We also added lots more pics to our picasa web album for this trip.
Sunday morning the campground started to empty out. We set out for the nearby town of Littleton where there was purported to be a small store named the Yarn Garden, but as luck would have it, the Yarn Garden has closed up shop. Oh well, nice little main street for a stroll and a great little local artisans craft store. After wandering around there a bit, we drove to over to Sugar Hill, a quaint little place of about 800 people; had a look in the one little general store then decided to try Polly's Pancake Parlor for some lunch. This place came highly recommended and, man, is it popular. The parking lot was fairly full and there were a few folks lingering around outside the entrance but in we went. WOW... without a reservation we were told it was at least an hour and a half wait! Now, in our collective humble opinions, there is nary a pancake on this earth that is worth an hour and a half wait! Back outside, we noticed a number of people lined up to get their picture taken with the rather large Polly's Pancake Parlor road sign. Someday, if we are ever back in the area, we'll make sure we make a reservation well in advance. We continued driving around the lovely area, stopped at a small roadside cafe for a very nice quiche lunch before heading back to Lancaster to pick up some steaks to grill for dinner. Returning to the campground, we found ourselves to have been totally abandoned. Just us, a few mosquitoes and grilled steaks for dinner.
The rest of the week was mainly to get us to Cleveland, Ohio. We had planned to see a ball game at Progressive Field in Cleveland next Sunday, but the weather forecast is making it look like a rainy Sunday. So we have decided to get to Cleveland by Friday, then if the forecast for Sunday still sucks, see if we can make it to the game Friday night. With the week after next being the all-star break, if we don't see a game in Cleveland this week, we likely won't on this trip and that would really suck!
Monday we headed south west to White River Junction, Vermont and the night's stop at the Quechee/Pine Valley KOA. After getting checked in we headed across the river back into New Hampshire for lunch at Mickey's Roadside Cafe before heading to the Enfield Shaker Museum. The Enfield Shaker Historical Society, over some time, has managed to purchase a number of the original shaker buildings, the most recent being the "red barn"...
... a beautiful large old barn which appears to have sat empty for a long long time and will need some restorative work. Their main prize though, is the Great Stone Dwelling, the largest building the Shakers ever made,...
... and now the museum's centerpiece. This is a magnificent building built from 1837 to 1841. The Shakers were some craftspeople! When it was built, this was the largest building north of Boston. As part of their fund raising efforts, the society rents out large portions of the building for special events, conferences and the like. While we were there, a music symposium with mostly young (teenage) folks was being held and the participants were staying in the upper floors so our tour was confined to the two lower floors only because, as the tour guide said, "there are clothes strewn everywhere". Beautiful place though.
Tuesday we headed west into upstate New York, a fairly long driving day, for us anyway, to get to Cooperstown, New York early enough to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame. We arrived at the Hartwick Highlands Campground, the closest one to Cooperstown, late afternoon and after getting set up, drove into town to go to "the Hall"...
We have been here a couple of times before and it is really neat to see that the exhibits change over time. Although there are excellent sections on historical aspects of the game, they make sure that there are plenty of exhibits focusing on current and recent past players and their accomplishments, making it much easier for young fans to relate. They have also developed excellent ways to show the wide variety of statistics kept since the beginning of baseball...
A really neat exhibit is the gallery highlighting the current year's inductees, of which there are four excellent choices for 2015....
We spent a few hours in the museum then it was time to head off and get some dinner. The main street of Cooperstown is choc-a-bloc full of baseball related souvenir shops full of a lot of stuff we neither need nor want at this point in our lives, so it was fairly easy to skip past most of them on our way to Mel's at 22, an upscale place specializing in American style dining with the biggest burgers we have seen in a long time. Neither one of us actually finished one.
Wednesday we continued our trek across upstate New York. Man, that's a long way. Along the way we stopped at a roadside diner (Fred's Inn) for what has to be the most abysmal lunch we have had on this trip. We arrived at the KOA in Watkins Glen late afternoon giving us just enough time for Brian to get a haircut, buy some pork chops and head back to the KOA for a grilled dinner. Watkins Glen is home to the Watkins Glen International Raceway with the next big race, a US Vintage Grand Prix, coming up in a couple of weeks. We were told that this place will get real busy for that.
