Montreal

We are in Montreal, where the force of the internet is weak. The "free" wifi at the RV park consists of 15 minutes per each hour that are free. Otherwise it's $8 a day. I think that probably constitutes false advertising. The other thing that is making me nuts is that there is a complete lack of cartography for the area south of Montreal proper. It's as if nothing south of Montreal was worth committing to paper. That, of course, is where we are. The park is very nice, we both have a sense of having been let out of jail now that we're no longer in the Adirondacks, and we can see the sky through the RV windows. Tomorrow we will conduct a scouting trip to find the bike path that goes to the Ile des Soeurs. It looks like it would be an extremely cool ride, unfortunately the trail head is in that uncharted region of the area.
On a different whine, the Quebec province is trying to attract tourist dollars. Where, one wonders, might the tourist dollar come from? Perhaps the United States, where they speak ENGLISH! There is very little in the way of info at the tourist center that's not in French. It's like putting a sign on the province that says "don't spend money here". We're memorizing Google maps when my air card is not dropping us. When one signed up for the air-Canada plan for twice the price of the air-American plan, one assumed that coverage would be included in the new price. Apparently this is not the case.
So, although we're in one of the most beautiful places on earth, there may not be a lot of pictures. Just me, whining.

New York - The Adirondack Forest Preserve

We have spent the last 6 nights in Wilmington, NY, which is in the Adirondack Forest Preserve. It's an area one fifth the size of New York, and was originally created to prevent deforestation and desertification of the area. There was concern that if the entire area was logged, the water levels in the Erie Canal would suffer. There is much private property ownership, but not a large amount of new development.
Lake Placid was the site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. It's surprising what a remote area it is. One wonders where everyone slept and ate. The speed skating track is outside. It's an oval concrete ring that they flooded. That was surprising.

An eatery in Lake Placid with a view of the lake.


Look across the lake at the large summer homes.


This was taken in AuSable Forks. It's one of the many itty bitty cute little towns that dot the landscape.

Now we are in Saranac Lake. It's another itty bitty cute little town.




Where we are there are rolling hills. The Adirondack Mountains are part of the preserve, but we did not get there. There's a lot of bucolic loveliness.


These are the ski jumps from the 1980 Olympics. They look really other worldly from the road.


There are a lot of bicyclists in the area. Saturday there was a road race in Wilmington, and Sunday there was a criterium in Saranac Lake. There are riders everywhere. The drivers are nice, we rode on the weekend and were not threatened at all. The road surface is another matter, some of the shoulders look like they've been carpet bombed.


Due to the intense rain storms that we've had here the rivers are pretty full.


Today, finally, the sun came out for awhile. We did about 23 miles on the mountain bikes, on the road. Getting the road bikes out requires that we completely dismantle the RV basement, and it wasn't worth it for one day.




So, I've had requests for a report on the Adirondacks. Obviously we did not see the entire area. Two days were spent dealing with my ear infection and other life issues, so that consumed some time. We didn't see the mountains, so I can not report on the hiking there. Plus the weather just SUCKED. The area is beautiful. If you don't fish or bicycle, I'm not sure what you'd do for more than a couple of days. If you're in a big RV, you probably will not like the parks here. They are heavily forested, really dark, and the interior roads were designed for coaches much smaller than ours. Hotels abound, however. I'd come back here later in the year when the weather is better, and I'd stay in a different park. There are hundreds of miles of places to ride and hike, when it's not raining. Did I mention it rained a lot?
Anyway, tomorrow we are off to Montreal for 3 weeks. Hopefully it will stop raining! I have switched our cell phone and aircard to really expensive Canadian plans so we are still on the grid while out of the US.
Hope you are all well.

Washington DC

Here we are in the wilds of New York, listening to it rain. What is UP with the weather this year? We spent the weekend in DC at the Cherry Hill RV park. More on that later. Anyway, Saturday we metro'ed in to Georgetown to walk around.
We like the subway, we see interesting people wearing interesting outfits. Especially their boots.


DC has spent a gazillion dollars on the Georgetown waterfront. In the 80s there was no reason to go down there, it was pretty creepy. Now it has been cutified, there are many condos and restaurants. People like to drive their boats up the Potomac and raft up on the docks.


