Scotland will not be independent from England, not sure how that affects me in either the long or short run, but it seems to be the right answer. We are going to drop some more bombs on somebody we think needs to have bombs dropped on them in the Middle East and Congress gave its permission. They actually voted to do something the President asked for, how unique. Men who batter women, well make that men in public life who batter women are getting appropriately treated by society, even a judge. Just how great is that.

I was taught it was not permissible to strike little girls when I was 4 or 5 (at least so I remember) it may have had something to do with with the arrival of my sister, Sandy. I don’t remember being taught not to hit boys. Knowing my mother I assume there was was more to the former than just the arrival of Sandy, but that was a long time ago and I managed to extend the message to ALL people along the way. I suspect that I have found other ways to establish my position in any pecking order that does not require physical contact or aggressive behavior.

If this looks like stream of conscience it is because it is. The news has been mostly dreadful and I am dreading the coming election with its endless ads, endless lies and endless name calling. Not to mention the possibility of a result I do not want to see, the Republican take over of the Senate, is not at all unlikely (I can’t even say that in the positive).

We have been in Dan and Malena’s yard since Saturday the 13th. We will be here until the 27th and then drive the Jeep back to Rochester for a couple of weeks before returning here. Our current plans include a trip to Charlotte NC to visit Leigh and Patrick (and Hazel) in their new home before continuing on to Red Bay. While sitting here I have made some improvements to our setup. With permission, I bought a nice new drinking water hose that I have attached to the nearest hose bib to provide continuous water rather than my former process of running out a collapsible 50 foot hose and filling the tank every 3 or 4 days. Makes showering a lot more pleasant as we don’t need to take navy showers. I even removed 6 very sharp pointed self threading screws from the deck plate in the  utility bay so I won’t pierce a hose or my hand and replaced them with stainless steel bolts and locking nuts. Thank you to the guys on Tiffin RV Network for that recommendation.

Dinner last night at Al Carbone just north of Charlottesville. Wonderful Peruvian Mexican fusion. Friends of Dan and Malena treated us to a barbecue a couple of years ago as they were working on recipes for the restaurant and they have launched it. Chicken grilled low and slow over green charcoal with an amazing sauce had me licking  my fingers  and the plantains were heavenly and I could not get enough of the grilled jalapenos and onions. Carol had corn on the cob with mayonnaise and cheese which she really enjoyed. Everything else that came to the table was consumed by the six of us. Want to wish them good luck and I am sure we will be eating there again.

Quick note on the new computer. I was able to restore almost everything the way I had it on the old computer. Just a few more programs to locate and install. I am writing this on it and getting used to the key board being shifted to the left to make room for the number pad which I really do like. I think I got my first number pad as an add-on for my Apple //e back in the dark ages and really find them a preferable way to enter numbers. The solid state hard drive really works to bring this machine up really fast.

I will not report on the weather, it just is.

Our day in Philadelphia did NOT include the Barnes after all. We had failed to plan ahead so it didn’t happen.  Instead we stopped at a private gallery, Seraphin, on Pine St.  I actually found a parking spot not too far away so me made that the center of our walking tour which took us to Rittenhouse Square. We arrived as the carillon was playing which was fun and did some shopping as we walked.

We returned to the Elks Lodge to find that the Armstrongs were back and Kiki was squalling up a storm complaining about her abandonment. It was great to get together with Dan and Beverly who we last saw in Rochester over the summer.  We found a reasonable place for dinner after some happy hour on the parking lot. We parted the next morning about 10 as we headed to Georgetown DE for some total r&r. We were so busy in NY and there was no sewer so we were over a week behind in cleaning and laundry.  Our plan was to stop at Homestead Campground for two nights and get caught up.  The rainy weather has abetted that cause and we haven’t even disconnected the Jeep 24 hours later. We may drive around the area later this afternoon.

I left that post four days ago without finishing it.  All the laundry is done and we moved on from Delaware after taking a drive in the Jeep to Rehoboth Beach.  Yet another town with too many tourist shops and a lovely boardwalk on the beach. We drove around Chesapeake Bay to Cherry Hill Park, a large lovely campground in College Park MD with public transit right on the premises.  Our first day we drove to Bunny and Alan Bernstein’s home in Pikeville. From there we went to Baltimore Inner Harbor for the beginning of the celebration of 200 year anniversary of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. There were tall ships and naval ships and enough people to make it feel festive.  We took a water taxi to Rusty Scupper for dinner and then back to their home where we parted after begining to make plans for a trip to New Zealand in 2016.

