A visit with the past

Ed had to go into work this afternoon and again I took off in the car.  This time my mission was to visit Valley View Cemetery.  My parents were married in the chapel at the cemetery. That may seem weird to some people but this is a lovely old stone church high on a hill that overlooks the cemetery.

I then went across the street to the cemetery itself.  Here is where my mothers parents are buried along with her younger brother who died much too young.  I made my way around paying my respects to those relatives who have gone before us.   I then went down the hill to a small creek that runs behind the cemetery.  This was the place where my parents wanted their ashes spread.  My brother and I did this several years ago, and whenever I am in the area I return to this peaceful spot. 
                                                                                                                                
On this Memorial Day weekend please take a moment to remember those servicemen and women who have sacrificed there lives for the freedoms we enjoy. 

Cruises on Lake George

There are three different boats that cruise the lake.  The largest is the Lac Du Saint Sacrement.  This boat is the largest and they mainly do dinner cruises and a brunch cruise on Sundays.

The next one is call the Mohican.  They do an Island Exploration cruise and they are the only one to cruise the entire 32 miles of the lake in what’s called the Discovery Tour cruise.

The last one is called Minne-Ha-Ha.  This is the smallest paddlewheel boat that does short hour long cruises.  They also do a moonlight cruise with live entertainment. 

The Mohican and Minne-Ha-Ha have been around for a longggg time.  I remember my grandparents taking my cousins and me on the Mohican. (Remember that Mike?)
The Lac Du Saint Sacrement is the newest and replaced one that was called Ticonderoga.
Ed and I can buy discount tickets from the park and I may take him on the Discovery Tour that the Mohican has.  However, I think we will wait until the weather warms up a little more.  It gets cold out on the lake.

Around the area

Ed had to work this afternoon so I decided to take the car and drive around with my camera.  If you ever get the chance to be in this area, please don’t drive the Northway (87).  Get off somewhere around exit 19 and drive Rt 9 and 9N up the shoreline of Lake George.  You will pass through Lake George Village and through the small towns of Diamond Point and Bolton Landing.  Continue on 9N and you will go through Silver Bay, Haugh and then into Ticonderoga.  Its a beautiful drive on a red road.  Here are some pictures I took.
This was a church at one time and now it houses the Bolton Landing Museum. 

Lake George Village

Warren County Courthouse in Lake George.

This picture of Lake George was taken as you exit the Northway and approach 9N.  Its a steep hill and I stopped to take this picture. 

This was taken from the Lake George Village, the most southern part of the lake.  32 miles to the north is Ticonderoga.

That’s just a few…stay tuned for more at a later date.

Around Warrensburg, NY and Schroon Valley Campground

We’ve been in the area now for a couple of weeks and the weather is finally warming up.  It got to 70 yesterday and after a week of 40’s & 50’s it felt balmy. 
I started my day by trying to find a pay phone.  Many of you know that my brother lives in Germany and Friday was his birthday.  I have an AT&T phone card that I use to call him, but I need a pay phone to use it.  They have a pay phone here at the park but when I went to use it, it seems it was disconnected.  I finally found a pay phone yesterday so I had a great time talking with Doug and catching up. (We do email but it was good to hear his voice) After I took a drive through town (2 stop lights) and took these pictures. One is a B & B that I thought was just lovely and the other is off the town square.
        
First week of work for me went good.  It’s a lot easier physically than Amazon.com but here we deal with the public and sometimes that can be challenging.  So we will see which is actually easier. 
These are a few pictures around the campground we a staying at. There are a few campsites around the river.  They are small, great tent sites or maybe a pop up camper. The river is so clear.
  
Here is the clubhouse and our campsite.
             
I’ll try to remember to take my camera with us when ever we go out.  I am from this area so the things I see aren’t new to me but hopefully they will interesting to those who read this blog.  Stay tuned……

Do you believe in Magic

We were able to drive up to Ticonderoga this evening to see family and enjoy seeing Zach (my cousin Kelly’s oldest boy) perform his magic.  He was giving a benefit for St. Mary’s school.  Zach has been doing magic since he was a small boy of 5.  At 7 he was doing magic for family any chance he got.  Tonight I had the joy of seeing this young man give a wonderful show.  The children were thrilled and he was even able to get a few adults in the audience to participate. 
It was great to see family and look forward to seeing more of them during the summer.
Here is a link to Zach’s web site and a picture.  Kelly and Alex, you have every reason to be very proud of this young man!!

http://www.zachivins.com/

Stewart’s Shoppe

As far back as I can remember we always had a Stewart’s Shoppe nearby.  My grandparents would take me to Stewart’s to get ice cream sundae’s.  I remember getting the dishes of ice cream and all the different toppings would be on the table and you would make your own sundae.  This was the first place I ever had chocolate ice cream with marshmallow topping! Yummmm!
We used to be able to get their soda’s (they have the best Root Beer and Orange soda ever!) in quart bottles in a case of 12 that you would mix and match.  If you took the empty bottles back, you didn’t have to pay the deposit again. Now they package it in cans. 

