We knew our travels through the more sparsely settled areas of the northlands were about to end. And as we descended into the heart of Michigan's lower peninsula, they did! Although there was nary a cloud in the sky, it was slightly darker, prophesying our descent into the Rust Belt.
Unsure of which route we'd pick to continue east, we settled in for the night at a KOA, (reserved in advance, with a one night, no refund policy), in Port Huron, Michigan, on the Ontario border, northeast of Detroit. We got our first glimpse of "midwest camping". It turns out the Good Sam rating is high here primarily because of things like "bumper boats", train rides, and a dizzying array of activities that would be attractive to the 2-18 year set. A wonderful place for people who want an amusement park for a campsite, but otherwise a very poor choice of places to stop. To make matters worse our particular site was the closest to the action of any in the entire park. The best strategy at this point seemed to point towards an early departure tomorrow.
It was September 10, and we were off in the early a.m. to Ohio. We attempted bypassing Detroit (an impossible feat as it developed), to avoid road construction, which cost us some miles and didn't avoid all the construction anyway. With severe winters, all road construction must be done in summer & fall. In Chicago, people believe there are 2 seasons, winter and construction.
Detroit was a mere 52 miles to the south; yet once we'd hit the northeast corner of this giant, sprawling urban mess, it would be an hour and a quarter getting into and negotiating around it -- all on "freeways". Happily, the Saturday morning traffic volumes were tolerable, because the roadways surely were not. The entire highway system into and around Detroit is made of that super-hard concrete, which was poured in blocks about 20 feet long, each of which has long since chosen its own unique vertical elevation. Compounding this misery, the extreme paucity of funding for public works in Detroit is painfully evident from the lack of adequate maintenance. I don't recall hearing of major earthquakes in the Detroit area, yet virtually all the roadways have long, gaping cracks and holes, as if to invite each passing vehicle. Clearly the strategy here is to make these worn out roads last as long as possible, as the favored option is to repair, not replace. As a consequence, these patched roadways are more patch than road.
Beware your favorite vehicles
As you're nearing to Detroit
As every rivet, shock and spring
'twill viciously exploit
These bumpy, cracked and dying roads
Will threaten your good cheer
Even though they fit right in
With all the scenery here
Those gaping holes and crevices
Are bent on your destruction
And making matters still worse yet
Everywhere's construction
Yet this is what's expected --
Not surprising in the least
It's exactly what you've bargained for
When you choose to travel east!
Eventually we survived our close encounter with Detroit, and headed on south for Toledo, where, consistent with another tradition popular in the East, we'd have to pay to drive on the main route east through Ohio. "Toledo" conjured images of mainstream rust belt. The freeway through the portion of Toledo we traveled did little to dispel such images. Reason insists that there must be attractive neighborhoods elsewhere in Toledo, but occasionally it becomes difficult to believe even conclusions which are well-grounded in logic.
Turning the corner at Toledo, we were off east once again, and followed the shores of Lake Erie. Onto the Ohio tollway, to Tom's disparaging remarks, which became more vocal when we reached the first "service stop". There was a nice picnic area with dog walk, for which you needed a $2.00 ticket - to be purchased at the service station. It was amazing how many people had actually purchased one!
We were headed for Geneva-by-the-Lake, where an RV park promised cable TV. We took the long way around Cleveland (we really should have individual maps of each state; of course, we didn't dream we would wind up in Ohio), and found more construction when we found the right road (good ol' Interstate 90), but reached our park without other incident, in plenty of time to see ALL the games.
Before we got to this town, we passed through Geneva. This is more of a full time town, and has great personality. Picturesque houses, painted pastel, pioneer colors, large green lawns, roadside tomato stands, and a real "down town".
Geneva-by-the-Lake, (which claims to be the first resort on Lake Erie), is a melange of fast food joints, bars and bikers. We'd picked an RV park named "Indian Shores", based on its "10" rating in the Good Sam guide, plus a notation it had cable TV. Tom was particularly delighted this mid-Saturday afternoon to find that the local cable hookup provided just about every game televised anywhere. Indeed, the whole schedule spanned from early afternoon through midnight in the western time zones! All this was a meaningless amenity for me, so I took off to explore the local environs.
It was still early the next morning when, following the shoreline of Lake Erie, we crossed into the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania. Just north of Erie, PA, we abandoned the interstate system, and returned to lesser routes to head due east on highway 17. Within a few miles we crossed the border into New York. Now we were really East!
I'm not sure if the denizens of Vermont, etal. would accept this state into their Northeast (we of the San Juan Islands do not accept Fidalgo, after all), but it looked like I expect the rest of the "East" to look. Our neighbor, Palmer Meredith, once tried to explain to Tom why the East was better than the West, (an impossible task), by saying that in the West, the mountains were so steep and high that you could see only the next mountain. In the East, he said, when one got to the top of a mountain, there was a view ! Since the mountains are so much lower, and more rounded, you can see more. There are vistas down valleys and to the mountains beyond the mountains.