Thursday we took the bus and subway to the Mall area where we started at the US Holocaust Museum.  I had managed to avoid going there for 21 years and now I needed to see it. My first thought was to just walk through,  after all I have been to Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem many times and visited several concentration camps and other sites in our travels. This is so well done and so heart breaking that even with all that I took two hours and that felt like I was running through, barely acknowledging the horror of the era and our own country’s failure to do even the least to mitigate the carnage. Today’s treatment of refugees/immigrants call them what you will is a reminder that our government has learned nothing from its past. The hate for the “other” is no less.  I will terminate my rant here.

We went on to the Sackler and Freer Galleries to experience some enlightenment before returning to Gee Whiz for dinner. Friday started with one of those house failures that seem some how more magnified in a motorhome.  The hose to the shower head had sprung a leak. Would the campground parts area have one to fit?  I left planning to continue on to Home Depot of they didn’t.  Fortunately they had just what I was looking for and I returned
triumphant to make the simple replacement. It went fine until I turned on the shower head which promptly disintegrated, spraying water all over the shower stall. Back to the store where I found the shower head I wanted in brushed nickel to match the coach and discounted because it was the last unit in stock.  It works fine!

We met Susana, Malena’s mother for lunch at the Old Angler’s Inn. The weather was perfect as we dined on the patio. The meal and company were excellent.  We followed Susana to the Torpedo Factory Art Galleries in Alexandria. After touring several galleries we saw her off into rush hour traffic and proceeded up the street we were on to Steven and Daisy’s house where we were expected for dinner.  This was a lovely evening with delicious food and even more delicious news of their planned wedding in June. I cannot imagine a more perfect end to a brief visit in our nation’s capital.  We have moved on to Covesville VA Dan and Malena’s home and I am sitting in the coach in their yard after a wonderful dinner as I write.

The past couple of days have continued to be wonderful and have been horrible and have brought not so minor stupidities as well.

The horrible,  the Glazers!  While not close friends by any measure we have known them well for most of our married lives. They were an integral part of our communal lives both on the greater community and the smaller more personal community.  God how they will be missed.

The almost trivial stupidity,  I crushed the screen of my laptop using the hydraulic extension of the passenger side living room slide for my weapon. The last time I tried this I merely broke some trim, I must have repaired it too well as it held and the laptop didn’t.  Cost to replace the screen is about the same as a new laptop. I have a new laptop on order and will pick it up at Dan’s in a week.  I spent a few pennies more and got a solid state hard drive (ssd) of good size.  It should be very fast.

We are now in the Marlton Elks where we will meet up with the Armstrongs for dinner. Marlton, you ask,  that’s in NJ about 30 minutes or less from Philadelphia. We plan to go in to see the Barnes Collecton in a bit.  The Armstrongs’s coach is next to ours and Kiki, their resident cat, is waiting for their return. They will pay a price for their absence I’m sure.

Back to our NYC experiences.  We took ferry and subway to Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to visit Donna Rosenthal,  a friend of Carol’s from childhood.  It was fun for a variety of reasons.  She lives in a building on W Plaza where my roommate Jon Kerner grew up.  I last visited that building in the Fall of 1963 on my way to Brown for my senior year (even then my travel routes were indirect). Donna treated us to lunch and then hired a car service to give us a tour of Brooklyn. The tour ended at the Brooklyn Museum where we saw some of the collection there being no special exhibition on.  Then we left Donna in the coffee shop while we took some time in the adjacent Botanical Garden. She dropped us at the entrance to the subway and we made our way back to the ferry past Whole Foods and thence to a light ‘dinner on board.  The heat continued unabated.  Carol did not object to running the  air conditioning.

Friday was one last day walking in the city.  From the ferry we took a subway up to Washington Square in hopes of seeing something of the area we remember from 50 years ago. There is very little left besides the street names and the Blue Note. We eventually found a coffee shop with good coffee,  but the atmosphere was altogether different. The area is now dominated by NYU. We continued walking to the lower entrance to the High Line where we met cousin Molly Ornati as planned.  We finally got to walk this unique Park  atop and old elevated rail line way over on the west side.  The landscaping and design makes you feel at If you have stepped into another world

Well not really, but we are both tired. We set out this morning just too late to catch the 10:30 Ferry so we took the PATH to the NY Subway System ultimately getting out into the sunshine at 59th and 5th. We had decided to start our day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th at 80th so we were looking at a 22 block walk, just over a mile. The day was fine and hot so we walked along the Central Park side of 5th past endless food carts with the zoo and many playgrounds in the park. Our intention was to take in the Garry Winogrand retrospective along with anything else that might catch our interest.

