Monthly Archives: July 2009
Peekskill and the Hudson River Valley…
Today Jan and I drove the 30 miles over to Peekskill, NY to get to a larger town nearer to New York City. We wanted to go by a motel or someplace that had a brochure rack that had a lot of stuff for New York City. The places around here had more things for this area and not a lot for New York.
And we hit the jackpot. So now we have plenty of stuff to look over to help plan for Brandi and Piper’s arrival tomorrow.
Heading back we came across the Cortlandt Colonial Restaurant, and liking the look of the place, decided to stop for lunch. And it was a good choice. Beautiful restaurant, excellent food, and good service. What more can you ask for?
Coming home we stopped at a scenic pullout and took pictures of the Hudson River Valley below us.
Hudson River Valley 1
Hudson River Valley 2
This is the place the Americans stretched a 600 yard, 65 ton chain across the river to prevent the British from sailing up the river during the Revolutionary War. It was a great idea, but the British never tried to break the chain. They just captured the forts on either side and removed the chain. Although I guess it really didn’t do them any good in the long run.
Later this afternoon, I set out all of our menagerie of flamingos, pelicans, moose, cats, and other assorted items in preparation for tomorrow’s arrival.
More tomorrow…
New York, New York…
I had a rude awakening this morning, or rather, a diesel awakening. And Jan had a good laugh at my expense.
Jan got up early but I was sleeping in…at least for a while. About 9 am, I was suddenly awakened from a deep sleep by our coach engine starting up…right underneath me. Our bed is right over the engine and it’s very LOUD when it’s running. And then about 5 seconds later, it quit.
Running out to the front of the coach I found Jan laughing. It turned out that lady next door had come over and told Jan that her cat was hiding under our coach, and ask Jan to start the engine to scare the cat out.
Well, it worked. It apparently scared the hell out of the cat and it took off, probably even harder to catch now.
And it scare the hell out of me, too.
Luckily I had showed Jan how to start the coach. Starting a diesel is not difficult, but there is a procedure you have to go thru so you don’t get all sorts of error messages.
We’re in a nice, woodsy RV park with a lot of wildlife around. So far, we’ve seen rabbits, a mother deer and her two fawns, and a flock of 5 or 6 wild turkeys. But no bears…yet.
Black Bear Campground
Later in the morning I finally got a chance to install the new replacement board in my EMS (Electrical Management System) that had died a couple of weeks ago in Williamsburg.
The new board kind of worked, but it didn’t completely fix the problem. So after talking to the company, they’re sending me another part. Hopefully this will fix it.
About 11 am we headed over to Middletown, NY, the nearest larger town. We wanted to pick up some things for the coach, see the countryside, and grab some lunch.
After our stops at Radio Shack and Advanced Auto Parts, we stumbled across Cosimos’ Brick Oven, a great Italian restarant. Jan and I both had panini sandwiches from the lunch menu. Really good. Hope we can go back before we leave.
Coming back we detoured over to Harriman, to check the location where we will be catching the MTA train into New York.
After we got back and took a nap, I went back to work on getting the satellite dish working. Yesterday, I was not able to get a signal from the satellite due to nearby trees.
So this afternoon, Jan helped me hoist the dish up on the roof of the coach for a better site line.
About 5 minutes later I had a signal and we had TV again.
After I finished with the satellite, Jan and I sat out in the fading light and enjoyed some sangria.
Life is good!