Thursday was going to be an extra long day so we decided to just take I-86 across the rest of New York. To start the day off, we discovered our GPS must have been out drinking last night, or something! Even though we have restrictions such as "no gravel roads" turned on, our GPS got us going west right out of the campground, then decided we should take a shortcut to get to I-86, on a gravel road! We thought, ok, maybe a bit of bad GPS data as it looks like we are on this gravel road for only about 5 kms (and it was a decent gravel road, not wash boarded at all). So after 5 kms we turn onto another gravel road and we are on this one for another 7+ kms, then another gravel road for another 7+ kms.... but... this time it gets ugly. As we approach the crest of a hill, we see a farmer start to pull out of his private road, then seeing us, he backs in and watches us go over the crest of the hill past him. At the bottom of the hill, the road suddenly, essentially ends! Not quite ends but turns into a two rutted road with knee high grass in the center and a very large sign indicating this is a seasonal road. What the ??? We notice the "good" gravel road ends at another farm's entrance drive so we decide to turn around there. There's no way we were going to keep going on the "seasonal road". Lucky for us there was sufficient room to turn around with the wee trailer. Back up the hill to where the farmer is now waiting for us. Turns out to be a very friendly guy (could have gone the other way but thankfully did not). He asked us where we were trying to get to and explained that they get many vehicles of all shapes and sizes doing exactly what we were trying to do. He said it was a good thing we turned around as about a mile on that "seasonal" road has been washed out!...
Note: GPS + BAD GPS DATA = TROUBLE!!!
This is why, regardless of how handy the GPS is, we would not blindly follow the GPS instructions in the middle of winter. Summer is one thing, but winter, in snowy conditions, not so much.
Anyway, the farmer was headed into town and told us to follow him. About 10 kms later, he waved us off in the right direction and we were on our way. WHEW! Our first really negative experience with the GPS. That debacle ended up adding over an hour to what was going to be a long day. We stopped at a Rite-Aid in Corning for a few things then jumped onto I-86 heading west. Around noon we stopped at the Seneca Allegany Casino for lunch. Chicken noodle soup for Brian as he was feeling a bit under the weather, and a monster cobb salad for Kris (so big half of it came along to be had later for dinner).
After lunch and back on I-86 we needed to stop and get some gas. At one point I, Brian, said that we'll take the next exit and get some gas. As we drove down the exit ramp, I said to Kris "I think that small sign there indicated the Lucy -Desi Museum!" What? So as I gas up the car, Kris checks the web and sure enough we have taken the exit ramp to Jamestown New York, the birthplace of Lucille Ball and now the home of the Lucy -/Desi Museum. HOW COOL IS THAT! So, we drove into downtown Jamestown and found the museum (can't pass this by)...
The museum chronicles the lives and times of both Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, shows awards that the I Love Lucy show won...
... has replicas of some of the show settings and some of the actual costumes ...
.... and excellent gift shops to boot. This is a fun place!
Leaving Jamestown and continuing on into Pennsylvania, we stopped at the Meadville KOA for the night.
Friday we headed off a bit early as we wanted to get to our target destination, the Homerville, Ohio, KOA by early afternoon so that we would have time to rest up before heading into Cleveland for the ball game. The weather forecast for Sunday still didn't look good so this was the day. We arrived at the KOA at about 3:30 PM, leaving us a little over an hour to rest before the one hour plus drive into Cleveland. Due to some massive road construction projects, it ended up taking us about an hour and a half to get close enough to Progressive Field to park, but we made it...
.... found the ticket window and bought our tickets, $24 each but they were a tad nosebleed-ish...
... although we had a cool view out of the park as the sun began to set....
After finding our seats we still had about a half hour before the game started. That was enough time to hit the team store for our usual souvenirs (pin and shoulder patch) and grab a bite to eat. We settled on a couple of bratwursts and found a place to sit and eat them. We shared a table with a couple of Clevelanders and had nice chat about what to do in Cleveland and they quite enjoyed hearing about our trip.
All in all, it was a defensive game with some great defensive plays on both sides but not a lot of hitting. The game was knotted at one apiece until the Oakland pitching sort of fell apart in the 6th, walking in two runs and giving up a two run single to spot the Indians a 5-1 lead that would not change the rest of the way. Since we had a good hour drive to get back to the campground and it was now dark, we decided to beat the traffic and left the game after the eighth inning. It ended up being pretty easy to get onto I-71 south from where we parked then it was a steady heavy traffic at a speed of 70+ mph all the way back. We got back to the trailer around 11:30 PM. Long day, very tiring.
Saturday we drove back into Cleveland to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...
We got there just after noon, so we checked out their cafe for a salad and sandwich for lunch before diving in. We spent the next three or so hours just wandering around, and loving, the various exhibits of equipment (eg guitars)...
... timelines in some of the key early rock and roll cities, in this case Memphis...
... and costumes such as The Beatles (Sgt Pepper) and The Supremes...
.... this is an excellent and fun place to spend a lot of time... maybe we'll have to come back here some day. Leaving the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame we drove around downtown Cleveland for a bit and decided it was a whole lot nicer that Pittsburgh. We stopped at the very upscale supermarket, Heinen's Grocery Store, for some deli meatloaf and salads to be had for dinner back at the campground.
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