Last Stops in PA

  This has been on of the longest gaps in my blog posts that I recall due to being in Pennsylvania for 43 days. Not that there isn't anything to see in PA but living here most of my life I have done many of the PA sights. My last post had us leaving Mercer, PA and going to Lancaster. After leaving Mercer we took the Turnpike east. Circle M was our campground for two weeks and we scored a roomy corner site.

 

 

We were very busy during our stay between dentist appointments and errands to Doreen's credit union, plus visits from friends and getting some of our belongings from Dan's basement. We had some good fires and 'smores. We also had some lousy fires due to wet wood.

Circle M is a beautiful campground close to Millersville and Lancaster. It even sports a nine hole chip and putt which I took advantage of.

 Well mostly chipping since the "greens" weren't really puttable. The campground is nestled on a peninsula around which the Conestoga River flows.

 

After Lancaster we made our way back up to NEPA for a week for Doreen's sister's 50'th surprise birthday party. We stayed at Clayton Park Recreation Area on Lake Henry.

We had a pull through site that was very narrow. The good thing was that anytime someone took the site next to us it was only for the night.

When we left Lancaster on September 23 there was barely a noticeable change to the color of the leaves on the trees but up here fall foliage was in full swing in some areas.

Clayton Park is convienently located to Jessup just ten miles over Archbald Mountian near Mt. Cobb and Hamlin. We had to avoid Doreen's sister for three days while roaming around the Scranton area before the surprise party but she was genuinely surprised to see us. She thought that we were long on our way back to Florida since last seeing us during our visit while at Scotrun.
The party was a good time and it was a chance to see everyone before returning to Florida. All of the Emmett siblings and their spouses:

 

On the last day we attended a JV football game to watch Doreen's nephew Nick who is the star quarterback for the team.

Due to several injuries on the offensive line many a play resulted in a roll out left or right.

 

A rare throw from the pocket

 

He finished with three TD throws to seal the victory.

 

We left Clayton Park on September 30 and drove to Gettysburg Farm.

I would say it is located about halfway between York and Gettysburg. I was impressed with the place as it was very well maintained, clean, and the seasonals were well kept. Sometimes the seasonal campers are unsightly. They have too much stuff on their site but not here. Like Circle M,  Gettysburg Farm is situated on a river, the Conewego.

The campground is huge with about 700 sites, many along the river. We found a nice pull through with lots of room. This is a great place for the family with a huge pool, big game room, and a petting zoo with llamas, goats, pigs, turkeys, ducks, and rabbits.

 

Some of the goats think they run the place!

 

 

After four days at Gettysburg Farm it was finally time to leave Pennsylvania in the rear view mirror. The nights were getting cold and we had to run the furnace overnight for the past week or so, so I am glad to be making way for warmer weather.

 

The time spent in PA was nice and it was great seeing everyone we did. For those of you we didn't get a chance to see I hope to do so on our next visit. I don't know when that will be, maybe next year. Now it is time to return to Florida.

 

 

Miles Mercer to Lancaster: 308.6

Miles to Clayton Park: 160

Miles to Gettysburg Farm: 189.5

Total miles: 7006.5

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Return to the Keystone State

  Our New England odyssey came to an end when we left New Hampshire on August 22. We made camp at Scotrun RV Resort in the Poconos for 11 days. Scotrun is on Rt. 611 near Tannersville and south of Mt. Pocono.

  We arrived on a Friday and I don't care to find a site on a Friday or Saturday because all the good ones are usually taken. All of the Outdoor World/ Thousand Trails are first come/ first pick of sites so what happens is that you have to cruise around the park looking for a site. Sometimes luck is on your side though. We saw there were only three sites available and one was a pull through with a an opening through the trees to the southwest sky- my satellite dish would work! I had to run about 100 feet of cable and set the dish near the edge of the site on a corner near the neighbors dish. The view of the lake wasn't too bad either.

 

 

 

The only down side to the site was the lack of a sewer connection. The park provided a pump out service free of charge though so it worked out.