Our first mission was to locate restrooms, no mean feat in that huge HUGE museum. The signage is limited and as many people as they have the place is so big they are pretty spread out. Then we had to get some lunch,THEN we could get to the exhibits which naturally was at the other end of the building. It is hard to run through the Met because every room you enter has so many items to capture the attention. Eventually we found our way to the Winogrand Retrospective and spent over an hour looking at the work. Although we both know his work, there was much to see that has not been generally available even in books. He left several thousand rolls of film undeveloped when he died, he had never even seen the contact sheets of the negatives. Much of the work included in the exhibit was from those rolls, well annotated. We went on to the rest of the photography on exhibit. It is a limited presentation but the work shownm is exquisite and challenging. Somehow we found ourselves working our way through the modern and contemporary art galleries. As we sort of moved toward the exit. You know you have seen too much art to take in much more when a room full of Picasso and Matisse takes just a passing look. We slowed down for the Surrealists and for Miro, but by then the brains were beyond taking in much more.

We sat in the park for a while just resting our feet and our brains before heading back to . . .  well we were not sure so we walked over to Madison Ave and turned downtown. Oh, would you believe we were passing the Whitney where there is a retrospective of Jeff Koons work. There was no line. We hemmed and hawed and finally said how can we just walk on by. Not only will the exhibit be gone but the Whitney will have moved out of the building before we get back here again. It was only 4:15 so in we went. Five floors of Koons’ work later we were just a bit slap happy so I

 took this selfy:

Storm King Art Center is one of those must see places. I am not sure why we had not even heard of it until my sister told us about their visit. So now I have been there and you have heard of it. It is a vast sculpture park with a large variety of outdoor venues, most although appearing natural are created and sculpted into being over time. Even the Calder hillside was created and shaped for the placement of the Calder stabiles. At every turn there is a surprise if you turn your head from the main item in your view. As we climbed the Calder slope at the end of the day returning to the Museum Hill Area I looked off to the side behind me and saw this picket fence in mirror:

We continue to work our way south in New York State. We stopped two nights in Eaton Lake Campsite, just north of Long Lake NY. From there we traveled down to Blue Mountain where we spent much of the day at the Adirondack Museum. We haven;t been there in probably 20 or 30 years. Last time we were there Water Witch was housed in a plexi dome in the entry. Now it is inside next to the ticket desk (this is a sailboat with at 30 foot (?) mast). It w as well worth the visit and it brought back a lot of memories. There are a lot of boats of all sorts and a private railcar and an old ADK hotel and . . .  well you get the idea. Speaking of stopping in a State Park in the Adirondacks, this is what you call shoehorned in.

Just a quick refresher for those who haven’t a clue who George Boldt was, he developed the original Waldorf Astoria on the site of what was to be Penn Station and several other grand hotels. He made fabulous amounts of money and fell in love with the 1000 Islands where he bought and developed Wellesley Island and ultimately acquired Hart Island, later renamed Heart Island. Eventually he decided to build a grand castle to give to his wife who he loved very much. The tragedy was that she died of Tuberculosis one month before he was to give it to her on Valentine’s Day. He telegraphed the construction foreman with instructions to cease work and leave the Island and Castle unfinished. Although he continued to come to the islands every summer, it is reported that he never again set foot on Heart Island. The island was eventually left to the elements and vandals for 73 years. Ultimately it came into the possession of the Thousand Island Bridge Authority (TIBA) which has been working on restoring it section by section to the condition it was when construction stopped. This has been going on for over 30 years. Much has been restored and many artifacts have been recovered and other similar artifacts have been added for display.

We arrived on an early shuttle direct from Alexandria Bay by about 11 AM and went directly to the Yacht House just across the river, it had never been abandoned so is in the condition it was when the family used it. We then returned to the Castle and spent a couple of hours in the main building before taking a lunch break in the food
concession, call it fuel. To continue on to the main gate, the Children’s Playhouse (It contains bowling alleys and a theater) and the Power House. All in all we spent $19.50 per person for admission fees and shuttle service on Uncle Sam Tour Boats.

. Using a paper map I would not have attempted to do this because it required route changes and turns every 3 to 9 miles until we eventually got to route 3 well beyond Watertown, actually in Theresa, and then 40 miles on NY 30. We did not have a reservation and the ranger was doubtful we could fit on any of the sites that were open for more than one night. We found a site, #117 if you are interested, onto which it was just possible to shoehorn our 36 foot coach. Do not even consider it in anything bigger. Good Sam says the sites are 30×50, that may be but they are dirt and far from level. From my tenting days, they are beautiful, in the coach, not so much.

We spent Friday and Saturday in Hamilton ON visiting Aunt Dodo who just turned 91. We stayed with Marilyn and Albert in Dundas as taking the coach for this jaunt seemed to be overkill. Marilyn put out a lovely luncheon for the five of us and then in the evening just the four of us went to dinner at their club. Saturday noon we gathered at the Mandarin Chinese Buffet in Burlington with Mitchell, Melaney and Haley; Harvey and Leslie; Michael and Stacey; Arnie and Peggy and of course Marilyn, Al and Dodo. It was quite a gang put together in the last week and a half. It was a fun reunion and we all said we need to do it more often.

