Confusing; in Rochester the beach area on Lake Ontario is spelled Charlotte, emphasis on the last syllable. That is how I have always pronounced it. Now we are in Charlotte NC, emphasis on the first syllable. How am I supposed to remember which is which? This should be my worst problem.

We drove down here (assuming you hold the map with North up, we drove “down” the page) on Saturday and setup camp at Carowinds Wilderness Resort. I guess lots of kids of all ages running around makes it a wilderness, it sure felt wild when we arrived on a warm Saturday afternoon. The adjacent amusement park adds to the wild feeling, otherwise it is a nice enough campground with paved pull through spots with functioning utilities, not even too pricey, a surprise given the location.

Our plan was to see Leigh and Pat Rainwater who moved here a couple of months ago and to see their new home, and visit with Hazel (but you would have had to follow her travels from Austin on Facebook to get the point). She has yet to make an appearance for us, other than the typical cat lump under the bedspread in the guest room. As we were traveling here we realized that David Lovenheim’s daughter, Greta and her husband Earl also live nearby. We made contact, email is great, and arranged to have them join us for dinner at 5 Church, conveniently located at the corner of 5th and Church. But I get ahead of myself.

Saturday we had cocktails at Vestry Place, the Rainwater’s home and then dinner at Ilios Noce  followed by desert and . . . back at Vestry. Sunday, after lolling around the coach for the morning we set off for down/uptown Charlotte (they have this thing about whether it is Downtown or Uptown because it is on a ridge) where our first stop was at Levine Museum of the New South. The “new” is post civil war. It is quite a journey from a crossroads community of 5,000 to the major banking center of today. After the museum we strolled to the Betchler Museum of Modern Art where we had tickets for a performance of British music from Purcell to Britten to go with their exhibit of British Art. From there we went to the dinner described above and had a wonderful time with Greta and Earl as well as Leigh and Pat.

Monday was a lazy day and we went to the Rainwater’s for a light dinner,salad by Leigh and soup by Carol and then home to get on the road to Red Bay. I worked over the route more than usual since the straightforward route goes through Atlanta and is lots of Interstates. We ended up taking a mountain road that I had been warned against. My failure to heed the warning will cost some time and money as a rock wall encroached on the roadway at one point and even with Carol keeping the the left wheels near the center line we made contact to the tune of some grinding noises, removing parts of our awnings and some paint. We are unscathed and the coach can be made whole, so it is merely another experience for us to laugh about when we look back.  As I write we are in Murphy NC along US 64 with about 5 hours of driving ahead of us tomorrow to get to Red Bay (or as Tiffin Owners Forum members call it “Camp Red Bay” immediately shortened to CRB). I must say the route was absolutely gorgeous. The mountains are magnificent and the Fall colors are at absolute peak in this area. Many of  the local campgrounds are full so our plan to stay at WalMart was a good idea.

Couldn’t help myself! After the last post – Neither Here nor There – this just seemed inevitable even if it doesn’t really mean anything, unless it does.

We have actually done pretty much what I said we would in the previous post. Our trip to NOTL was about as straight forward as it gets. The Whirlpool Street Bridge was closed so we had to use the Rainbow Bridge and wait about 30 minutes to get through customs, no Nexus there. We had plenty of time for lunch at Epicurean in the heart of town, this is our favorite lunch spot in the town and has been there many years. We shopped a bit and then went  to the Courthouse to see A Charity that Began at Home by Hankin. It was wonderfully well done and provided plenty of the expected laughs. Just think about a British country home filled with people invited not because you want to invite them but because nobody else will invite them. It is not a happy prospect except for the audience, my sides ached as we left.

Dinner at Zee after checking in at the Old Bank House. Both rate high marks for service and comfort. The restaurant is very well located and the service was impeccable as was the food. After dinner we enjoyed the modern version of GB Shaw’s Philanderer. The B&B is bigger than we used to like with something like 9 rooms, but everyone was friendly and interesting. We walked down to the lake shore before breakfast and found this scene. The two gentlemen in

costume were actors with the man flying the drone with camera as they were preparing a marketing video for the town’s anniversary coming up next year. Carol and I were both taken with the apparent anachronism in our face. This was shot with the camera on my tablet as that was all I had with me for the walk.

