Forging Our Way

Today was a travel day for us. We had said our goodbyes to our hosts Rosy and Lou last night. I was up early and we pulled out at 8:00. First I headed over to the cheapest place around for diesel. And came smack up against one of the annoyances of travel in a Motor Home. I needed about 50 gals of fuel but the pump shut off at 22. So, I swiped the card again and got another 22. The delivery system is just not set up for vehicles that take fuel in the quantities we need. At Flying J, I can swipe my loyalty card after my credit card and pump as much as I need on the one delivery, but if I can't get to a FJ, I'm out of luck.

But getting diesel is a piece of cake compared to getting propane. It seemed I could go to any hardware store in town and half the gas stations and some drug stores and get a 20lb. bottle of propane. Now that I've got a 130 gal tank to get filled it's another story. I started by going to a Suburban Propane depot. All sorts of tanks and hoses and trucks and two gals at desks who tell me that there's nobody there who can operated a pump. So I figure, surely I'll find someplace along the road. Well, I did. I stopped and at an Amerigas in Alder Creek with two gals, pumps, hoses, tanks of all kinds, even men, only to be told that I missed the last guy who could do it by 15 minutes. They told me to go to a hardware store. So we kept on going and the search continues tomorrow.

We made it to Old Forge by 11:30 and spent a couple of hours in the Old Forge Hardware store and wandering around town. Old Forge is a classic tourist trap complete with water park but is dear to the heart of every upstate New Yorker I know. It's a small town that most think of as the gateway to the Adirondacks.

Of course, It's not exactly the center of high culture.

But it's home to the Old Forge Hardware Store. Once just an old time source of hardware, now it's all that and more. It's famous for having just about anything you might want or need from nails to packbaskets, books to cast iron pots.It's always fun to browse the aisles.

From Old Forge, we retreated down Route 28 to Forestport Station to a local landmark restaurant called The Buffalo Head. The story goes that when lumbering was the local industry, one of the lumberman lived in a tiny apartment in NYC, one wall of which was adorned with a mounted Buffalo head. His wife gave him the ultimatum and so he brought it north to the Forestport station and hung it on the wall there. When later workers rode the train into the woods, when they were asked what station they wanted to be delivered to, they would answer "Buffalo Head". The current owners took the name for the restaurant when they purchased it in 1962 and it's been there ever since.

 It has a very complete menu and is standing room only on the weekends. We had the prime rib and it was just as we had remembered, one of the best anywhere.

After stuffing ourselves with home made pie we wandered down the road and then followed Rt 12 through Lowville and turned to 812 up to our latest stop. We will spend the week in the driveway here at my cousin's house in New Bremen. More visiting and genealogy.

Engines and More Food

I awoke yesterday morning to the sound of this tractor starting up outside our bedroom window. It's a 1951 Harry Ferguson tractor with a 1969 Chevy 350 engine. It was built and restored by our host, Louis Barbaglia, and Lou was getting it ready to display at the festival.

There was a whole row of old tractors and then next to them was one of my favorites, the single cylinder, hit and miss engines.

Although we often find them hooked up to ice cream makers, this one was demonstrating the grinding of corn.

While we were watching the engines, a little more ancient transportation came by.

Of course, we didn't make it through all the food the first day, so we were back at it yesterday. The first order of the day was barbeque. In these parts that means only one thing Cornell Recipe Chicken. No pulled pork or lathered beef in around here. No, it's chicken halves roasted on racks over a pit fire and basted with a special sauce developed years ago in the kitchens at nearby Cornell University.

A traditional side dish served with the chicken, and also with corn on the cob, is called "salt potatoes". These are small 1"-1 1/2" new potatoes boiled in heavily salted water and served with melted butter. The dinner consisted of chicken, salt potatoes, cole slaw, applesauce, roll and a drink.

For dessert we have something called fried dough. It's bread dough, rolled into sheets and then cut into strips, twisted and then deep fried and then rolled in cinnamon sugar.

There's also curly fries, if you're interested.

And it goes on and on 'til we were too stuffed to move.

I told the story yesterday of the Community Council and it's functions. I found a poster that they had put up to show how the monies that they have raised are spent.

