From VA to NY: Schodack Island

Tuesday June 15-Wednesday June 30, 2021                      Most Recent Posts
On the road and                                                                            It’s Celia’s Turn
Schodack Island State Park                                                          It’s June Finally
Castleton-on-Hudson, New York

In my last days at the farm, I picked blueberries and found a shedded snake skin under the new and smaller grape arbor that was put up this early spring to save at least 2 of the original 40+ year old grapes.  We’ll see how they do.  The arbor needs to be painted the dark green of the house and shed trim.  But that’s hopefully for Shannon while I’m gone.

Always happy to see snake skins assuming they are from black snakes and not copperheads.  Black Snakes keep down the mice.  Wish they could eat groundhogs.  Think about the idea of wiggling out of your skin as you grow.  WOW!

I also repaired the washing machine which hadn’t been working since I got back. I’d been avoiding dealing with it but now I was out of procrastination time. 

David probably could not have put the stackable washer and dryer in a cuter and more difficult place to get to.  It’s behind what looks like a wall with a washboard on it.  But the top is a dutch door and to access the washer at the bottom I had to lift the heavy wooden bottom section up and out of the way.  No small task for me. 

But thankfully I was able to get it fixed with a new fuse since if the washer had to be replaced, the claw foot tub would have to be moved in order to remove the washer.  Not sure the maytag repairman would be prepared for that.

The picture below is how it usually looks when I use it.  That’s the dryer on top and the washer is behind the wooden bottom which I had to remove to fix it.

Ms Fix-it at work with the washer bottom to her right and the wooden bottom in front of the shower. 

Tuesday June 20 it’s finally time for me to leave Virginia,  head north and hopefully get out of this mid 90’s weather.

That doesn’t turn out to be the case but for right now,  I’m on the road going up the spine of the Appalachians under cloudy skies and light rain.  First stop, Walmart parking lot. Nothing memorable there but thanks to Walmart for saving me at least $30 when all I wanted to do was sleep.

Second night stop Mohigan Sun Pocono Casino parking lot in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania.  I’ve never stayed in a casino parking lot before and really didn’t know how it worked.   

This picture is zoomed to what I assume is the hotel and the full moon on the right and the spire from the casino on the left.  It was quite a long distance from where I was parked.  Love my camera.

Some folks pulled in after me and of course even with an entire empty parking lot, they pulled up right next to me and turned their generator on.  They had a diesel pusher with not many windows for cross ventilation so I suppose it was on for the air conditioning.   But then a shuttle bus pulled up out of no where and they got on.  I’m assuming they went to the casino.  I considered trying to figure this out but I was too tired from driving and wasn’t sure I wanted to do it alone.  I’ve found there are a lot of things I would be more  likely to do if David were with me and this is one of them.  “Maybe” next time.  But how did they call the shuttle??

I also love that the Native American Tribe is using some of its profits for the wind turbines.  I wonder if the casino and hotel are all powered by alternative energy. Super zooming this time.

On the other side of Winnona there was a nice sunset over the hills.  Full moon on one side, sunset on the other.  Pretty nice for a parking lot site.

 

I spent the evening looking into directions to Schodack Island State Park.  I didn’t like either what RV Trip Wizard or Google had cooked up for me.  Drilling down, they both looked very sketchy for a big rig.   I wasn’t able to find anything that looked doable so I waited until morning to call the park.  From then on, it was like a Laurel and Hardy movie soundtrack.

“Where are you coming from”? 
me: “Coming north on I 87 from I 84”. 
“No but what town so I can google it for you”. 
Me:  I’ve already done that and it tells me . . . . .    and on and on and on.    She had no clue, the website had nothing but a link to google maps.  She did give me the park manager’s phone number and I called but had to leave a message.  SIGH

I drove on and stopped at nearly every rest stop on the interstates getting closer and closer with no good directions.  If the park manager didn’t call me back, I had no idea what I was going to do.  At THE very last minute someone who knew what he was talking about returned my call and  told me I’d have to go past the park on the interstate and come in from the north near Albany and Rensselaer since there was no good way to get there from the south.  Why did I choose this park???  Why don’t they have detailed directions to the park from all 4 directions on their website?  Why do the people who answer the phone not have directions they can read to you or email to you?  Who is running this park anyway?  

With his directions I finally made it to the park and to my nice pull through site.  $30 for electricity, dump station and water spigots you use to fill your tank.

Most state parks in New England do not have water hook ups at each site.  Maybe because it’s too much trouble to handle them all in the freezing winters? 

I’ve been on the road long enough to know that you have to flush the water spigots before you hook the water to your site or fill your tank.  So I let the water run a couple of minutes and put some, as I always do, into a clear plastic jug to take a look and a smell.  Usually, no problem, this time  - NOT GOOD.  The water stinks and is yellow.  No way I’m putting that in my tank or drinking it.  That means jugs of it for flushing and a trip to the grocery for bottled water to drink for a week.

The day I arrived it was lovely out and from then on for the entire week the temperature was between 92 and 98.  It was cooler in Virginia than here.  This did not make for great hiking or kayaking.  

Despite my harrowing day, I had enough energy to go for a hike to investigate the park.  I knew today was the last day of nice temperatures so I wanted to take advantage of that.

One of the things I love about National and State parks is that unlike private campgrounds they often have a hiking trail right off the campground.  That was the case here, a short connector  trail was very close to my site and led to the main park trail that went 4.3 miles although it proved to be nearly impossible to follow.

The main trail and two others I was able to find were very nice but they didn’t agree with the map or maybe it was me.  But I don’t think so.  Given how much help the office had been with how to get here, I didn’t bother to ask them about the trails and the map.  I kind of wonder if they’ve ever even hiked these trails.

I hiked down to the kayak put in on Schodack Creek and this was what I found.

The floating dock definitely was not floating and neither would a kayak.  Had there been a drought?

With that disappointment and after a trying day of directions problems I was ready to call it quits and head back.

I’ll continue with the rest of my week and hot times at Schodack Island in the next post which is already partially written so it won’t take so much time to get published.