We needed to get back to Rochester by 12:15 for an appointment, but it was not to happen. I could not figure out how to get to the Nexus lanes on the Lewiston Bridge and we spent a miserable hour or more waiting for our turn at the border booth. The appointment got rescheduled. How was I to know that the Nexus lanes were in the lane marked commercial trucks only? I’ll know the next time.

Yom Kippur occupied Saturday and Sunday we actually stayed home and in the evening we watched Chef, a movie we had heard about and we took the time to see it on TWCable On Demand. We don’t have our Roku here, I left it on the coach. We really enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to most anyone.

Enough with the hour by hour and minute by minute. We have been fussing with doing things that need to be done in Rochester before we depart on Monday not to return until late May or early June. Also we need to put in place the last minute details for going to Israel with all eleven of us departing December 22. Everyone now has a current passport and I have all the numbers except for Josh’s. The tickets are paid for, the trip will have been paid for on my birthday and the travel insurance is in place. Just need to get all of us to JFK by 8 PM on the 22nd and those plans are all made as well.

For those interested in our actual road plans just in case we might cross paths here are the known way points. Rochester to Charlottesville by car on Monday Oct 13. Charlottesville to Charlotte NC on Oct 18. Time in Charlotte is at least through morning of the 20th. This is subject to extension. Next stop is Red Bay AL (if you don’t know don’t ask) with plan to arrive Thursday or Friday. Duration there is unknown as it depends on how fast we can get Tiffin and other vendors to attend to our service needs. From Red Bay we head for Rainbows End in Livingston TX with plan to arrive December 15. Upon return from Israel we will pick up the coach and depart on January 15. The next way point is Escapade (a national gathering of Escapee members) March 8 to 13 in Tucson. That’s it for now. I have no idea when or how we will eventually get to LA and that is because I refuse to look that far ahead, today.

We are in Rochester, in our apartment until October 13 – Here! The coach is in Covesville, VA, Malena and Dan’s yard – There! This is strange state of affairs for us. We have been separated from the coach only by international travel, for the most part in the past several years. We drove the Jeep through from Covesville to the apartment in a total of under nine hours stopping only for fuel, three times, and to eat our lunch which we had packed. The audio book, A Monstrous Regiment of Women: A Novel of Suspense by Laurie R. King, swept us along the highway so the time and miles passed almost unnoticed. This is the second novel in the series about Sherlock Holmes and his new, young assistant/partner Mary Russell. We started it in August and listened in bits and pieces as our road time permitted. This run was uninterrupted Interstate time and the spell did not end until we were making the turn into Pleasant St where the entrance to the parking lot is. We listened to the closing credits as we were shutting down the engine. Perfect timing.

Our time in Covesville was jam packed with farm life activities and celebrating Rosh HaShana. We did not get out to see people as we had hoped because we were busy spending wonderful time with Malena and Dan and especially with Alex and Corey. I had forgotten how to play Hearts in the interim since graduating from Brown, but I certainly have not lost my ability at Backgammon.  I refused to accept a challenge to play Scrabble, they play constantly and I fear I have lost my edge there too.

We have booked a whirlwind of activities for our time in Rochester including a day at Niagara-on-the-Lake to see two plays and stay the night in a B & B. That started because we have to go to Niagara Falls to complete the process of renewing Carol’s Nexus card which includes Trusted Traveler and Global Entry, both very important for our travel plans this December and January. So while we were already going to be in the Falls, it seemed just a short hop to N-O-T-L and a play or two and who wants to start a 90 minute plus drive back to Rochester after an 11 PM curtain.  We used to do such things, but . . .

Doctors, Dentists and friends and oh yes Book of Mormon another play will occupy us in the time not taken by Yom Kippur and the Goldberg Lecture in Neurology. Then back to Covesville on the wings of another audio book, to be selected.

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.