Friday, July 31, 2015
We have arrived at BaHHH HaboHHHH!  We had a short drive today from Skowhegan, and stopped at the rest area before Bangor, ME and stocked up on all the informational things there are to do here.  We should have allowed a month here alone!  I think we'll be back here, too!  We have 10 days here, so we are welcoming that, although, we know it won't be resting time. Our son, Mike and his family arrive on Sunday and will be with us for the week, and we look forward to that.  We did find out that there are four microbreweries on the island, and one was very close to us, so we checked it out this afternoon.  The beer was good, and we brought home a full rack of baby back ribs for dinner tonight.  We both agreed that the beer was better than the meal.  They only do 'meat' and it's all smoked, so we'll find a different place for seafood.  Tomorrow is another day.

 This is the bar area and kitchen for the Atlantic Brewing Company that we found close to us today.  They have an outside patio area for people to eat and drink their beer.

This is the Quebec or 'Crouching Beaver' oven, that was built by early settlers of French Canada or northern Maine.  The ovens would heat for a number of days, with the first day, they would cook meats, such as roasts or bake bread, and the second day it acted like a clothes dryer on soggy days.

Thursday, July 30, 2015
Today is our free day to check out Skowhegan, and no traveling with the motor home.  We did find out that Skowhegan was named after the Indian tribe that lived here before any white men.  We mostly geo-cached today and it took us to some interesting places.  We were told by the owner of the campground, that this is the home of New Balance shoes, so we went to the outlet store and Jim bought a pair of shoes. Then we struck off to find our caches.  We found a neat one on the suspension bridge and walked on the bridge.  Of course, we had to do that!  We found a microbrewery that had a geo-cache, so we had to check that out.  It's pretty young (13 years old), but their beer was quite good.  They wouldn't fill our growler, as it's the state law to only fill their own growlers, so we bought a few bottles that they had of the kind we preferred.  We did have fun with 'Nancy' and we're glad we went.  They have heard of the New Glarus Brewery, in fact, the owner loves Spotted Cow!  Oh, if they could only see that facility, compared to theirs.  They were still in the garage, which is under the house that they live in.  We're starting to get a shower, so we hope it ends by morning when we need to hook up.  We're ready to move.

                                        This is the New Balance Plant in Skowhegan, Maine.

     Suspension bridge over the river at Skowhegan, Maine.  This is my favorite photo for today.

The wooden sculpture depicting the Maine Indians, who were the first people to use these lands in a peaceful way.  It was 65 feet high.

We met Nancy at the Oak Pond Brewing Company, just east of Skowhegan, ME.  Their slogan: Try it because it's local.  Buy it because it's good!

Wednesday, July 29, 2015
After leaving our wonderful campground in Danville, VT, we traveled through the Green Mountains in Vermont, and the White Mountains in New Hampshire, all on Hwy. 2. All the way across these states and into Maine, we kept seeing signs that we should be aware of moose, but we saw no real ones.  There were plenty of wood carved or tin, and they all lawn ornaments.  Maybe before we get out of this area, we'll see a real one!  We will be in Skowhegan, ME until Friday, so tomorrow we will go scout out the town.  I haven't found out yet if it is Norwegian.  I forgot to ask when we checked in, but there is plenty of time.  I do know they have the tallest wood carved Indian in town, so perhaps it was settled by the Native Americans.  We did see that they have a microbrewery just east of us on Hwy. 2.  They are only open from 3:30 to 5:30, so we have to plan our day perfectly.  I saw a sign today that said: ' Give mosquitoes a break, get a haircut.'  Of course, it was at a barber shop.   A few days ago, we saw a sign that said, 'Make the rest of your life, the best of your life'. My feeling on that one is that, the best of our life was when we were raising our four children.  We are just reaping the benefits of doing a great job! I have no pictures to post today, but once we get to Acadia National Park, we'll make up for it! For our dancing friends, I have this to tell you.  We got in today and the phone rang.  It was Kathy (Katrina) Goezinger from Freeport, IL.  I was so surprised to hear from her, as we had heard that she had a stroke several years ago, and was in a nursing home.  She sounded wonderful, but said she can't dance any more, and has problems with her right arm and leg.  She said she wanted to contact us because she discovered the film from her cam-recorder from our trip to Europe with her and Bob Gerber in 2004!  She wants to send us a DVD of it.  She said she watched it this week and it took 3 hours!  We were so excited to hear from her and that she is doing fairly well.  At least she's home and said she even went to New Glarus last weekend.  This made today another 10!