Now we're off to more Northern climes for a few days before starting back South. We've really enjoyed being back in our old stomping grounds. We've visited and eaten and toured all over the area. We think that the small town festivals are really special. I encourage all of you to support yours, wherever they may be.

Festival Time

For us, coming back to Jordan meant coming for the annual Jordan Fall Festival. First, a little backstory. Jordan is a small town of about 4000 people located west of Syracuse. It really took off with the construction of the Eire Barge Canal which came through the town in 1819 and then was revitalized in 1890. The canal and the commerce it brought were the vital blood of the town. At one time, there was a local factory that just made wheelbarrows for the construction of the canal. Many sections of the canal were hand dug, although there are old photos of steam shovels being used in later construction. I used to own and live in a house that was a boarding house when the canal was built. Later the New York Central Railroad came through town and the construction of that boosted business. But when the New York State Thruway came along, the town decided that they really didn't want the commercialism that might attend having an exit right on the edge of town. That really slowed the growth rate of the town, which turned out to be good and bad. The lack of commercialism has led to a quiet, small town atmosphere with historical overtones that is quite pleasant. It has also held down the ability of the town to fund the programs that are part of the life of the town. Thus there is a Community Council that administers the many popular programs and it's funding is driven by the annual fall festival.

So, all of the various organizations come together to man the booths and sell the food and raise the money.

It's a combination of carnival rides, crafts, food and entertainment that is typical of many small town affairs across the country. But for us it's special because we participated in it for so many years, taking our places in the booths and enjoying the local delicacies. One of which are the fish sandwiches. This is real fish, folks, haddock from cold Northern waters. Not the ubiquitous flounder that we find all over the South.

And they have fresh made doughnuts, or what are otherwise called fried cakes, and fresh pressed apple cider that disappeared before I could get a picture. And they had sandwiches of sliced cheese and baked ham piled high on rye bread. These fellows were had to put to keep up with the demand.

Of course, there are the carnival rides and the games for the kids.

We're going back today and spending some time with our kids and grandkids and making sure we sample more of that food.

Catching up

Yesterday was kind of dreary. It rained most of the day and then went into the 40's overnight. We stayed in until the rain let up and then went for a ride, mostly for entertainment. I spent some time on the computer puzzling over the findings at the cemetery. I think I got it mostly worked out.

I had found a name that was new to me but looked like it might have been an older brother. Well, sure enough there really was an older brother. He had the same father but a different mother. The monument had listings for two wives but there had actually been three. I don't know where the third wife is buried but it seems she bore three children. The older son isn't buried in the family plot either and I'm not sure where he is. But I did find one entry that makes me think he died at Andersonville, the notorious Confederate prison near Sumter, Georgia.

I also had found two names on the stone, husband and wife, who were new to me and might not have fit at all into the family. But, it turns out that the wife was my wife's great aunt, and she and her husband were buried in the family plot. It's so much fun solving the puzzles.

We drove around the county and in our travels were able to go by five of our previous places of residence, three of which we had owned. One of them I grew up in and spent most of life there. Now, they are just houses. I have no longing to go back and no real emotion or sense of loss when I look at them. I've never been one to keep looking back, and while I certainly value the times I had as a younger person, I have a keen awareness of who and where I am now and I value that at least as much.

Of course, the day wouldn't have been complete without more gastronomic delight. We managed to stop at Pete's Polar Parlor for some raspberry soft ice cream cones. It's really neat when something you remember fondly turns out to be still the same. We just haven't been able to get the same sort of soft ice cream in the South that we grew up with around here, so we always treat ourselves at least once when we get back in the area.

Today the cold front has settled in and the sky has cleared and it's sunny, if colder. Tonight is the start of the Jordan Fall Festival, and we begin by going over for more food. Tonight it will be fresh fish sandwiches.

Chasing Our Roots

Today's post is about genealogy. One of the reasons for our trip was to explore some of our genealogical past. Our first efforts towards this goal were washed out in PA, so we wanted to take advantage of a day of good weather to visit a cemetery nearby. Of course, since our other main objective is to eat our way across the country, we stopped at one of our favorite old 50's diners, the Little Gem, for breakfast.