We stopped in Bath, NY tonight, at a park situated only 5 miles from the Taylor Vineyards (we contemplated sending Sao, our Napa Valley friend, a T-shirt!). Driving out to explore it, we found that they were having a festival, featuring the Black Mountain Cloggers. I remember from my stay in Philadelphia that regional "arts" are much appreciated in this area, and that clogging is a dance from the Dutch who originally inhabited this area. It has become a heavy footed sort of tap, but the regionality of the dance was delightful. Taylor Vineyards' architecture Tom described accurately as prisonlike, and the wine will not win any competition with California wines, but it was an interesting way to spend the afternoon. We even purchased a bottle of the most expensive wine the vineyards had to offer.
At dinner we sampled our expensive wine. It was terrible. The "nose" was as if someone had dumped a box of b-b's into the vat and let them rust. I preferred the box wine.
Today, instead of hitching up and getting off to our customary early head start on mileage, we left the RV behind and took a side trip to Corning, NY. The claim to fame here is the company of the same name -- and it predominates the downtown area. Its most famous product line is Steuban glass. We had visited the counterpart in Waterford, Ireland, so we stopped by here as well. This is obviously a well-visited area, and even in this off-season there were tour buses and lots of foreign visitors. The showroom here offers a dazzling display of the top-line Steuben collection. And as in Waterford, the value of the pieces are determined in large measure by the "name" of the master glass blower who creates it.
What we've seen of New York State so far is completely at odds with one's vision of New York City, but the population densities are still a bit high for what we would consider being "out in the country". There are no schools, no hospitals, no grocery stores, merely non- stop summer homes completely encircling each and every lake.
We came through another Geneva that afternoon. Geneva, New York, is a lovely town, with many mansion-type homes fronting on Seneca Lake. Without the 5th wheel, it would have been an interesting city to explore. As it is, parking is at a premium, and the street signs say that from October through March, there is no parking at all on many of the streets.
We arrived in Poland, the night of the 12th, by-passing Cuba, Texas and Mexico-- all New York. Poland appeared at first to be another extremely small town, with a very nice RV park, where each site is wide with borders of full grown trees. We were fairly close to the street though, and hoped the traffic would lessen after dark.
There had really been a dearth of grocery stores for the last few days. I was beginning to wonder how/what these folks eat and where they purchased it. Tonight we feasted on something from the freezer and a combination of frozen Brussels sprouts and 1/2 left over cauliflower. To paraphrase Mr. Jimmy Buffet, "I'm tired of all these small groceries in my life. I want my Safeway!"
Unfortunately, we were not close enough to the highway to frighten away a skunk. At about 9 o'clock the 5th wheel got a good dose of skunk scent. I guess I was lucky not to have been directly sprayed; when I entered the 5th wheel, Tom said I smelled "skunky", and shortly thereafter, whew!! We did manage to get to sleep, and while there was some scent in the morning, it was practically gone. This must be the difference between a live skunk, who takes his scent with him, and a dead one who doesn't.
Took off up Highway 8 this morning, and after a 2 hour drive, arrived in Spectator, NY. Here we found "King of the Frosties", not an ice cream parlor, but an excellent breakfast restaurant. Our waitress, Janice Peasley, was very knowledgeable about the town, the county (Hamilton), the difference between "hamlet" and "town", and the different routes through the Adirondacks. This because she wears the hats of waitress, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, and of real estate broker!! We learned that Hamilton County is the largest county in New York State, with the greatest amount of state owned land. We had some fun comparing traditions for bidding good-by to the seasonal tourists (the local equivalent of our "take back the rock" is Bloody Marys on the porch and a good-bye wave). The town, named after a nearby mountain, was a summer-only town until the advent of the snowmobile, which rescued the town at a time when dual income families were becoming the norm-- when Mom could no longer take the kids to the lake for the summer.
Janice recommended that we travel north through Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. We took her advice and headed north instead of continuing in our original Easterly direction. Our new route was higher and consequently we had our first glimpse of the fabled fall colors. At one spot, we found an uninhabited small lake rimmed with reds and oranges, and as I looked out at it I heard the call of a loon. Perfect!
The countryside of the Adirondack Mountains, and the lake country of upper New York State is quite different from the West, perhaps influenced in part by a different lifestyle.. Unlike Western lake country, where people tend to be "transient" guests, these folks are here because their second home is here. And while there are facilities for campers and RVers, their numbers compared to the vast numbers of lakeside cabins and homes indicate they are clearly a small minority of the population at any point in time. It's pretty here, with rolling hills and relatively dense forests of mixed conifer and deciduous trees.