The park was quite nice and I was glad to be out of New England, especially Massachusetts. The two parks we stayed at there were crummy compared to Scotrun. Here I was able to do some fishing and relax by one of the quiet pools.

 

 

There was a water slide also but I did not venture onto that. My time here was spent just relaxing. No sight seeing, no attractions.

 

This part of our trip would be for reconnecting with family and friends. Doreen and I went up to her hometown of Jessup, just outside of Scranton where we went to the annual Jessup Hose Company wine tasting event.

 

Nothing fancy here in spite of the fresh lobster. A dozen or so local wineries serving up samples along with some food vendors. Mainly it was a chance to see Doreen's family and hang out. I ended up leaving her at her mother's house for a few days and the next day got some golf in for the first time since leaving Florida on May 4. I played Hideaway Hills with Barry, Doreen's brother Mark, and his son Ryan. Since I hadn't touched a club in four months I didn't have high expectations. Good thing because I played lousy!

  The following week I played Lederach on Labor Day. Once again lousy. It didn't help that we were partying the day before until the wee hours of the morning at Doreen's sister's house in Phoenixville, and that the temperature and humidity were in the 80's. Anyway a good time was had by all and it was nice to see everyone at Michele and Jimmy's. We ate, drank, played can jam, and Mark and I defended our boccie ball championship title. We finally lost a game when darkness descended on the court. Here is a shot of what I call Mark's terminator grouping that usually seals the deal:

 

As I said earlier I was not prone to sightseeing or anything like that even though we were close to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. We had visits from Doreen's brother and his family for an afternoon and buddy-boy, Dan another night. Before you knew it our stay was over and it was time to head to Northwest PA for my longtime friend T.C's wedding. He and his fiancee' Christine were getting married on Sunday September 9.

 

We headed west across I-80 and drove through a pounding rain storm. Visibility was so poor traffic slowed to a 20 mph crawl as we passed the DuBois area. We arrived at our destination which was T.C.'s house in Jackson Center, Mercer County where we set up the trailer along the tree line of the farm.

 

It was a lovely bucolic and rural setting

 

 

After getting all set up, which was made a little difficult because of the rainy weather, we headed to his sister and brother-in-law's restaurant in Mercer for some dinner.

 

 

Jimmy still makes a great fish sandwich which I remember from his days down on Spring Garden Ave. in Pittsburgh running his parent's restaurant. Doreen had the wings which are also good.

 

  Some back story might be in order here: T.C. and I went to the same grade school and high school and a group of us started hanging out together somewhere around the mid 1970's. Our core consisted of six or seven guys and gals growing up in Pittsburgh on the Northside in the Brighton Heights/ Woods Run area. We were constantly together, mostly getting into trouble, but mainly having fun and learning life lessons. None of us landed in jail, well kind of, T.C. and I both did working for the DOC, but everyone turned out as upstanding citizens. We might not see each other but once every five or ten years but when we do it is party time. On this particular occasion, T.C.'s wedding, there were five of us plus T.C: me, Joe L. and his wife Judy, Ron N. and his wife Torrie, Mike R. and his wife Sue, and Dave Z. the perennial bachelor. We did a little Village People YMCA for T.C. and I wish I had pics. If I can find someone that has them I will put them up. I think it is great that we still are together after all these years. I am so glad they came to the wedding and we all had a chance to get caught up.

  The days leading up to the wedding I was helping T.C. get things prepared. I manned the tractor and he did all the grunt work;



 

 

I became proficient with the scoop fetching mulch for T.C. to spread. We would work all day until sundown and then order a pizza and crack a cold one. Of course no home improvement job is done without a trip to the local hardware store which in this case was a feed store too:

I love the old wood floors and items crammed in every available space.

 

Since we were only hours drive from Pittsburgh we made a trip down to see my mom a couple times and my sister Lori and her kids Ryan and Megan. One night we had dinner at her house and now that the kids are grown it was odd realizing they were adults and did adult things such as drink wine or beer. Another night I was surprised my mom wanted to go to dinner at an Irish Pub:

 

 

T.C. and Chris' wedding day was perfect and came off without a hitch. All though my OCD kicked in when T.C.'s sister insisted on setting up the tables in a diagonal pattern. Well it wasn't a pattern until she conceded to make it a pattern.

