near the village of Rhinebeck. Called in the morning and found that they had a spot for us. We closed up, hitched the pick-up, and left quickly. (Just before we left, two other RVs were pulling out - one a Tiffin Phaeton model - our Allegro Bus is another Tiffin motor home - and I asked how long he had been here. Three days too long, was his reply.) Light rain most of the way. One trip highlight was crossing this bridge over the Hudson River.
Here's a link to the Interlake RV park we moved to. It is a very nice park, with all the amenities. Susie was happy. Me, too , needless to say. We were in phone contact with Mandi and Paul who were on their way up from NYC. (Incidentally, road signs in the area say New York 82 miles, e.g. So, even if you live in NY some place other than NYC, all you have to say is that you're going to New York and people know you're going to NYC.) We headed to Rhinebeck for lunch and rendezvoused with M and P at a nice sidewalk restaurant there.
Their route brought them through Hyde Park. The FDR home and museum and the Vanderbilt mansion caught their attention and those became our Sunday objectives. Next installment.
Susie and Rob
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