Terry Time

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This is the photo I forgot to take of Terry and Me :-((

While in the Detroit area we were lucky enough to spend time with my friend Terry, husband Jerry, and daughter Mackenzie.  Terry and I have been colleagues for many years and generally met up yearly at conferences about ADHD.  Getting to spend personal time with her and her family was super special.

This visit I was treated to meeting Terry’s Mother, Helen, and her step-father, Norman.  What an adventure!  Terry’s Mom is 85+ and has had a life filled with creative ventures – she taught dance, and gourmet cooking classes, among other things.  Today she stays busy creating necklaces.  She has a huge studio, full of beads.  I have to confess that just looking at all the colors and shapes made me feel happy – like being a kid again.  Helen insisted I choose a few of the necklaces, as a gift.  Unbelievable treasures!  She also allowed me to photograph her in her studio, despite her being very camera shy.  She is a very sweet, gracious lady with a warm smile and personality to match.

Norman was a hoot.  At 90+, he spends his time creating custom t-shirts, hats, wall plates, and framed collages.

Jerry, an orthopedic surgeon,  took time out of his busy schedule to take Joe fishing.  He is very skilled at catch and release, so he did the releasing,  allowing Joe just enough time to show off his prize after a catch…..a Northern Pike.

Terry’s daughter Mackenzie was fun to be with and makes a great smoothie, and all the family pets added to our great time together.

Thanks to Terry and Jerry for such a special visit!

 

 

The Cisco Kids – well, Old Guys

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Joe and Glenn with Glenn's homemade brew

Joe and Glenn with Glenn’s homemade brew

 

Sometimes we have friends in our life that we don’t see very often, but even after a prolonged absence it’s easy to step into each other’s lives and feel very comfortable – the Graber family are some of those folks in our lives.

Joe and Glenn were work colleagues and have remained friends. Bonny and I have a connection through our mutual love and work with kids with disabilities. Their daughter, Katlin, is currently beginning her Masters in Counseling. So there’s an obvious connection. You can tell by their photos what genuine warmth and love they have for each other. Teddy is their dog’s name – isn’t he just beautiful!! Great personality, too.

They graciously entertained us at their home with a fabulous dinner and camaraderie. Glenn also shared his home-brewed Bell’s Two Hearted Ale with Joe, which was made with some of the hops Glenn is growing in the backyard. What a treat, even though Joe is trying to go gluten-free! We look forward to the day they come visit us, so we can repay their hospitality!

 

Irish pub with Irish cousin

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This title could have been used in Florida with my cousin Carol and husband Ernie – we are all first cousins and we all have a parent who is 100% Irish.  My Mom was the oldest, then brother John who is the dad of the Florida cousins, and then Frank, who is the father of Richard and Lynn.  Many of you know I have spent years researching our genealogy, just enough to know we are partly from Dublin, County Sligo, and County Cork on our grandfather’s side, and mostly Northern Ireland on our grandmother’s side.

Growing up I was closest to my cousin Rich (then known as Dick) and Lynn.  They lived closest to us and Rich and I were in the same class grades K-8.  I just want to mention him, because I did not get to see him on this trip, as much as I wanted to.   Next trip…

My cousin Lynn has lived in the Syracuse area for many years, which is very “out of the way’ for our usual travels, so I was very glad she and Ed were going to be free for a visit.  We hung out at their home catching up on years of family stuff, while our dogs also played and shared treats.

Lynn knew about my interest in Irish pubs and she endorsed my request for Coleman’s as a good place for dinner.  It is located on Tipperary Hill – a real Irish neighborhood!  If you read the link below, you’ll understand why the Irish settled there.  It also happens to be where a lot of Poles settled, and Lynn’s husband grew up there.  It was so much fun hearing about being a kid in the area from Ed.  One of the interesting things there is the traffic light with the green light on top.  The photo is below and the story is in the wikipedia area linked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipperary_Hill

Thanks, Lynn and Ed and Snowball for such a fun visit!

 

It’s all in the family

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Aunt Pat, age 88

Aunt Pat, age 88

Our trip across Upstate New York provided us with visits with two more parts of my family.  My father’s sister, my Aunt Pat, age 88, lives in the same area that she did when I was a kid.  She and my Uncle Dave owned a farm, and we would go to visit, often around Thanksgiving.  I had 4 cousins there, and we spent many hours playing in the barn, going for rides on the tractor with my uncle, and, when we were older, doing target practice.  I particularly remember playing with the goats and being allowed to help milk them.