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

We were up early this morning, so we decided to leave the campground even BEFORE anyone was allowed to run generators.  We had such a trying time getting back into this spot, and we wanted to make our exit before too many people were stirring.  We hooked up the truck once we got out on Hwy. 30, and it all worked out very well.  We did alter our travel plans by going south, as our motor home GPS had a problem with us crossing in northern NY across the bridges over Lake Champlain, and into Vermont, but instead wanted us to go to Canada.  We had purchased too much wine and still had Wisconsin beer aboard, so we had to go to Plan B.  We're glad we did, and our day went very well.  We arrived at Waterbury, VT at 1:00 and stopped at Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Plant there and did the tour.  Our friend, Vern Irion really wanted us to stop here!  Twist my arm!  We had a great turnaround for the Rv, and we even found a geo-cache there, so we earned a souvenir for the state of Vermont.  Once we arrived at Montpelier, we took Hwy. 2 from there and will continue on that until we get to Newport, Maine.  It's a secondary road, but quite nice and very scenic.  Our campground is called Sugar Ridge in Danville, VT, and is very nice.  The sites are even level, which is a bonus over the last two nights!  We're sitting high atop the mountains here so our internet works very well, too.  That will give me a chance to catch up on posting my pictures and logging our caches.  This is just an overnight and we'll be stopping in Skowhegan, ME for two nights.  Do you think Skowhegan is Norwegian?  We'll find out.

                   This is our very tight fitting spot in Rollins Pond Campground, near Tupper Lake, NY.

   

                                                                 Scenic drive today.

                                                          Crossing Lake Champlain.

                These two photos were taken at Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Plant in Waterbury, VT. 

Monday, July 27, 2015

We made the right choice today to go to Lake Placid to check it out.  Beautiful day, but a little on the warm side.  We aren't complaining, as it could be raining.  Our geo-caching took us to the most important part of Lake Placid, but we did drive through the town, and were amazed at the people there!  We were warned back at the Kinzua Bridge State Park by 'Shelly', that the Ironman was going on in Lake Placid on Sunday, but we had this planned, so here we are!  For those of you who live in Wisconsin, or those who have ever been to the Wisconsin Dells, this is a glorified WI Dells!  Very touristy, and with the Ironman competition there, it only added to the mass of people milling around.  We saw what we wanted to see: the hockey arena where 'The Miracle on Ice' happened in 1980, the ski jump, which was awesome, the skating rink, the torch holder and John Brown's home and grave.  We also had our picture taken on the podium at the ski jump, by a couple from Madison, WI!  Small world.  We leave our huge campground in the morning for Vermont, and dreading the trek out of here.  We clocked it by truck today, how long it takes us to get out and it was 25 minutes!  They claim to be the best huge campground, and I know our son and his family would love it here.  They tent camp and that is mostly what it is.  Most every site is on the water, and we are site # 220. That doesn't count the ones in the 'other campground' that we had to drive through to get to this.  Uffda!  Tomorrow is a travel day with a one night's stay in Danville, Vermont.
I tried to load pictures, but we don't have good service tonight, so I'll do it another time. We are in a very dense forest here, but beautiful!

             The hockey arena where "The Miracle on Ice" took place during the 1980 Winter Olympics.

                                              The symbol outside the skating/hockey arenas.

                                                                  Yes, it was REAL snow!

                                                 The ski jump on the Olympic grounds.

                                       Jim and Marlene standing on the podium at the ski jump.

               My favorite picture from today.  It's the torch holder with the Olympic rings in the foreground.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Today was a great travel day from Lower NY State to Upper NY State!  We were hesitant to take Hwy. 3 into the Adirondack's, but it's a beautiful road.  It reminds us of Northern Wisconsin.  Getting to our campground was another thing.  We had to go through one campground to get to ours and the roads were narrow and we are in a FOREST, so you go a ways, and let someone pass, and then we arrived at our site!  OMG!  We thought, "we are going to fit in there"?  It's plenty long enough but the trees are very close!  We aren't even going to put out our bedroom slide out tonight.  Otherwise, it is beautiful here!  We are backed right up to Fish Creek Pond.  We have no hook ups, so that means we will have to run our generator for coffee in the morning, and charge our batteries.....house and body!  I'm surprised the internet works out here because we are deep in a dense forest area.  Yesterday we didn't write as that was our geo-caching day and we did find 16 caches and some were pretty ingenious!  We met some very friendly people, and actually got two youngsters to help us find our last cache.  We had stopped at a picnic shelter to get a cache and there was a family reunion going on, so we skipped it and came back to it later.  Only five people were remaining from the picnic/reunion, and the two children were amongst them.  They had a great time helping us find the cache, and we took pictures of them with the cache container and we'll post it on the blog, when we can do pictures.  They were just awesome and we all had a great time.  I think we made geo-cachers out of them!  Tomorrow we are going to Lake Placid, so we should have lots to write about tomorrow night. Life is good!