Monday was spent nursing a hangover and a broken middle toe. Don't ask me how but my toe was painful and then turned black and blue. Doreen said I keeled over off the sofa. Oh well, not much you can do for it except tape it up. Once I was mobile enough we took a trip down to the Grove City Premium Outlets. I wanted to hit two stores there: Steelers Sideline Store and Sports Obsession. I picked up some small items and a cool door mat. 

After walking around on my broken toe with a hangover it was time to eat some classic Pittsburgh grub: Primanti Brothers. Primanti's is a Pittsburgh institution that started with a restaurant in the Strip District. It was the place to go after a hard night drinking on the Northside back in the day. After last call you would drive there at 2 AM and soak up all the booze with the No.2 best seller cheesesteak. (which beats a Pat's or Geno's back in Philly).

Over the decades Primatis has opened franchises including Grove City:

 

I love all of their sandwiches including the kielbasa which is what I had this time:

 

For the uninitiated the sandwiches are "almost famous" due to the oven fresh Italian bread, and the hand cut French fries and slaw being placed right on the sandwich. I doubled the meat and added an egg and I was in sandwich heaven. I usually wash it down with an IC Light but instead opted for a spicy bloody mary. Doreen had the pastrami and a Guinness, add a slice of their new pizza as an appetizer and the bill was about $26. What a bargain!

 

Miles to Scotrun: 325.1

Miles to Mercer: 290

Total miles: 6348.4

Maine to New Hampshire=Revised

  We left the Acadia National Park area on August 2 and drove down the coast to Wells, ME and Moody Beach Campground. Wells and many other towns along US Route 1 are summer beach towns with mostly motels and lodgings catering to the beach goers. We got in on a Saturday and pickings were slim for a site. Most of the sites are parallel and a tight fit.

 

Of course I wasn't going to get a satellite signal with so many trees so I didn't even set it up to try. Cable was $16 a week so I had to shell out money for that in addition to my DISH bill that I paid for the month.

We didn't do a whole lot at Moody Beach. I hung by the pool which was nice and quiet most of the stay. We took a ride to Kittery to the outlet stores and to Portsmouth for cat food. We did get some local seafood at Jake's.

 

Jake's is a typical lobster pound so ubiquitous in Maine. You place your order at the window, either inside or outside, and pick it up when they call your number. Some places sell beer or it is BYOB. I had the fried seafood platter. The clam strips were great but they really stay with you.  

Our last few days in Maine were spent checking out some lighthouses. Maine is famous for lighthouses and we drove to see two of them. Our first one was Cape Neddick in York down US 1. Its official name is Cape Neddick but the local nomenclature and signage refer to it as Nubble Light, which is the name of the island where it stands.

    The light is on its own island and visitor parking is on the cape. There is a picnic area and a gift shop of course as well as a an ice cream parlor nearby. From the shore of the cape you can catch a glimpse of the ocean front estates:

 

Cape Neddick was activated in 1879.

 

We left Cape Neddick and headed to Portland. We took I-95 up to Portland because traffic on US1 is crazy going through Ogunquit. Ogunquit is a busy little town, and between the pedestrian and vehicle traffic the north bound side can get backed up for several miles. The interstate is faster anyway.

  Portland Head Light is located in a city park called Fort Williams Park. This light is one of the most photographed of all the Maine lighthouse and is the oldest in Maine. The construction of the lighthouse was ordered by George Washington.

 

This one you can actually walk right up to. The lighthouse is located on Cape Elizabeth protecting the main port approach to Portland.

 

The building in the foreground is the light keepers house and the short brick structure in the rear is the fog horn building. The lighthouse's accessibility  to be photographed from many different angles is what makes it one of the most photographed lighthouses in Maine.