We had lunch at the waterfront. Jim tried another fried soft shelled crab sandwich. It was better than the one he had last year at the Outer Banks.


It's fun to watch their legs fall out of the bun.


After lunch we continued walking. This is part of the old C&O canal system.


Lyndon LaRouche has had supporters staking out street corners in Georgetown since I was in high school. It just amazes me that they are still there after all these years.



We went to Dean and Deluca. It's an uber upscale grocery store.


It's just just lovely there.

The walk continued. We went up through Georgetown University and through the neighborhoods. The row houses there are just beautiful.


Sunday we went back in on the subway to go to the Smithsonian. People bring all kinds of stuff on the subway. This gentleman had the wheel and tire with him and got off at the Greenbelt station. I was disappointed that we did not see how he got it down the escalator.


Main lobby of the Museum of Natural History.


The Hope Diamond.


Then we went to the Museum of American History. It's really worth seeing. I wanted to see the First Ladies exhibit but the line was just huge. They have Julia Childs' kitchen there. It's definitely worth seeing. I don't have any pictures of it because the lighting was terrible. The picture below is from the transportation exhibit. I thought it was amusing, and a little poignant. Now we're called RVr's instead of "trailerites".....


One of the first travel trailers.


The Castle at the Smithsonian. It was the first building in the complex.


This is the second oldest building at the Smithsonian. It's closed for renovations.


This morning was tedious. I had to ask the guy next to us to move his giant pickup truck to we could leave. Moving about that park was really difficult, due to narrow streets. Anyway, he was pretty upset, said he'd only gotten to bed two hours before (it was 8:30!), but I persisted and he eventually came out and moved. The traffic around Baltimore was horrendous.


This is why the traffic was so bad. How does this happen? This is an on ramp to the circumferential, how on earth did the driver get up enough speed to wreck the car this badly?


It was a long day, lots of construction and slow traffic. Jim was a trooper and did all the driving. Tomorrow will be shorter. We're going to be in the Adirondacks for 6 nights. I have no idea how the internet will be there, so you may or may not be hearing from us from the woods. After that, it's in to Canada with us.
So, we hope your are all well, as we are.

Washington DC

Greetings gentle readers, gather ye round and listen to my tale of lamentation and woe. We left Greensboro bright and early, and best of all, we left between rain storms so we were not drenched. That ended early, this is how most of the day looked. We NEVER run the wipers on high, but we did today.


When we got through Richmond, the traffic just went from bad to worse. I think we had about 45 miles of 5 mph traffic. This was one of the many accidents impacting traffic. Somehow, this truck managed to go off the road and jack knife. That's the trailer that has come around on the cab. The guy is lucky he wasn't squashed by it. There were several more accidents after that. It was a LONG drive to DC.

So, we're here at Cherry Hill RV Park. We came very close to hitting a sign post with the RV trying to get around a corner. We had to ask one RV to move their truck. They were very nice about it, they have two pit bulls and a large cockatoo in their RV. That's a lot of critters. Anyway, with the truck out of the way, Jim was able to wiggle the RV through the turn with no damage. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.
BUT, on the bright side, today is the last day of rain, tomorrow will be bright and shiny and in the upper 70's.

Chapel Hill NC Walk

Here are photos from the long slow Chapel Hill walk.

Chapel Hill NC

We're in Chapel Hill. This is where we used to live in Wake Forest. We were there for about a year. We were very gratified to see that the yard doesn't look any better now than when we had it. That yard was a bear to take care of.

We're in the Spring Hill RV park which is in the woods. It's way far away from everywhere. There are a lot of permanent residents, as is evidenced by the number of mailboxes.

Trees in an RV park are evil, they leave tree stuff on top of the coach, making more work for Jim.

Many people seem to be seasonal renters.

When you see a propane tank this large you know they've been here for awhile.


These are the evil trees overhanging our RV and dropping tree goo on top of our pristine roof.


Today we did a slow walking tour of Chapel Hill in the heat and the humidity. I think I'll do those pictures later because there are a lot of them.

Tomorrow we are off to Greensboro for warranty work. We will more than likely spend the night on their lot (does that not sound bucolic?) and hopefully depart Friday morning. If that goes well, we're thinking a couple or 3 days in the DC area might be fun, and then it's on to New York. We have to pick up mail in Plattsburgh next week and then it's over the border into the Great White North.