While it would have been ideal to be able to see all my cousins and their kids, that will have to wait until next time.  We did get to have a really nice visit with Aunt Pat and two of my cousins, Lexy (and husband Ron) and Artie.  Aunt Pat is still quick- minded with a great sense of humor.  She was a nurse years and years ago, as I am, and we have always had a lot of similar personality characteristics.   Lexy and Ron have just been through some very sad family issues and their life is in huge flux.  I am grateful they were willing and able to join us.  Artie is the most hyperactive person I have ever known.  His brain never stops and he can talk twice as fast as I can.  His sense of humor is incredible.  Artie spent the evening with us at the RV park, which was very special.  I have to laugh whenever I think of something he said.  “Do you know that you and your brother were never separate people in our house?  You were both ‘Donald and Jeri’, always spoken of as that whole phrase”.  I’m guessing most of my cousins would think of us the same way – and we think of them that way also….”Dick and Lynn, Howie and Connie,” etc. – whenever there were two cousins in the family unit.  The boys names only came first because they were born first.  My Florida cousins were also a named group “June, Carol and Michael”…LOL    That is probably common in many families.

Anyway, after spending several days with trains shaking the motor home day and night, we moved down the road about 2 hours to visit the next cousin.

 

Getting Into Hot Water

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This was written more for our memory than anything else, but it also shows that RV travel can have its challenges.  Joe did the technical editing 🙂

We all love and need hot water! In the Bus our hot water is made through a piece of equipment called an Aqua Hot (a diesel burner that provides hot water and our main heat). It’s handy-dandy most times, in that it makes water hot on demand, eliminating the need to keep water in a hot water tank all the time. Well, somewhere around Raleigh, ours started acting up, and in Virginia it quit, except for an occasional run of hot water. So that made it necessary to boil water for dishes and using the RV park’s showers. Not ideal, but we could get by.   Joe had it looked at on Cape Cod, but 500 bucks later, it still was not fixed (that did include the annual service on the Aqua Hot). This is not something that can be repaired just anywhere or by anyone-it really needs a tech experienced in dealing with the Aqua Hot.

Through the Aqua Hot web site, Joe became of aware of a mobile independent service guy in New Hampshire who had a good reputation for working on Aqua Hot units. He gave him a call and he told us to meet him in a Target parking lot that was just a few miles down I-95 from the rest stop we were in. We got there and waited his arrival. Up pulls this guy, Tom, in a van, and Joe and I both immediately noted that his shirt had both his business name and the AquaHot logo.   It doesn’t take a lot to impress us sometimes, 🙂  but and an hour later we had hot water! It required pulling stuff out of the storage bays so that he could get at the equipment….see fun photo!  Tom was one of the most skilled techs we have encountered, and we were so lucky to have found him!

Anyway, our VT and NH adventures are pretty much summed up with that one two-hour time period. Yay for the return of hot water!!!

 

 

 

 

 

The Maine Event

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Lobster and Ice Cream - the Maine menu

Lobster and Ice Cream – the Maine menu

We love this state! In the 1970’s we used to take long weekends here, primarily to the beaches of York and Wells. We didn’t go there this time, because we knew we wanted to spend time in the northen areas. We honeymooned in the Bar Harbor area (Mount Desert Island, Acadia Nat’l Park) in 1972, and returned again in 1973. The coasts are rocky, and the seafood is at the top of my personal food chain – right under ice cream. One thing we actually found amusing is the intimate relationship between lobster and ice cream in Maine. Almost every business that sells lobster also advertises its wonderful ice cream!

We had a fabulous RV site right on the water for several days. Since school was still in we had the whole area to ourselves, while there will be 20 or more RV’s packed in each day during July and August. We explored Acadia Nat’l Park, and the town or Bar Harbor. And we ate lobster, ice cream,and more lobster. Add in more steamers and you can imagine….

