Our first day

We finally cast anchor at around 1 pm today. It was a very hectic morning, getting all of our stuff out of the vacation rental and into the RV and/or my parent’s house. All of our nerves were frayed, but we finally got everything loaded up in the RV and had Wendy drop the car at my parents while I drove down to the Post Office for the official departure photo…

Since we still weren’t ready to leave, we bought lunch at the Winhall Market and ate it on the way. We then stopped at the farm stand 10 miles down the road to buy food for dinner and after that we were on our way. The bumpy Vermont roads were a little scary at first, but eventually we got into a groove and continued to the Shadow Brook campground near Cooperstown, NY without any further stops (well we did have to stop a a cross road to let an Amish horse and buggy pass, but I’m not counting toll booths and top lights). Simon mostly read (Harry Potter 5), Wendy fell asleep on the sofa, Josh and I worked on finalizing the budget. Wendy tried out the new coffee maker and made me an excellent cup of French Roast. We went through a hellacious rain storm near Albany that had me nervous because of the limited visibility, but other than that things went well.

We finally got to the campground around 5pm, just as we were listening to Harry Chapin’s 30,000 Pounds of Bananas song (Josh’s voice is changing, and he’s getting pretty good at the bass part on the chorus refrain). I didn’t know what to expect from a campground, given that I’ve never done much car camping or any RVing before, but the place is really nice. We have full hookups (electric and water) and the campground has a nice pool and playground. Here’s a photo I took from the front lawn just after we checked in…

We got to the campsite and did all the numerous set-up tasks (connecting water and electric, taking out the awning, putting the slide-out out) very rapidly considering how inexperienced we all were. The family posed for a few photos and then we went off to the pool.

After the pool, we cooked our first RV dinner. Given how little planning we did, and our inability to find a grocery store along the way (we kept thinking we’d see one off the road, and didn’t) we eked out a passable meal –cheese and crackers, linguini in a sage butter sauce and a green salad with the veggies from the farm stand. After dinner, Simon took his bicycle out and we set off to discover the rest of the campground. It’s hard to figure out how long the rest of the inhabitants here are staying – there are a lot of camper/trailers that seem to have been here for a long time, with cluttered front porches, barbeque grills and toddler toys all over their campsites. We seem to be the only folks stopping by for just a night or two.

As I’m writing this (9:30pm EST) the kids are asleep, Wendy’s reading in bed and I’m due for a good night’s sleep as well, so I think I’ll sign off. We’re all very excited about going to the baseball hall of fame tomorrow and I hope to be blogging a lot more regularly now that all of the preparations are finished and we’re on the road.
Thanks for all of the nice emails that you’ve been sending. It’s been great to stay in touch, and Wendy and I hope you’ll keep commenting / emailing.