Wedding Week Sunday

Sunday morning we headed for the baseball game of Raelyn's brother Nate.  It was good to be at a youth baseball game again. 

Raelyn's Brother Nate and Stepdad Ray

The ball field is located at the old Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, and parked right next to the parking lot is this bomber.
 

Bomber at Delutis Field in Rome, NY

After the game, Frank and Linda headed over to the wedding venue ... Turning Stone Resort in Verona, NY. The wedding will be outside on the Great Lawn.  It looks to be a lovely setting.  The campground where we will be staying is just across the road from the resort, and we will be moving Pooh II over there for the days surrounding the wedding.   We checked out our reserved site, got a good look at the campground amenities, and then headed for an afternoon of cemetery walking.

As our readers may know, Linda is interested in genealogy.  She is an avid user of Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com, and she has found several cemeteries of ancestors on those sites.  It so happens that some of her ancestors are buried nearby:  Gideon Parsons (who fought in the Revolutionary War) and the parents of Gideon's son's wife (Clarissa Cleveland Parsons), Jedidiah and Lydia Cleveland. We were able to get photos of all three graves.

It is interesting that we are staying for a few days in Cleveland, NY.  We wonder if there is a connection between Linda's Clevelands who are buried about 25 miles away across the lake, and the Village of Cleveland.  More research is needed.

Matt and Raelyn arrived in NewYork after an all-night drive from South Carolina.  We will see them on Monday.

Let The Wedding Week Begin

Under the shadow of Thy throne

Thy saints have dwelt secure

Sufficient is Thine arm alone,

And our defense is sure.

Those words from a great hymn stuck on Linda's brain as we began the last leg of the journey.  Once again, real danger had confronted us, and yet we were safe, and the people we encountered along the way were honorable.  We would remiss if we did not thank God publicly for His many blessings on us and our family, and for His protection of us on our journeys. 

On Saturday we finally made it to Cleveland, NY, and the lovely home of Raelyn's Aunt Valerie and her husband John.  They have a gorgeous house right on Oneida Lake, and they graciously asked us to stay on their property for a few days before the wedding. 

The only minor glitch of the day was a confused Garmin.   When we figured out that Garmin had no idea where their property was, we were 5 miles beyond their house on a 2-lane road with nowhere to turn around.  Eventually, we came upon an elementary school with a bus turnaround in the front and we headed back. 

Of course, we could have done the sensible thing and CALLED Valerie to make sure we knew where we were going, instead of relying on Garmin.  But that wouldn't have been nearly as exciting.

After we got Pooh II settled in and hooked up, we had a terrific evening sitting on the deck overlooking the lake, sipping Cosmos and noshing on yummy dips, chips and burgers.   You, dear reader may not have been able to share in the delicious goodies, but you can feast on these pictures of the Dziura Estate . . . a little bit of heaven in Cleveland, NY.

Spectacular View

Boating or fishing off the Dziura dock

Party Central

Just gorgeous

Pooh II enjoying her stay here

Raelyn's parents were there, and several of her other relatives as well.  Matt is marrying into a large family, and that is a blessing in itself.  Matt and Rae will drive in from South Caroline on Sunday morning, so for this night, it is just the families of the bride and groom getting more acquainted.

Once Matt and Rae get here, the festivities will begin in earnest.  This night was a good chance to relax, get to know each other better, and rest up for the whirlwind that will begin tomorrow.

Amish Country - Day 2

Next morning, we decided to head to the Christiana Museum of the Underground Railroad.  While we didn't know much about it, it sounded interesting.  We love to visit little local museums. The Christiana Museum is a most intriguing place, with a curator (using the term loosely) who gave us a fascinating account of a little known incident involving the Fugitive Slave Act.

Zerchner Hotel.  A stop on the Underground Railroad in Christiana, PA.

In 1851, it was legal for a Southern slave owner to go into the non-slave states and retrieve their "property."  So, for a slave in the South who managed to escape and get across the Mason Dixon line, freedom was not guaranteed.  In fact the Fugitive Slave Law permitted the US Marshals to deputize local non-slave-owning Northerners to help the Southerners capture escaped slaves.  This was a major reason why escaped slaves went to Canada instead of staying in the North.

This man tells a great narrative

So, with all that going on, it is no wonder there were "incidents" all over the North border states when the slave "property" was apprehended.  The Christiana Riot (Rebellion?) is one of the better documented occurrences.

When we left the museum around 2:00, we decided to stop and pick up some real Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple (Linda loves it) and then head straight back to the garage. 

They had told us the day before that the parts would arrive around noon, and we figured we could be on our way by 3:00 at the latest.  Arrghhh.  When we got back to Andersons, they said the parts had JUST ARRIVED.  As is turned out, they did not start the repair until about 3:30, and Linda was a little frantic that they would not be done on time.  However, not to worry.  The brakes were fixed and we were on our way by 4:30.

We headed straight to a nice campground just down the road, and spent the remainder of the day just kicking back:  watching TV, surfing the 'net, having a couple of beers, and planning the next day's trip to our destination in Upstate New York, near Syracuse.

Amish Country - Day 1

After Pooh II was safely towed to Anderson's Garage, we headed out to do a little shopping, museum browsing, and genealogy searching.

We perused racks of kitsch ... all proudly proclaiming to be authentic "Amish" or "Pennsylvania Dutch."    Most of these things will do nothing but collect dust.  Fun to look at, but not to take home

Next on our list was the Museum of Mennonite Heritage.  It was primarily a gift shop (again!) with a small "museum" section of Mennonite and Amish history in the region.  There was, however, a wealth of material for home-schoolers regarding the ancient Israelis and the Ark of the Covenant . . . lots of workbooks and model kits for the kids to work on. 