Now I’m sitting in the living room of our apartment waiting for Josh and his friend to arrive for lunch. Boxes are starting to collect in the corridors and fill with the few things we need to load out to the coach. After lunch we will take them (the boxes)  out to the coach, now that we have a functional elevator in the building, and start up the refrigerator. Tomorrow the food will make the trip and we will hook up the Jeep and head north.

Our first destination is along the St Lawrence River in Northern NY. Depending on how the day goes we could make it to Ogdensburg or we could stop a bit short in Alexandria Bay where there are several campgrounds. Our reason for going this way, as I mentioned in a prior blog, is to visit the birthplace of Frederick Remington and to see the museum there. This also puts us north of the Adirondacks State Park and will give us a chance to drive through the park and maybe even spend a night or two. Eventually we want to get to Hyde Park area, it looks like we will camp in Rhinebeck NY, not too far away. There are several homes and mansions in addition to FDRs home and museum worth touring in the area and dinner at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) would be on the agenda. Also on the program is a visit to Storm King Art Center. Timing is still up in the air as our plans include arriving at Liberty Harbor Marina and RV Park on August 29 and staying through September 2. Plans beyond that are vague. We had hoped to visit friends in Philadelphia, but they are on their way to France as we might be arriving.

We will wend our way to Covesville VA where we will be for Rosh HaShanah and Dan’s birthday. Following that we will return to Rochester September 29 where we will stay until October 13 or so. We are not sure how long we will stay there, but our route from there probably will include Charlotte, NC to say Hi to Leigh and Patrick who just moved there from Austin. We need to visit Hazel who has been providing a running journal of the transition and move from her feline perspective.

We also are planning a stop in Red Bay Alabama, northwest corner of the state, where Gee Whiz was built. The shower door has never been quite right and I hope that someone there can actually resolve the problem. Also the sleep number bed is leaking on Carol’s side so it goes from soft to uninflated in the course of a week or so.  Ultimately we need to make it to Rainbow’s End in Livingston TX by December 15. We leave for Israel from Houston on December 22, leaving the coach on site for the two week we will be gone. Travel plans beyond that are even more vague only knowing we will get to LA at some point and probably the Bay Area as well to see a new grand nephew due in September.

Since that walk we have taken many more walks, but with less exciting discoveries. For now we are entertaining or being entertained for almost every meal as we prepare to get back in the coach. A brief idea of our near term schedule follows: on Friday the 15th we drive in the Jeep to Hamilton ON to visit Carol’s aunt who just turned 91 – we should all be as spry and active at 85 as she is at 91. Then we will stay over with cousins before traveling to Niagara Falls for dinner with more cousins. A day (or two) in Rochester to prepare ourselves and the coach and we set off to see some of New York that we have driven through without stopping. First destination is Ogdensburg along the St Lawrence River where Frederick Remington, the sculptor, was born and there is a museum. Then to Hyde Park where among other things we will tour FDR’s home and museum. Eventually we will get to Jersey City NJ where we will stay over Labor Day Weekend to see Carol’s family and attend her brother’s birthday party. Since we will be a short ferry ride from Manhattan I cannot imagine that we won’t get into the city.

The looking glass gets a bit foggy after that. We will be in Covesville, VA with Dan, Malena and family over Rosh HaShanah and Dan’s birthday which coincide this year, and back in Rochester from September 29, or so, through October 13ish. Then back to C’ville before heading out either west or south or?

I have left the comment section of this blog “moderated” but otherwise open, not subjecting my readers to the “captcha” block because they are a nuisance (the captchas not my readers). Today I received 15 “comments” on one post from several years ago which has been drawing these spam offers regularly for the past 5 or 6 months.

Enough! I have turned back on the captcha so you will have to prove you are not a machine to post a comment by responding to the captcha requirement.  I have looked at the recent ones and they are much easier than the old system. I am interested to hear about your experience with this system. I am very sorry to have had to resort to this, but that is the internet these days. If you have my email address or are linked to me on FaceBook or Google+ you can reach me through those media as well as commenting here.

Not much more news around here. Tomorrow GeeWhiz goes in for an oil changes and other routine service so it will be ready to roll out of Rochester mid August. We are planning on seeing some of NY and possibly NJ and then PA on our way to Dan and Malena’s. Not sure of the timing of everything.  We will be in Rochester from either the 8th or 28th of September until October 11 or so. I guess you can see the very positive planning that has gone into this plan. I suspect we will know what we have done once we have done it.