When we left Mount Desert Island we headed northeast, on a road so bumpy we figured every piece of glass in the bus would surely shatter. Luckily, everything survived. Next stop was the most easternmost point in the US, at the West Quoddy Head lighthouse outside of Lubec, Maine. It truly is a beautiful lighthouse, and we enjoyed touching base at another extreme land point of the US. (Note: we will be skipping the most northern point in the continental US, but I challenge any of you to guess where that is, and then see if you are right – especially you, Gillian!)

We continued on to Calais, Maine, where we left the bus so we could take a day to explore Canada and the Bay of Fundy.  See you there, in my next post!

 

Cape Cod Quickie

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Joe had never been to Cape Cod, so it seemed a shame to skip it. We allowed 2 days, and he was able to get a quick sense of the place. The weather wasn’t very friendly, so we did a lot of sightseeing from the car. We also spent some time attempting (unsuccessfully) to get our hot water maker working (aqua hot).

Not sure we’ll be back, but very glad we came.

Sarah and the Sea

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Rhode Island – such a tiny state, yet one we have always enjoyed. This time I think we covered quite a bit of new territory. We stayed on the west side of the state, and our first night we headed to a restaurant at Matunuck Beach. I started with two raw oysters, just because. Then I had a bowl of steamers (NOT steamed clams) for the first time in almost 40 years. Then I had 6 Oysters Rockefeller.  Pure goodness!  

The next day we met up with Sarah, daughter of our friends Peggy and Mike from North Carolina.  She is an artist, and has lived in Providence since going to RISD for graduate school a number of years ago.  Sarah showed us around, from the garden she is growing in an empty lot next to her house, to her studio.  See photos.  Sarah has an awesome studio in a very interesting industrial area.  Those who know me know 1. I LOVED seeing Sarah’s studio, and 2. I couldn’t wait to get out of there!  (City-phobe here.)  After the obligatory stop at the capital, we headed to a cool little island just east of Newport, and down to Beavertail State Park.  On the way we had lunch in the very American town of Bristol.  See the photo of the red, white and blue stripes marking their Memorial Day parade route.  The island was full of typical New England rocky coasts and fishermen to go with them. I’m so very glad I got to make memories with Sarah, and I thank her for the fun day!

The next night we went to an Irish Pub in Newport.  It was everything we expected.  There was a very active session, and we met a gal from Ireland and her husband. We shared our table and enjoyed chatting with them.  We might easily have been in Ireland.  Also similar to Ireland was the trip back to the RV park, across the bridge in very soupy fog.  UGH!!

Friends in the RV world

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Rob and Nancie

Rob and Nancie

If one is open to it, the RV lifestyle is a great way to make friends from all over the country. We met Rob and Nancie in 2013 out in Quartzite on one of our January Tiffin “Happening” adventures. They are from the tip of Long Island, and happen to live where my college roommate lived and owned a business for many years. While they didn’t know each other, they knew many people and places in common. Rob and Nancie spent the winter in various places in the West, and in March they joined us at PIR for the NASCAR event, along with RV friends Larry and Amy from Scottsdale, who reserve and provide the RV sites we use at PIR.

When they heard we would be coming through Connecticut, they planned a ferry trip over from Long Island to meet us in Mystic, CT. We had a wonderful dinner and walked the streets a bit. One thing I was fascinated by was the street-level bridge right in the middle of town. It opens on a schedule for boats to pass through. We got to see it both up and down, and noting the large counterweights and wheel mechanism by which it worked was fascinating. Rob was a great educator about the process.

It was a quick visit, but one that certainly added to the enjoyment of our trip. Thanks, Rob and Nancie, for coming over to see us, and one of these days we’ll get out to see you on Long Island!

Memory Lane

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Not much to write here, as I’ll include relevant info in the caption of each photo. During our time in the Catskill Mts and the Mid-Hudson Valley (on the trip) I took some photos of places and structures of meaning to Joe and myself. For some of you it will be a walk down memory lane with me. For others, a glimpse into our past.

There is only one story that I want to relate that is too long for the photo caption. You will see a photo of the place that Joe and I lived when we were first married. It was a duplex apartment over a garage, between New Paltz and Poughkeepsie. When we pulled into the parking lot I was transported back in time. I could see myself standing at the top of the stairs, looking out over the town and fields, listening to the church bells ringing, indicating the end of the Viet Nam war. I remember tears falling then, and I was immediately choked up with that remembrance.

Now take a quick stroll down memory lane with me and Joe.