August 28 - September 6, 2009

We left Rangeley on Friday and spent the weekend with Clif, Anne and Liz in New Hampshire. It was cold and rainy all day Saturday. We had Clif help us with a couple of things on our computers. Saturday Jared, Allie and Landon came for dinner. Sunday was a much nicer day. We still just hung out and visited. We had not seen them since May of 2008 so it was good to spend time with family.

Sunday we drove to Lincoln, New Hampshire which was only a couple of hours. There are no elevators and I figured Bob would have to do a bunch of carrying but our unit had two steps from the parking lot and then right in the door. Praise the Lord. It is getting cool at night but is still warm in the day. The van is finally dried out.

Monday morning Bob went to the activity meeting. I have been doing some reading and catching up on the blog and it was laundry day. We went for smores by the campfire on Monday night. Tuesday we took two different trips with the resort staff.

This is looking across from New Hampshire into Vermont.

The first was called Fall Foliage and Apple Picking. There is no Fall foliage yet but we stopped at 2 covered bridges. This is the Swiftwater Bridge.

The Bath bridge is over 350 feet and is the longest in the country.

We also stopped at a place called Indian Leap. Indians were to jump this to prove their manhood.

We ate lunch at the Windy Ridge Orchard.

Then we each picked ¼ peck of apples right from the trees and got to take them home.

We went to the oldest General Store in the country (Brick Store), received ¼ pound of fudge and also an ice cream cone.

By the time we got back we had only 20 minutes until the next activity. We went to Fadden’s Sugar House and General Store. We heard how they make maple syrup today, saw the equipment and found that this business has been in the family for 7 generations.

And we got to sample the maple syrup.

Wednesday was time for some computer catch-up. We skipped the “make your own bird feeder”. Thursday we went by caravan to the Cog Railway and rode to the top of Mt. Washington.

It is New Hampshire’s highest peak and it took about an hour to ride up. The steep tracks were astonishing and we found that the locomotive wasn’t hooked to the car. It just pushes the car up the mountain.

We were lucky as it wasn’t very windy and was about 52 degrees at the top.

We had about an hour and then boarded for the trip back down.

It was an enjoyable and different experience.

Friday was baking day. I made 2 pies with the apples and tried a new recipe for brownies. I have enough food in the freezer now for most of next week. We are not sure what our accommodations will be like as we have seen some terrible reviews.

Saturday was finishing up the blogs (I am now up to date), doing some laundry and packing. Probably tonight will be our spa night. I will let you know when I post next time. We head into Canada tomorrow for 3 weeks.

August 16 - 28, 2009

We were busy during our 4 full days in Massachusetts. We visited with others at the wine and cheese social and I went to two different spa sessions, one with Beauti Control and the other with Arbonne. We spent one day in Hyde Park, New York visiting the Vanderbilt Historic Site,

FDR National Historic Park

and then the Eleanor Roosevelt Historic Park called Val-Kill.

The FDR site was where he was born, raised, lived and also died. We learned quite a bit. At the Vanderbilt site the park has hired goats from a farmer to eat the vegetation on the hill along the Hudson River.

We enjoyed many fresh vegetables from the road side stands. Eating fresh corn-on-the-cob, BLTs and peach shortcake has been fun.

We didn’t have a full week in Massachusetts but moved on Friday, August 21 to Rangeley, Maine. On our way up through the country we visited the only National Park in New Hampshire which is Saint-Gaudens.

He was a sculptor who is best known for his standing Lincoln.

He had a studio here.

We also learned that he was friends with Chester Arthur French who sculpted the sitting Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.

It rained all afternoon after we had lunch in West Lebanon, New Hampshire and the van started leaking again. We arrived in Rangeley, Maine about 6 p.m. Oh wow, how awesome. We were in a three bedroom log cabin.

The master bedroom and bath were upstairs and there were two bedrooms and bath downstairs as well as a nice kitchen, dining area and living room with a fireplace.

There was a covered front porch with a picnic table and a couple of chairs. We could see Rangeley Lake from the main lodge.

We walked in the mornings down to the lake edge where there was a dock.

It was comfortable and very relaxing all week. I loved to sit in the rocking chair and watch out the big picture window.

The visitor center operates a free moose tour two evenings a week for about 2 hours in the evening just before dark. Since I have been so many places and have never seen a moose we decided to go on Monday night. But it was a bust. No moose and this was the first time with this bus driver. Oh well. Bob & I drove out on our own on Wednesday night and did actually see 3 moose. It was almost dark and we couldn’t take a picture but we did see them. They were females so no large antlers. We didn’t do any other traveling during the week as Bob worked to dry out the carpet of the van. This was one of the first places that I really didn’t want to leave because it was so comfortable.

August 8-16, 2009

We left Virginia and traveled north to New Jersey. We spent a lovely evening and day with Coleen’s cousin Sandy & Frank. We hadn’t seen them for over a year and it was great to spend some time visiting with them. They graciously opened their home to us for the night. We worshiped with them at their church on Sunday morning. Coleen even visited 2 quilt shops with Sandy. Bob went with Frank to see the remodeling on Kathy & Garrett’s house. Kathy, Garrett and Alisa stopped in to see us Saturday night.

We left New Jersey early Sunday evening and drove to Shawnee-on-the-Delaware, Pennsylvania. We moved into a nice two bedroom condo. There were two floors with bedrooms up and a very nice screened porch. Monday we got our bearings and did some planning for the week. Tuesday Bob took the van to get and oil change. We then went to the outlet mall and found some really good bargains on some clothes. We stopped at the grocery and arrived back at the condo about 7 p.m. just in time to see a black bear tipping over the garbage cans in the parking lot. We guessed that the bear was about a year old but it sure knew what to do. We also saw a skunk walking around the parking lot of the recreation center.

We went to the Delaware Water Gap National Park at Dingmans Falls. We walked to see them and also passed by Silverthread Falls. We spent another day driving to the Upper Delaware Gap National Park. We stopped at the Roebling Delaware Aqueduct. It brought back memories of our canal trip in June. It is a road now but used to be a canal over the river. We stopped at Grey Towers which is a National Historic Site operated in Milford, PA. It was the summer home of the Gifford Pinchot family who was governor of Pennsylvania twice and was instrumental in starting the forest service.


Next was the Zane Grey Museum in Lackawaxen right on the Delaware River.

The last stop of the day was the Steamtown National Historic Park in Scranton.





It brought back memories of the Durango steam trains. The roundhouse, turntable and yard have been restored and there is an excellent museum. We went through a caboose,

box car,
sleeping car and then the mail car.


We got back to the condo just in time to see the 3 raccoon run under our porch.

As we returned from our Saturday morning walk we enjoyed another visit from a bear. This was a larger one and she also came back a second time about a half hour later. She just pushed the entire bin over so that the trash cans inside dump out and then she rifled through the garbage. We decided that this was our wild animal week.

We left on Sunday for Hancock, Massachusetts. On the way we stopped in Kinderhook, New York at Martin Van Buren Historic Site to see Lindenwald. Since we are seeing so many historic items I found a book called Presidents for Dummies and purchased it to see what we might learn in a short amount of time.