From their website…
“Stewart's is an employee and family-owned convenience store chain based in Saratoga Springs, NY.  Stewart's is known for milk, ice cream, coffee, food to go, gasoline, and more.  Our success comes from the integration of our manufacturing and distribution systems.  We make and/or distribute ¾ of what we sell in our shops at our plant in Greenfield, NY.  Today there are 327 Stewart's Shops located in over 30 counties across upstate New York and southern Vermont.”
   
I am so looking forward to my summer in New York.  It’s  a good thing I’m working so I can work off the calories in my ice cream…”Crumbs along the Mohawk”! It’s a graham cracker flavored ice cream with chucks of graham cracker and caramel. Can’t get it anywhere but from Stewart’s.  YUMMY!!

Settling in

We arrived here in Lake George on Thursday.  We had to wait to get into our assigned site because there was a rental trailer that maintenance had to move.  They got the trailer pulled out around 2:30 and we were then able to get started.  We had purchased some boards for under our tires the day before at Lowes so that was the first step. (We like to do this whenever we are going to be somewhere for this extended length of time) The site is very level already so we really just needed to put our jacks down to stabilize us.
Once we were level and the slides extended, Ed goes about fixing the outside and I start on the inside.  Since we are going to be here for 4 months, we put everything up.  The awning comes out and is tied down…we even have the first arm of the awning down so we are not hitting it as we go in and out the door.  We are thinking about putting out our lights also.  We also had to use our portable dish since we have a lot of trees around us.  But we were not going to go all summer without our direct tv since we have purchased MLB for the summer.
Once I get everything set up, I will take some pictures.  Also want to get some plants but think I will wait a bit for those.  They are calling for snow showers tomorrow night!!
We have been familiarizing ourselves with the area.  Warrensburg is a very small town, they have a grocery store, hardware store and a sporting general store (hunting and fishing).  But about 25 miles away is a Walmart and we found a Super K Mart.  Never been in one of those.  They had groceries, and the normal K mart items and also sold appliances!

Today we went and had a great visit with my uncle.  He’s one of the reasons we took this job and we are hoping that we can spend a lot of time visiting.
I start work on Monday.  If the weather is good tomorrow (not raining) I will try to get some pictures of the campground and the river.

The Sweet World of Chocolate

Yesterday we went to Hershey.  The first place we went to was The Hershey Story museum.  Milton Hershey started out as a caramel candy maker in Lancaster.  He started making his chocolate in that factory.  He sold his company for over a million dollars and went looking for a spot to build a new factory to make his chocolate.  He decided on Hershey because of its proximity to the dairy farms.  He also started building homes around the area for his workers.  He encouraged them to purchase the homes and even held the bank notes on them.  He wanted a community that was well rounded so he also built a theater, sports complex and community building.  When he died he left a majority of his fortune to the Hershey Technical School which was an orphanage for boys. 
Here is the secret that makes his chocolate so smooth…its called conching!                      
The chocolate is mixed with these granite rollers for 3 days! The whole museum was very interesting.  We must have spent a couple of hours there just reading about making chocolate. 
We also went to Hershey’s Chocolate World.  This a fun family place with a 3D movie and a ride that tells about Hershey’s Chocolate and of course there is a store with all the candy they make. 
      
That’s one LARGE candy bar! No we did not buy that but we did buy our share of chocolate.
I really liked the street lights on Chocolate Avenue.

Fun Day!

Computer problems and Amish Country

We arrived at this Thousand Trails park last Wednesday.   Once I get everything set up in the motorhome, I sit down and turn on my computer.  Well…..this time when I turned the computer on I got an error message I didn’t pay attention to and up came the dell background picture.  I went to check my documents folder and everything was gone!  GONE!!  After I spent about 10 minutes in panic mode, I got out Ed’s computer. (Thank god we have his as a backup) I got on line and started looking for computer repair places.  I got very lucky and found a company, RDCS in Lebanon. They were opened and off we went.  It seems my profile somehow go corrupted.  All the files were still there I just couldn’t access them.  I picked it up today and I now have a new profile with all my documents and a new anti virus program he recommended.  Avira is cheaper than Norton and not as cumbersome.  He also set up my backup drive to backup once a week!  He was awesome and very patient explaining everything.  And all this for a flat fee of $74.00!! He does not charge per hour but per job!! 
Thursday we drove to Lancaster County to see the Amish farms in the area.  We went through Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse PA.  We shopped at little village in Intercourse and went for a tour of an Amish Farm. 
Here are some farmer plowing the fields getting ready to plant.
     
We did see a buggy on the road but I couldn’t get a good picture so here is one we took at the Amish Farm.

This is what they call a market wagon because the back seat come out so they can put in all the purchases.
Friday, Ed played golf and I did a few chores around here. I cleaned the bathroom and defrosted the freezer. 
Stay turned!