 The waterfalls are a common occurrence in PA with all the rains they have had, and the many streams, and rivers.  This is Nelson Falls near Cowanesque, PA in the northeastern part of the state.

       These are the delightful geo-caching buddies we met!  We had a great time with them.  Great kids!

Friday, July 24, 2015
We had another wonderful day, and we spent it in Watkin's Glen State Park in NY.  It was only 30 miles from our campground in Cowanesque, and we wanted to check out the Finger Lakes area in NY.  Upon researching things to do in the area, I discovered this park, and we are very glad we went.  It is close to Seneca Lake, one of the 11 Finger Lakes in NY.  It is one of the most famous of the New York State Parks, and with all the people there today, it must be the most popular, as well.  It is stunningly, jaw dropping beautiful! It is quite primitive but they have done a lot to make it accessible for people to get close to the fast raging water that gushes down through the gorge.  Within two miles, the glen's stream descends 400 feet past 200 foot cliffs, generating 19 waterfalls along its course.  There are trails on both sides of the water course, so with all our traipsing around today, we hiked 6 miles.  We did some geo-caching, also, so that helped to add our mileage.  It also gave us our NY souvenir for geo-caching in a different state.  We also checked out the wineries in that area, as it's known for their dry Riesling wines.  We chose to go to the Castel Grisch. It is high atop the soft rolling hills overlooking Lake Seneca, and with it being such a beautiful day, we chose to eat outside.  We had a delicious lunch, and called it a day.  I am sorry that I can't post my pictures from today, as of yet.  We have terrible internet service here, but I manage to send out the blog okay, and an occasional e-mail.  I'll bombard you with pictures another time.  We plan to go geo-caching in this area tomorrow, so I may not write until we get to our next 'adventure'.  We leave Sunday for Tupper Lake, NY and that is in the upper Adirondack's.  We'll be there two nights. 
It's Saturday and we'll send out the pictures from yesterday at Watkin's Glen State Park and I'm including a picture of Punxsutawney Phil, as we couldn't leave PA without seeing him!

Thursday, July 23, 2015

We left Tionesta, PA today and decided to take Hwy. 6 as our main route to Cowanesque, PA.  Our next campground is at Tompkin's Campground, which is another corps of engineer park, on Lake Cowanesque.  It is absolutely lovely here!  As careful as we were to check out our trip today, you know what they say about 'best laid plans',  they don't always work.  We wanted to stop in Kinzua State Park and see one of the 10 highest skywalks in the world, and walk on it.  Jim checked out Google Earth and it looked like we could bring our motor home, towing our truck in and make a loop return back out.  When we got there, they had one section on the main road in, marked for RV's and buses.  No turnaround.  They are building a new Visitor Center there, and it appears to be fabulous, so we may have to come back again.  They closed the loop road off, and only cars permitted to drive into the other parking lot (which was big enough for us to turn around!).  We enjoyed the awe of the bridge, and met some neat people along the way, and tried to stay focused on the majesty of this structure, and forget about how we were going to get out of there. We managed by unhooking, turning around and hooking back up again.  Hwy. 6 was a wonderful and scenic drive and we're so glad we took it.  Jim got a little concerned when his motor home GPS kept telling him to turn around, as there was a 10 ton limit ahead!  I told him that we checked with the PA DOT and they said we could travel it with no problem.  I also told him that we just crossed 2 - 10 ton limit bridges and all was fine! We are only here for three nights, and I know we will wish that we could stay longer, but we need to keep on schedule to meet our son and his family in Bar Harbor.  This isn't too far to come back someday.  I tried to post some pictures from today, but our internet isn't very good here, and it wouldn't do it. Our phones are also dead, so we won't get any messages until we get to a different location.  We are having 75 degrees weather and dry air, so it's beautiful here.

I'm posting pictures from the Kinzua Skywalk.  We're a day late but with lack of internet service, we had to go to Plan B.  We did the Watkin's State Park today and I'll write that tonight.  Awesome place.  We just had lunch at the Castel Grisch Winery, perched high above Seneca Lake with a great view.  We even bought some wine!  Now for the pictures from yesterday.

                   This is the Kinzua Skywalk Bridge at Kinzua Bridge State Park in Mt.Jewett, PA.

                                         Jim and I at the end of the skywalk on Kinzua Bridge.

                                                    Bridge supports under the skywalk.

                                                          Tornado damage in 2003.

