Our RV Adventures

Today was a travel day, the start of a two day trip to Celina, OH where we will spend 6 days at the Eastern Gypsy RV Rally,  an RV rally put on by Nick Russell and his wife Terry.

Nick publishes “The Gypsy Journal” a very popular bimonthly RV newsletter and last year started putting on a series of Western Rallys in Arizona and Eastern Rallys in OH.

We attended the Western Rally in Casa Grande, AZ in February 2008, just a week or so after we first hit road on our new RV life.

We did not attend this year’s Western Rally this past February since were going to do the East Coast this year, but we do plan on doing the Western one next year, since we will be out that way.

We left the park about 11 am and drove about 6 miles to a Flying J Truck Stop to fuel up before hitting the Interstate.  We put in about 111 gallons and went 990 miles on the last tank. That means we’re getting almost 9 miles to the gallon.  Not bad when we weigh almost 31,000 pounds and are pulling a truck weighing almost 6000 pounds.

I mean, what kind of mileage does your home get?

We didn’t get back on the road until about 11:45 due to the slow RV diesel pumps at the Flying J.  When I can I like to fill up at the truck pumps because they have bigger nozzles and fill much faster.

When your tank holds 150 gallons,  you want to dump the fuel in as fast as possible.

But the truck lanes were very busy and these guys work for a living, running on a tight schedule.  So I try to stay out of their way.

So I was in the RV lanes, with a diesel pump that seemed to putting out molasses.  It was that slow.  After 10 minutes I had only put in 40 gallons.

But finally we were on the road for 3 state trip.  We started out in NY, cut about 45 miles across the top left corner of PA, and end up just SE of Cleveland, OH.

We stopped at a rest area Dennys for lunch just before we left NY state.  The rest areas here in NY are different.  Rather just restrooms and vending machines like most states, NY’s have gas stations and restaurants.

Ours had a McDonalds, a Dennys, a coffee place, and several others.

We arrived at our KOA park about 4 pm. We were able to get a large pull-thru site so that we didn’t have to unhook the toad, since we didn’t plan on going out for dinner.

After getting set up, we let Mister out to roam around a bit.

Streetsboro KOA

That’s him at the bottom right of the picture.

Then it was in for the night and an early start tomorrow.

Later…

As I said, today was pretty much just an errand day.

We’re at the Sleepy Hollow Lake Campground in Corfu, NY, a little east of Buffalo. 

Sleepy Hollow Lake

It’s the only park we’ve ever stayed at that has a petting zoo!  They have alpacas, goats, sheep, pigs, and emus.  Not bad.

Petting Zoo 1

Petting Zoo 2

Petting Zoo 3

Petting Zoo 4

And for some strange reason, it also has its own firetruck!

Firetruck

Not sure that’s a good thing or a bad thing. 

After sitting outside with Mister a while, we headed out looking a good place to have lunch.

While looking for, what turned out to be an out-of-business Mexican place, we stumbled on Quaker Steak and Lube,  a restaurant with, not surprisingly, an automobile theme.

And really good food. 

Besides a full menu, they also specialized in Buffalo Wings.  I noticed that besides the normal ones, they had  ‘Atomic Wings, so Jan and I decided to try a sampler plate of 5 wings.

Wing Chart

According to the SHU (Scoville Heat Units) chart on their menu,  regular Buffalo wings rate a 3000 of the chart.  Really, really hot wings rate a 30,000.

Their Atomic Wings come in at150,000 SHU!

Jan ate two wings and I ate 3.  They were hot, very hot.  But I’m not sure they’re any hotter than the hottest ones that Hooters has.

But for the rest of the day, our lips did tingle and feel like they had been sunburned.

After lunch, with our tongues still tingling and our eyes still watering, we drove over to Sam’s Club for some ‘stuff’.

Heading back toward home we stopped off at a Walgreens that had flu shots available.  Jan wanted to get one.  This is just for the normal flu.  The Swine (H1N1) Flu shots won’t be available until sometime next month.

As usual,  I didn’t get one.  As I tell Jan,  “I depend on the kindness of strangers”.  I figure if everyone else gets a shot, then I won’t need one.

I haven’t gotten a flu shot for years and I haven’t had the flu for years.  And pretty much every time I got a shot in the past, I’ve gotten the flu.

So there.

We also stopped off at a NAPA Auto Parts so I could buy a new battery for the truck.  We’ve had a couple of instances recently where our truck wouldn’t start, so I wanted to take care of the problem.

I installed the new battery in the NAPA parking lot so I wouldn’t have to bring the old one back later.

Later that evening, we decided to have more chicken wings.  This time from the place that created the first Buffalo Wings in 1964 and started the whole thing.

It’s called ‘The Original Anchor Bar” and is located in Buffalo, of all places.  The place is really a family Italian restaurant and has been around since 1934.

The wings came about when some friends of the owner’s son showed up right before closing one night, and the son asked his mother to fix something for them.  She took a bunch of chicken wings that she was planning to use for soup, deep fried them, and then dunked them in a sauce she had been working on for another recipe.

And a legend was born!

This being an Italian restaurant, besides an order of Spicy BBQ Wings, we got a cheese and pepperoni pizza, and an order of Pizza Logs, kind of like Italian Egg Rolls.  All very good.  And we had leftovers.

Then it was back home to get ready to  head out tomorrow on a two day trip to Celinda, OH for the Eastern Gypsy RV Rally.

More tomorrow…