On the road to the Adirondacks...

We had just left Niagara headed for two weeks in the Adirondacks when it started raining again and Rose's windshield wiper went so far to the left of the windshield it got wrapped around the side on the drivers side and stopped working again. So.. Gary got out in the pouring rain (I wish had taken a picture of him but I was too panicked to think of it as a photo opportunity!) He readjusted the wiper and thank goodness it has worked ever since - we have had lots of opportunities to test it with all of the rain we have had!

Finally settled at the campground in Lake George.....

We stayed in the Lake George area at a very quiet and "woodsy" campground for the first week. That's where we got the microwave fixed. To our amazement ( and relief), the appliance repair centers will actually make a "house call" to a campground! We found out that the door had to be replaced and would have to be ordered. Fortunately we were staying at the campground long enough for the door to be shipped and installed- so it's working again!!

We had yet another trip to a vet in Lake George to look at Molly's infection and to get her last vaccination. The lamp shade is off!!! Little did we know when we left Atlanta that we would be going on a vet tour of the NE US and Canada. We're hoping we have had our final stop on our vet tour and that the rest of the trip will be vet free!

There was plenty of time to relax at the campground and the weather was nice and cool so we had a campfire almost every night. The pile of wood must have looked like a pile of bones to Molly because she kept hauling the sticks off the pile and chewing on them!

Gary building a fire

Molly chewing the fire kindling


Highlights around Lake George...

• Boat ride on Lake George - it's a 32 mile long lake with beautiful mountains surrounding it
• The Adirondack Museum and a tour of Sagamore - the Vanderbilt's "Great Camp" from the late 1800's - it is fascinating!
  
  
  The Sagamore "Great Camp" - fabulous architecture made of birch bark and logs built in the late 1800's.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Adirondacks Museum - The classic wooden canoes
  
  
  
  
  
  

Lovely Lupine blooming along one of our hikes

Ready for a hike to the Hudson river - lampshade and all!

Exhausted after the first half mile!








Now on to the high peaks of the Adirondacks near Lake Placid...

The second week we moved Rose to Lake Placid - just 150 miles north of Lake George. We thought this would be a really easy trip up but boy were we surprised! We had just left the campground, maybe 5 minutes earlier when Rose's "check engine" light came on. Needless to say we were not prepared for yet another problem with Rose! Now what do we do???

We pulled over to the side of the road and called Coach net - the emergency road service for RVs. They said they would have a technician call us right back. Well - it seemed like an eternity before they called us back but it was really just 10 minutes. During that time my mind was racing with all of the possibilities of what could be wrong and what will we do....They explained that it was probably an emission sensor and we could keep driving it and the light would probably go out. They said if it started blinking to stop immediately. So - we started Rose up again and got back on the road with the light still on but thankfully not blinking. Shortly after we were back on the road we hit a bump in the road and the light went out and has never come on again! So - we've decided that every time we have a problem, we just find a bump in the road and drive Rose over it and the problem will go away! Easy peasy!!

Highlights of the high peaks of the Adirondacks...

• The beautiful scenery with lakes, rivers, mountains and waterfalls. It was as beautiful as we had hoped it would be! It is truly an outdoor paradise for hiking, canoeing, kayaking, fishing, biking and all kinds of winter sports too!
• Hikes with Molly to the Hudson river and a waterfall
• A drive to the summit of Whiteface mountain
• The Lake Placid Olympic ski jumping venues
• Dinner with Bob and Julia - new friends we met on our trip to Asia in April

A beautiful walk in High Falls Gorge

With our friends Bob and Julia having a lovely dinner of fresh rainbow trout with a view of the falls

Top of the ski jump at Lake Placid

Ski jumper practicing at Lake Placid

At the summit on Whiteface Mountain

Next stop... Montreal, Quebec City and New Brunswick!

The adventure begins - our first big road trip!

After three wonderful years of living and travelling in Europe and a trip to South America, Antarctica, and Asia - we're off to experience the beauty of North America in a 40 foot RV. It may not sound like much of a challenge but our only experience with an RV was renting a 26 foot "over the cab" for a week -20 years ago! The next challenge is getting used to living in 356 square feet of living space - every inch counts. If that wasn't enough, we have a new puppy named Molly. So I'll introduce you to the members of our travelling family...... Molly - "the boss", Gary - driver and chief of maintenance, Sharon -RV travel planner, Rose -our BIG girl RV and Scooter - our Smart Car.

First is Molly!
The day we picked up Molly we were driving her back to our RV and she got car sick - not a good start for a dog that will travelling for months at a time! Lucky for all of us - she got used to the motion very quickly - thank goodness, and she is already a really good traveller. She lays in my lap and sleeps most of the time. Pretty good for a 4 month old puppy!

Gary - BUS driver ( thank goodness he is quite happy doing ALL of the driving; I wouldn't even think about trying to drive such a big girl as Rose!) He's also chief of maintenance, there's always something that needs repairing - lots of moving parts... One of the regular jobs is connecting the sewer hose every time we stop at a campground. Nothing better to make us appreciate a permanent connection...

Here's Sharon - the travel planner working hard on the travel plans. Molly helps in the planning - she adds in lots of breaks for walks and treats.

Meet Rose - she's a VERY big girl! We named her Rose because with Rose you can't be in a hurry (she's too big to move quickly) so we hope she will help us to stop and smell the roses instead of running past them in a blur!

Last but certainly not least is Scooter. We bought the Smart Car because it is the only car that will fit in Rose but the bonus has been that she is so much fun to drive and gets great gas mileage too! Scooter helps make up for Rose's drinking problem. Rose just guzzles the fuel!

At the campsite Scooter in Rose's garage

It was a rocky start to the trip to Niagara....

We were barely north of Atlanta on I75 when the passenger windshield wiper broke off of Rose in the middle of a thunderstorm and then the other wiper quit working. I was wondering if this was an omen of some sort. We stopped in Chattanooga to get the wipers fixed and they shipped the wrong part - delaying our trip for two days. We finally hit the road with no time to spare to meet our Irish friends in Niagara two days later. Our first night on the way to Niagara was in a Walmart parking lot in Cincinatti. We turned on the TV just in time to hear a news alert about a toronado and large hail warning for the area where we were staying. The wind and heavy rain lasted all night long but fortunately there was no toronado, too. By this point I am wondering what's next....

Fortunately, the rest of the trip to Niagara was uneventful - my heart couldn't take much more. We arrived just in time to get ready to have our Irish friends join us in our RV for a cookout and campfire. We had good ole American hotdogs and hamburgers and S'mores.

More bumps in the road.....

But the evening was not without yet another opportunity for the chief of maintenance.......When our friends came over for the cookout the first night in Niagara, our microwave/convection oven stopped working. How do we survive without a microwave and how do we get it fixed while we're on the road??? ( more about this in our next blog update)

Molly provided even more excitement on the trip. Asserting her right to act like a puppy - she chewed up the power cord to my laptop. It looked like it was unsalvagable but the chief of maintenance came to the rescue with electrical tape. It took almost a whole roll of tape but my cord is fixed and Molly is under constant surveillance! We also had an unexpected trip to a veterinarian in Niagara - Molly's stitches from her spaying operation the week before were becoming infected so we got the name of a vet in Niagara and off we went to get some antibiotics. For the next 10 days she had a "lampshade" on her head until she healed.

Highlights of Niagara Falls....Seeing our dear friends Paul, Mary and Geoff from Ireland and the beauty of the Niagara Falls area.,,,

At the falls with Mary, Paul and Geoff Horseshoe falls from the Canadian side

Next stop - the Adirondacks in upstate New York!