We woke up to a beautiful morning with drier air, and temps in the 70's for today. We went to the Visitor Center in Clarion, PA to pick up our Clarion Co. AGT coin, which is beautiful.  We found out that the trails in PA are funded with grants because they are in the Allegheny National Forest, so that's why they are so nice out here and the ones we have ridden on in WI are packed gravel.  The gal we talked to at the center also put many of the caches out on the trail we were planning to do today, so that was nice to meet her. We did half of them, which amounted to 29 caches, and biked 10 miles, so we will save the northern half for another time.  Next year?  We're off to visit our friends, Evie and John again tonight at their home, as we are leaving in the morning for Cowanesque, PA.  It's another corps of engineer park, with lots of stuff to do nearby.  We are mainly going to travel Hwy. 6 which is known as one of the most scenic highways in the nation. We did check with the PA DOT if we could safely drive our motor home on that highway, as our GPS wanted us to take the I-system.  Going out east, we are concerned for low bridges, or weight of vehicles that could prompt us to turn around.  Not that easy with a motor home and tow vehicle. We're just trying to keep ahead of a problem!  We're ready to move.  No pictures today. 

Tuesday, July 21, 2015
We had a marvelous day today, even if we had more rain!  It started out great, so we struck off for Cranberry, PA where there is a beautiful hiking/biking trail on Sandy Creek.  They also have geo-caches along the trail, so that was a plus!  We even found our D5 cache, meaning it was the highest degree of difficulty to find and we needed one to obtain our souvenir for the 15 years of geo-caching.  It was on one of the bridges that crosses the Sandy Creek Trail, and Jim retrieved it. It's called 'Catwalk' so I'll let you imagine what he had to do to get it. His ankle is much better!  Then we ran into a couple hiking on the path, and we stopped to talk to them (imagine that!) and come to realize that he was very instrumental in getting approval of making this a bike/hike path.  It was originally an ATV trail, and it is in the works to be part of a trail that extends from Lake Erie to Pittsburgh, and continue on to Washington D.C. We left that couple and found one more cache and heard the clap of thunder!  Jim said it was time to turn around, and this time I didn't balk, as we could see the dark clouds rolling in.  We made it back to the truck, loaded up our bikes and the rain started!  We came back to Tionesta, and took our nut bread to the visitor center to give to our friends, who volunteer there.  We met them in 2010, and have kept in touch with them since.  We didn't tell them that we were coming, and we walked in, and Evie just sat in a stupor.  John said, 'well, my goodness, it's Jim and Marlene'!  We stayed and chatted with them for two hours.  Of course, we bought t-shirts and post cards!  They wanted to see us tomorrow, but we have plans to bike again in Clarion PA, and we know we need to leave early as it will be late when we get back.  We agreed to meet them at their place tomorrow evening.  John likes beer, so we'll take along a few WI beers to share with them.  It was another 10 day!

                               Jim on the bridge approaching the tunnel on the Sandy Creek Trail

The couple we met on the trail.  They were interesting to talk to, and he was involved with the development of the trail.

                           Our friends at the Visitor Center in Tionesta, PA.  Evie, Jim, Marlene, and John

Monday, July 20, 2015
There was no rush to get any place today, as we had a terrible rainstorm last night and everything had to dry up before we could do what we wanted to do. We heard a howl last night, that neither of us had heard before! There was a stillness in the air, and all of a sudden it let loose!  We did hear on the news that a tornado was sighted just north of us.  We went to the dam later this morning, which is just around the corner from us and the road is much higher than our campground. To our surprise, we saw several trees were downed by the park visitor center, and a crew was in cleaning it up.  So much for staying out of harm's way!  We did venture out after lunch today and did some geo-caching on some back roads and the work crews were out getting trees out of the roads.  We did manage to find 17 caches today, and we were on roads that we weren't sure where we were going to come out!  One was a one lane, narrow road, so we were glad we didn't meet anyone.  Jim asked me is it was a holler and I told him that I thought it had an in and out.  We didn't exactly want to be escorted out! The Allegheny River is very high and the smaller creeks were full with some very fast, rushing water.  We hope to do a bike trail tomorrow if it doesn't rain.
Our RV is the one on the top left, hidden in the trees.  This was taken from the road by the visitor center. 

                                  This is the scene of downed trees at the visitor center at our park.