Diane's history begins in this area with the grave-site of her great, great grandfather and his son. It turns out that the son, her great grandfather is the only one in her line that we have so far identified as having served in the Civil War. More on that later. We drove up to the Mexico Primitive Cemetery to find that the graves were clearly marked and in pretty good condition for their age. Some of the stones were made of marble, which is vulnerable to washing away with the effects of acid rain, but they were still legible.

Although I had most of the information about these generations, it's always interesting to visit the graves and see what they have and who else might be buried there as well. This visit turned up a couple of surprises. I had hoped to come up with dates for Diane's great aunt who's stone Curley is investigating in the above photo. But just the name, no dates to be found.

Military veterans usually have some sort of commemorative marker. Diane's great grandfather enlisted in Company B of the 10th Regiment of the New York Heavy Artillery in 1862 and was mustered out of service at the end of the war in 1865 at Petersburg, VA. I knew that from research on Ancestry.com but I wanted to see if he had a marker. Sure enough, there it was.

Now for a surprise. On the monument above her great grandfather's name is a name I didn't have. The birth date was three years before her GGF's and the inscription states that he died in 1864 at the age of 27. But, there's no grave with his name on the headstone. So I can guess that this was an older brother. Did he enlist at the same time and serve in the war? Was he killed or died in the war and buried somewhere else? Only further research can shed any light on this but that's the fun of exploring the family roots.

And yet another surprise. On another side of the monument are engraved the names of two completely new people with names I've never come across. Their headstones are there in the plot. Who are they? Are they related? Does this just represent the sale of left over burial plots? More digging to do. Maybe not literally!

We wound up the day with some friends at a popular local Syracuse restaurant called Spaghetti Warehouse. They have a whole intact antique trolley car inside as one of the dining areas. Good food. I had the lasagna, which is one of their claims to fame and it really was very good. Then we retired to the comfort of the coach to listen to the sound of rain on the roof to lull us to sleep.

Baby's got new shoes

Well, it's time to enter what I hope is the final page of the tire saga. After spending much of yesterday calling and pricing and comparing, I finally ordered four new tires to go across the rear of the coach. I picked them up and had them mounted today.
It's an interesting, and somewhat frustrating, experience to have to fit new tires in mid-trip. The RV blogs are full of stories, and a little information, about what to buy or not. But out on the road, choice of brand is very restricted. It is largely restricted to what brands are warehoused in the area, thus enabling the availability of the chosen size. I was open to many brands but the only available ones were Goodyear and Michelin. While I was attracted to the Michelins, they were $100 more per tire. That just wasn't in the travel budget. That left the Goodyear's, but which ones? I was offered the G670 RV tire and also the G647 truck tire. I went on line and compared them and I was ready to pay the extra $50 per tire if the 670's really looked to be superior. In the end, though, I decided that the 670's were Goodyear's attempt to benefit from the RV buyer's willingness to pay more for a purpose branded product.

The two tires are very similar in specifications. The 647's have 3/32" more tread depth and they also have a blockier tread pattern. They have a M&S designation due to the tread pattern. They are the tire that might be mounted on a UPS truck.

I bought them from the local Summit Automotive branch. They had never sold a tire of that size before and when the tires came in, they realized that they could not mount them. They called me and then called another local tire service center to get them mounted. Unfortunately, this meant I had to carry them up the road to the other business. These young men did a very good job and soon had us on the road.

I think I did the best I could given the limitations of the situation and I'm satisfied with my choices. I would warn anyone reading this that I took a very large risk by continuing to drive the coach with the blown tire. I would not recommend this to anyone. I took a chance and got very lucky.
The other takeaway from this is to not start on trip if you have any question about the condition of your tires. It is far, far easier to source and install tires in your home territory than it is hundreds of miles away.
As a postscript, I would add that I feel that my ill advised entry into the washed out campground and the drive through the rock field to get out is what did in the tire. It was two years old and in otherwise good condition. It had been removed and checked over by a truck tire service center in Burlington before we left. I believe it suffered a rock bruise in the sidewall getting out of the campground. It blew out within two miles of leaving the campground. When I first examined it upon hearing the explosion, it appeared normal and was not hotter than its mate. While I had a tire pressure monitoring system, a TST, I was unable to get the monitor to correctly read the sensors, so I was running blind. I WILL fix that!
Now, on to new, and safer, adventures.

