Homeward Bound

The last night before we turned south was the coldest so far. The temperature got down to 30˚. We tried running the electric heater (which wouldn’t keep us warm if the temperature is that low) and the propane furnace (which would be able to keep us warm but provides large temperature swings) at the same time. We hoped the furnace would be able to cope with the cold, and the electric heater would help maintain an even temperature. As it turned out, it seems the heater kept the furnace from turning on, so we turned the heater off. It worked out okay and we stayed warm.

Now that we have left the Finger Lakes, the sun has come out and it is a beautiful day. Route 20 is labeled as a scenic highway, and it certainly is. It winds through tree-covered hills with large farms. There are big corn fields cut out of the forest. The towns are small and picturesque. At one point we stopped to take some pictures at a roadside attraction called the Tepee. It was like something out of the Route 66 of yore. Jean went inside and ended up in a long conversation with a couple of local ladies.

           

         

After a while, we turned onto NY-145. That is a country road, narrower and more curvy. But the views were just as nice. We missed our campground and went in to Middleburgh. There we found that the library was closed, and was not open on Sundays. We eventually were reassured that there would actually be a performance on Sunday. Everything seemed to close at 2:00 on Saturday — not the country town on a Saturday that we grew up with. There was one restaurant open, so we had lunch and headed back to find the campground.

The campground was marked if you were arriving from Middleburgh. I wondered if there would be any level sites in this hilly country, but the site was fine, and had a great view.

           

Sunday broke with heavy overcast and lots of wind. Sometimes it would rock the Roadtrek. It wasn’t as cold as yesterday, but nasty just the same. Our only goal for the day was to get some lunch in town and attend a 4:00pm performance of Jay Ungar and Molly Mason at the library. We left the campground a little after 1:00 and drove to the library. We parked the van in the almost empty parking lot and walked to a convenience store for a quart of milk. On the way we noticed that the three restaurants that we spotted were all open.

About 2:30 we sallied forth in search of lunch. At that time, two of the restaurants were closed; the only one open was a dingy-looking Chinese restaurant. It was either that or hot dogs at the convenience store, so we went in. We looked at the menu and ordered at the counter, then found a clean table. The food, when it arrived, was very hot and reasonably good. While we were eating two or three people came in to pick up order-out. Other than that, we were the only customers in there.

We left about 3:15. When we walked back to the library the parking lot was almost full. We had been told that the doors would open fifteen minutes before the show, but people were going in already. There was a $10 donation for the library which we gladly paid. There were several rows of chairs in the big main room. We managed to get a couple of the remaining seats in the second row. People kept coming in steadily, and they kept bringing out more chairs. They eventually ran out, but I assume everyone got a seat. The library was completely full.

The program got started right on time. There was still some fiddling around before they got the sound settled, but we were close in and heard everything perfectly. They play a mix of folk, country, mountain music, and stuff that Jay writes. They are great musicians and have a close relationship with the audience. It is more like a few people in someone’s living room than performing for a large room full of people.  When they played Lover’s Waltz, Jean felt comfortable telling them it was “our song.” I mentioned we also liked Home-grown Tomatoes and they played that as well. The program was about an hour-and-a-half long but it seemed like twenty minutes. It was well worth coming up from Virginia.

It had sprinkled a little bit during the show, but it was dry when we got back to the campground. I was able to get us hooked up without dealing with rain. I may not be so lucky tomorrow.

Next morning, it was rainy (but not when I unplugged, thankfully) with low-hanging clouds covering the hilltops. We drove back down to Middleburgh to top off the fuel, then headed back north to Cobleskill to pick up I-88. We had a choice of two routes to Binghamton, a secondary road through the mountains or Interstate the whole way. The weather being iffy, we chose the interstate. We would normally pick the more scenic route.

Ran all day in occasional rain. Traffic was light but the road was often rough. At Binghamton we picked up I-81 for the long drive south. Our goal for the day was Winchester (VA) — ambitious but possible. We were running short on water and propane, and the refrigerator was almost empty. The only thing that was full was our holding tanks. It was time to be back home.

Lunch was sandwiches in a rest area. We stopped for fuel on the road in Shippensburg, PA. Back on the road in the dark and rain — with lots of trucks. I was beginning to wonder if we hadn’t bitten off too much. It was too late to look for a campground, we just pulled in to a Cracker Barrel in Winchester. It was a little after 8:00pm. Our day’s run was 408 miles, much more than we usually do.

Supper in Cracker Barrel, also breakfast. We had to decide what route to take on this our last day on the road. We could stay on the interstate and make it home in about three hours. Or we could take Route 11, which is much more pleasant (and far fewer trucks) and take a little longer. Or we could take the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway, much slower but prettier. This would usually be our preferred route. We looked at the weather app on our phones, which indicated that we would probably start out in rain, but drive out of it before too long.

We decided to go home through the mountains, so we headed for Front Royal and the start of the Skyline Drive. We ran through occasional rain and fog for about the first ten miles of the Skyline. After that we had overcast weather and alternating between a clear road and sections of fog. Sometimes we were above the cloud and sometime below it. And sometimes we were right in it. The fog varied from a light haze to sections so thick that you could only see three dashes of the dashed center line. It was slow going, but still better than I-81. And we had great views most of the time.

           

We stopped for lunch at Big Meadows. We got to the Peaks of Otter in time for dinner. Good views and good eating, a great way to end the adventure.

The inevitable statistics: We were gone for 24 days and covered a total of 2,664 miles. We visited with friends or family in Yorktown, VA, Mystic, CT, and Burlington, VT. We also attended a concert by one of our favorite duos in Middleburgh, NY; and we saw lots of new territory. All told a successful trip.