Next door to the Museum was the Lancaster County Mennonite Genealogical Museum.  For a non-member fee of $5, Linda was able to track down a reference to one of her Mennonite ancestors ... one Hans Heinrich Raudenbusch.  Buried deep in a Miscellaneous file folder of uncategorized material regarding people whose last names begin with the letter R was a two-page write up on Hans and his parents, and his journey to America from Germany.  A needle in a haystack find.   Wheeeee!

Mennonite Genealogy Library

We headed back to Andersons.  It was hot and we were tired and anxious to get a status update on the brake repair.  While we were waiting to speak with the garage owner, Frank struck up a conversation with a guy who had a big auto transport rig.   It turns out that every year he goes to Clearwater, Florida, to pick up players' cars from the Philadelphia Phillies Spring Training facility and transport them back to Philadelphia for the season, as the players take a plane back.

All in all, an interesting and enjoyable day.

The Brakes

Just when the trip was going so well ... some woman in an SUV 1/4 mile ahead of us tried to make a U-turn on I-81 in front of a whole line of traffic.   Needless to say, there was massive screeching of tires, and big rigs flailing this way and that to avoid hitting each other.  Pooh II was at the tail end of the action, but Frank still had to lay on the brakes extremely hard.  The smell of burning brake fluid was everywhere.  But, there were no accidents.  On a Southern California freeway, this would be just another day, but here on I-81 in West Virginia, not so much.

Fast forward 2 hours and we were in Lancaster County PA, looking forward to a couple of restful days in the Amish countryside when we heard a terrible clacking sound in the front wheel area, and then ... horrors ... no brakes.  No brakes, really.  Frank did a masterful job of bringing the 22,000 lb rig to a stop by downshifting, using the emergency brake, and then pulling into a big empty parking lot as we slowly came to a stop.  Whew.  It was truly scary.

A big-rig tow truck wasn't available until the next morning, so we had to spend the night there in the furniture store parking lot.  The evening became a lot more bearable when we discovered an open wifi connection from the coffee shop next door that was closed for the evening.  Voila!  We had internet and Slingbox TV.  Things could have been worse.

So sad

The next morning, we got towed to Anderson's Trucking.  Of course the required parts had to be ordered and wouldn't be delivered until the next day.  This meant one more night on generator power ... this time in the back lot of the repair shop.  No internet that night, but we were so tired we didn't care. 

Spending the night behind Andersons

Linda got a little nervous that the brakes might not get fixed on Friday.  The shop didn't start the job until 2:00 pm.  What if they can't finish?  They are not open on Saturdays. What if they find something else wrong?  Linda was stressing, and knitting as fast as she could.  But they did get it fixed, and we were on our way again Friday afternoon.

The owners of Anderson Garage

In our next post we'll tell about our sightseeing adventures in Lancaster County while we waited for The Brakes to be fixed.  We did have a grand time, after all.

Father's Day

Even though it's Father's Day, one of my mother's sayings kept popping into my head all morning.  When Mom was about my age now, (and also traveling for months at a time in her motorhome) she would say, "I can do anything I used to do when I was younger; but it just takes me longer to do it, and it takes me longer to recover from doing it."    

Whoo boy, I understand her now.  Take today, for instance.

We planned ... planned!, mind you, to load up the motorhome this morning, and then take off up the Interstate by noon, or shortly thereafter.  We definitely did NOT anticipate that transferring our lives from the condo to the motorhome would take 4 hours.   Actually, loading up and getting ready to roll does involve quite a bit of maneuvering:  loading clothes, food, electronic gear, hobby gear, knitting stuff, other stuff, and more stuff.  Then there is the exercise of attaching the dinghy to the motorhome, which involves going to get the dinghy at the off-site parking spot, leaving the SUV there, and then driving back to the motorhome, attaching it all together.  Finally, there are the last minute pre-flight checklists, and tire pressure checks to be made before lift-off.

It just takes us longer than it used to to get all this done (thanks for the warning, mom). So, we are resolved that for future trips, loading the motorhome will be a 2-day process.  As it was, we did not cross the Howard Frankland bridge headed north until 3:00 pm.  We made it to Dayton Beach, but no matter the time of day, the drive across Florida was 150 miles of pure joy.  We are on the road again!

Even with the tiring preparations, we love the motorhome lifestyle.  We like the fact that we get to sleep in our own bed every night, we don't have to unpack and repack suitcases every time we change locations, and we don't have to eat in restaurants all the time.  We do have to do our own dishes, tho.

We head for South Carolina tomorrow.

The Summer of 2012

Frank and Linda are on the move again.  The Winnebago has been checked, scanned, lifted, poked, prodded, tested, oiled, cleaned, polished, and pronounced road-worthy. 

We also did a mini "shake-down" trip to Bay Bayou Campground in Tampa ... you might remember we stayed there on our way home last year.  It is a delightful place, and we spent the day making sure all the internal organs were functioning . . . stove, refrigerator, plumbing, etc.   If you followed our trip last year, you know we had several setbacks and detours along the way.  We hope to avoid making similar memories this year.

Tomorrow we hitch up the dinghy and get back on the road in earnest.  Cue the Willie Nelson music.

First up on this year's agenda is our son's wedding in Upstate New York on June 29.  We're taking a leisurely journey north, spending some time doing genealogy research in Virginia, and then visiting Amish Country in Pennsylvania.

Frank says there is no better way to spend a Father's Day (once the kids have left home) than to be in the motorhome, heading for adventure.