The route was not immune to the construction mania either. Not only in the Detroit and Cleveland areas, now construction in small towns and in areas where there were no towns at all. This construction necessitated several by-passes:
They're replacing the roads in the hamlets,
They won't stop until the job's done
They're replacing the roads in the cities
And driving there isn't much fun
They're moving large rocks with the 'dozers
And traveling past them is slow
They're replacing the roads in the mountains
They'll continue until they hit snow
Before we left the Adirondacks, we came to a place which is not remote at all. Lake Placid is a large town, full of restaurants, specialty stores, Swiss decor and tourists. And next was Aussable (pronounced "Awessable") Chasm. Here for a fee you can walk into a gorge and watch the river run through. The cliffs will be 200 feet above you. It would be hard to rate this spectacular by Western standards.
Leaving Lake Placid, (which has some of the same attributes as famous Rocky Mountain ski areas,) we "descended" (keeping in mind we've never been over about 2,000 feet in elevation) to the shores of Lake Champlain, and looked across the waters to what would prove to be a vastly different land -- Vermont. The busmen, (as in "busman's holiday"), from San Juan Island will take any ferry ride at any time and this was our introduction to Vermont. There are several crossing sites. We chose one which connects Plattsford, NY, with the outskirt communities of Burlington, VT. On board I chatted with one of the crew, who resides in Vermont. This ferry runs all year long, and for about 4-5 months of the year, it plows through ice to keep its schedule. The snow accumulates here to about 3-4 feet, and doesn't disappear until April or May. According to my shipboard mentor, the primary winter activity here is ice fishing. He complained that too many Atlantic salmon had been turned loose in Lake Champlain, thus prejudicing his more favored catch -- perch and sunfish! I was a bit amazed at this chap's choice of fish, but he probably knows something that I don't.
Arriving at the other side, we could almost "feel" a change in the environment. We were finally in "New England", after almost 4,000 miles. That night we stayed in Colchester, just north of Burlington, and close to Mallets Bay -- a picturesque water oriented community on a pleasant inland waterway of Lake Champlain. It also is near the only Costco in the entire New England area, so we took the opportunity to stock up a bit.
This morning, Sept. 14, we headed south to explore the Green Mountain state. We planned to drop the RV somewhere and tour the back roads. We took Interstate 89 south from Burlington, near Montpelier, and on south to a point near Woodstock. This was, without question, the most spectacular stretch of interstate highway we'd ever driven. We couldn't even see any towns or villages as we passed through, because the interstate doesn't go "through" any of them -- including Montpelier. The entire route is a continuum of fall forests, spreading through the steep hillside country for as far as the eye can see. There weren't even any billboards to detract from this incredible scenery, as they're apparently banned throughout the entire state, replaced instead with very small signs which provide the traveler with minimal information about what services are available at each exit.
If you want the feel of New England, you must see the towns. You won't see them from the freeways. You also won't find any breakfast stops. And that was our desire, after being on the road for about an hour this morning. We began searching for information about what options might be available at each approaching exit from the freeway. We could learn nothing from the traditional means of advertising, as there were no billboards. We noted, on state-furnished signs so small they would not have been objected to ever by the Cape San Juan Fathers, a modicum of information hinting at what might be found if one chose to leave at any approaching exit. But after trying a couple of these, we found that there were no services at the freeway exits themselves, but rather at some undisclosed distance into the countryside on a narrow lane.
This worked out fine for us this morning. Although it took some time to find a place for breakfast, when we did, it was delicious. We had griddle cakes, a kind of pancake just a little different from what we'd eaten before, and, of course, Vermont maple syrup.
Then we were off on the of backroads, Tom doing all the driving, (hard work with a 5th wheel), to our park for the night. En route, we passed through Woodstock, VT. This town is a real tourist attraction, judging from the number of visitors out this day. It is a beautiful town, but the price of the items for sale here outstrip prices for similar items elsewhere. We stopped long enough to detach the 5th wheel at the park we'd chosen for the night, and then set off again to complete a circle tour of southern Vermont. We got lost a couple of times, but eventually arrived in Proctor, home of the Vermont marble Factory and of Robert Holden. In a hurry to return to our RV park, Tom lost Missy's leash:
I really did a foul deed
When Missy's favorite leash I lost
The one which stretched past twenty feet --
And was purchased at great cost
Now her freedom was restricted
No more the space to roam
With life's horizon's just six feet
She might as well be home
But we've replaced it with a new one
(Encouraged by my wife)
And now our Missy has again
A brand new "leash on life"
T.H. Gonser* (*Punch line furnished by Stephanie)