On the Road Again

With apologies to WN, we're On The Road Again. I won't say that it's in search of adventure, because that usually finds us whether we want it or not. This time, we're going back to the place of our roots, central New York. We've spent a good part of our lives in Jordan, NY and so we're back here for another dose of the Jordan Fall Festival that's coming up this weekend.
We left Burlington, NC on Friday afternoon later than than I would have chosen. We started later in the week because I had the coach in to Cummins Atlantic for service that ran long (another story) and later in the day because I took too long to get packed. Oh well, we're retired so not to worry.

WE came up rt 49 to 62 into Danville, VA where we picked up 29 and followed that all the way up to 17 in Warrenton, VA and then up to I66 and then to I81. The idea was to travel int the valley all the way up to avoid the big hills on I81. That worked out pretty well but we found ourselves in rush hour Friday afternoon traffic going north out of Charlottesville. That lasted for about 30 miles of stop and go but  we eventually got to our stopping point at the Cracker Barrel in Winchester, VA at exit 313. Dinner and an overnite and then we were on our way up into central PA.
We crossed the I81 bridge over the Susquehanna in Harrisburg and could see that the river was in flood stage. I had chosen to follow 322 north along the river to get to rt 15 further north. We saw signs that 322 had reopened. That was our first hint of what was to come. From the Southern to the Northern border of PA, we saw massive, tragic flooding. We saw house and whole settlements in the water. Not up to the roofs but certainly in the front doors. Many campgrounds exit along the river and the campers had been pulled out and lined up along the sides of the highway. We one settlement isolated in the water with disaster relief supplying it and looking out at an old brick structure that had caught fire and burned with no way to stop it.
We made a couple of shopping stops and keep moving north into Bradford County.
I had spotted a campground listing that looked like a good place to overnite but when we got there, it was covered in piles of stone and silt from the flood a couple of days earlier. I foolishly tried to pull in to what looked like solid ground and turned out to be covered in a foot of silt. I nearly buried the coach up to the axles but kept on churning and made it to solid ground. The owner came out an used his tractor to smooth the rocks enough for me to get back on the road. Talk about dumb!
Well, we kept on keeping on until we got to Canton, PA and I though we might stay the night in a parking lot. So I went into the Subway, the only place open, and asked permission. There wasn't anybody there who could OK it but a gal working there called her father and asked him. He volunteered to have us park in front of his barn, so she led us out into the country to the farm. His driveway had been washed away but he had repaired it well enough for me get in and the place was beautiful.

It turned out to be a poultry farm. Now, I know you're thinking "What about the smell?". Really, it was very mild and virtually non-existent inside the coach. So we slept well and got back on the road about 9:00am on Sunday.
My plan had been to explore the area a little since my ancestors came from there but that plan got washed out by the flood. Virtually every low lying road was closed and even the roads in the hills were heavily eroded. Every little trickle had become a torrent and washed out roads and driveways. I opted to continue north on 14 up to Troy where I picked up US6, thinking it, being the main road in the area, would be our best way out. Well, it was, but not without it's problems as well. It had washed away in several places but had been made passable. We came across one place where there was a sturdy concrete bridge and the water had just bypassed the bridge and lifted the whole roadbed and guardrails and everything and cast them aside.  We finally made it to 220 north and followed that up to NY only to find that I17 eastbound was closed. So we took rt 34 all the way up to Ithaca and stopped at an old hangout, Mano's Diner, for breakfast. Leaving there, we continued on 34 to come up to Jordan.
Along the way, out in the middle of nothing but acres of cornfields, we smelled burned rubber. I got out to check and found that I had blown the inside right dual tire and the sidewall had shredded. And I had been driving on it since Canton!. Talk about dumb and lucky at the same time. Well, I decided to chance keeping going since we had come this far and we made all the way to our stop. Now I'm shopping for tires. Since I stressed the outside tire so heavily, I'll need to replace it as well. I really think I'll replace all four across the back since the mismatch would be so great.
So that's our adventure so far. I can do with some calm for a few days. Stay tuned. I've got to limber up the camera and get some pictures in here. The ones I took are in my iPad and I don't know how to get them out yet.