 

 

 The rocky coastline has claimed some casualties in spite of the light. The Annie C.Maguire hit the rocks in 1886. No one knows why:

 

Farther out in the bay is the ruins of Halfway Rock Light:

 

Halfway Rock was built in 1871 on a small rock that is about 10 feet above the water line at high tide.

The park also has the ruins of Fort Williams; a coastal defense fort erected in the 1890's.

 

You can climb and explore the gun batteries or picnic on the beach near buy:

 

 

 

We left Maine August 15 for New Hampshire. Since we used our membership at Moody we had to spend money for a week between stops. We ended up at Tuxbury Pond on the New Hampshire/ Mass. border.

 

The campground was nice and secluded but still only less than 10 miles to shopping or provisions. Once again we didn't do much. I think after three months of vigorous sight seeing we are getting less enamored with feeling like we have to be out seeing everything.

 I did talk to a fellow who stopped at the site when he saw my inoperable Tailgater Satellite antenna sitting there. He stated that he too had one but returned it to Camping World and got a different model because it did not work in New England. I said that I didn't have much luck with it either. After much discussion we came to the conclusion that the western arc satellites that the Tailgater uses were to close to the horizon and the slightest obstruction rising more than a few feet off the ground would block the signal. I took his lead and drove to a Camping World in Chichester, NH to return my Tailgater. I anticipated a hard time returning it but there was no problem. I picked up the Winegard Pathway X2. Of course it is $80 more.

 

 

The Pathway X2 has the capability of picking up the western arc satellite as well as the eastern arc satellites unlike the Tailgater which can only pick up the western arc. This is something the retailer or manufacturer should inform the consumer of.

I got mine back to the trailer and tested it immediately. My first attempt using the western arc failed so I tried the eastern arc. This was a partial failure only picking up one bird. I relocated the X2 to another spot and I was in business; I had all three birds. I was glad I made the switch to the X2.

  The same day we got the X2 we went to Concord since it was only a few miles from Camping World. We found ample parking on Main St. and went for a walk to the capitol building.

 

A local parking enforcement officer was friendly enough to take our picture and tell us how to get to the accessible entrance:

 

Some famous New Hampshireites are Alan Sheppard, Christa McCauliffe,  Daniel Webster,

 

and no one's favorite president, Franklin Pierce, the 14'th chief executive who can be seen behind us in the photo above the Memorial Arch. We took a self guided tour of the capitol building. Strangely New Hampshire has the most state representatives, 3,400 citizens per rep, of any state and the fourth fewest state senators.

 

I love these quaint state capitals. They are nothing like Harrisburg, PA.

 

This is an add on if you read this already. I forgot some stuff. Our last day in New Hampshire we went out for more seafood. According to on-line reviews the place to go is either Brown's Lobster Pound or Markey"s Lobster Pool. We settled on Brown's which seemed to have stellar reviews.

 

The set up is a little confusing- you order all fried food at the window out side, steamers inside, and boiled lobster in a different area. Since I had lobster roll and whole lobster already in our travels I opted for the fried lobster and Doreen went with the fish and chips; fried haddock and French fries. I have to say I don't know how the place got all those good reviews. Frying lobster is just a sin, it comes out too tough. The haddock would have been good if they seasoned it. The cole slaw and tartar sauce had  no flavor. None of the food is seasoned and if you can't make a simple thing like tartar sauce with some zing you might as well chuck it. Disappointing to say the least.

Afterwards we took a ride down the strip of US 1 but there is really nothing along there but residential areas. The beach looked nice but there is no where to park. Unless you are renting a house or live there it is difficult to park near the beach.

 

Here is the town harbor of Seabrook:

 

 

 

New Hampshire was probably the most economical of the New England states to date. No sales tax is levied and they do not charge a stupid bottle deposit on beverages like Vermont and Maine. A thirty pack of Busch Light for only $15.97! Oh also, they have liquor stores at their interstate rest areas for the thirsty traveler.

 

 

 

Miles this leg: 247

 

Total miles: 5733.3