Sunday, July 19, 2015
Today was a travel day, but there is no hurry.  We only had a few hours on the road, as we are staying at  the Tionesta Recreation Area Campground, which is a corps park with FULL hookups!  That's unheard of in corps parks, but we understand that a frequent visitor at the corps parks in PA has a relative that is a senator.  Need I say any more?  We have stayed here before, after attending the polkafest in Enon Valley, PA so we are somewhat familiar with the area.  I should have started out saying "These Pennsylvania hills are calling me back".....words to a very popular polka song.  We love traveling in PA!  We will be here four nights, so it's a good time to kick back and take it easy.  I have loaded some geo-caches on a rails to trails bike trail, so we'll try to do that when it isn't so hot and it's not raining.  We got in too early today, as someone was in our spot yet, so we had to park somewhere else, until they left.  They have every right to stay until check out time, so we were fine with that. We weren't even parked yet, and the lady across the road from us, said she has a daughter from Madison, WI.  Then she said they were stationed at Truax, the military base in Madison 'many years ago'.  I know we will be talking to them some more.  Jim set the dish up so we are watching the Brewers! The AC is on and we're 'happy campers'! I'll post the picture of the beautiful glass sculpture, that we saw in Starved Rock State Park in IL. I sent the pictures to Leonard Bottema because he does this with single dishes.  This is mechanical and takes it to the next level.

It's still Saturday and we arrived in Streetsboro, OH about 1:30 this afternoon.  Our plan for today was to visit Lorene (Ene) Gebler in her new residence in Macedonia, OH and then go to her daughter, Jayne's house in Hudson for dinner.  We found Ene in great spirits and it was so very good to see our long time dancing friend!  She has a lovely and spacious apartment in a very nice building, and she is only 15 minutes from her daughter.  After reminiscing about all the great times we've had over the years, and of course, laughing a lot, we drove down to Jayne's.  She had a wonderful meal for us and they were prefect hosts!  I'll post a picture of Jayne, Ron, Ene, Jim and I, taken in Jayne's back yard.  Today was a 10!

                                     This is another pictures of Ene on her patio at her place.

Saturday, 7/18/2015

Good morning!  We have gotten some e-mails from some of you, concerned about us as you are watching the weather for us!  Yes, Elkhart, IN had some storms last night, but we only had rain.  We had an uneventful day, so I didn't post anything.  We breezed through Chicago in record time (the roads are always rough there, and I always say it 'settles my flour'), and we arrived in Elkhart, IN early in the afternoon.  Here is where we ran into a dilemma.  The road was closed to get into our campground for the two blocks prior to the entrance, so we followed the detour for CR4 but only went 2 blocks!  We knew we couldn't come in from the back side, so we stopped and called the campground.   They told us that the road construction people will let us through.  OYE! What a mess. We were disappointed to find out that our RV supply place had been a victim of the recent recession and closed, and the other two that are in town, didn't have what we were looking for.  We did go to the Great Wall Restaurant and have dinner last night.  We had eaten there with Curly and Karon Long about 4 years ago, when they used to live in this area.  I actually had to call them in AZ, to get the name, as we couldn't remember it.  Now for me to forget a restaurant's name, is unusual, so I must be losing it!  We're off to Streetsboro, OH today and I won't post until later this evening.  We're meeting a dancing friend, who used to live in Rantoul, IL and now lives closer to her daughter in Hudson, OH. It's HOT and HUMID here today!  Summer has arrived.

We left Wittenberg at our targeted time this morning and had a good day of travel.  We arrived at Starved Rock State Park in Utica, IL for an overnight.  We had two different friends tell us about this park, so we wanted to see it for ourselves.  Annette, our dancing friend, said the Ice Caves are awesome in the winter time, and Jeanie, our hiking friend was here this past spring, and they liked the hiking and the scenery.  It's a very nice park with lots of wood carvings and an interesting glass sculpture by the main lodge.  We had just enough time to scout out the main park area and do a short hike to the park's namesake....Starved Rock.  It was a huff and puff with lots of stairs and we found out that we are out of shape! We got back to the truck just in time for the Heavens to fall!  We did manage to pick up one geo-cache on our way, but the rain ended our hiking in Starved Rock.  All the more reason to come back.  We'll be up tomorrow and arrive in Elkhart, IN for the night.

                                      We saw this dragonfly when we stopped for the geo-cache

                        There are many carvings of eagles in the park, and Adler means Eagle in German

July 15, 2015
We have been busy this week, packing for our new adventure to New England, of which, we have never been to that area.  We will add to this journal as we travel and feel we have noteworthy things of interest for you.  I think every day is an adventure, so you'll be hearing from us often!  We haven't had much time at our Wittenberg residence, Eagle's Landing, or better known as our 'homey shed', since returning from AZ, as we have had three polkafests to attend, and then the doctor appointments for the two of us, have consumed what little time we have had. We're good for another 100,000 miles, and we will be ready to embark on our travels tomorrow morning.  For those of you who aren't familiar with our dwelling for the summertime, this is Eagle's Landing.