Back Home Again

After finishing up all the details in Florida I (Dennis) headed north late Tuesday morning. We decided that Baltimore would be the best place to meet based on cost and location, so Nancy scheduled a flight to arrive at BWI Thursday evening. By leaving on Tuesday I had some cushion built into the schedule, which turned out to be a good thing as I spent most of the day Wednesday at Central Carolina Truck Sales, the Volvo dealer in Kernersville, NC. My main concern had been to get to a campground on Wednesday evening so I could watch the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup, which they did.

Tuesday evening the truck began losing throttle response and each time I stopped the problem got worse, eventually I was using the cruise control for acceleration. I decided to take advantage of the light traffic and push on through the night. I arrived at Mayberry Campground in Mt Airy, NC at 5:30 AM Wednesday morning. Located the nearest Volvo dealer and then got down there and joined the service line first thing in the morning. Fortunately they were able to determine the problem and had the parts on hand to repair it.

So Thursday morning I was back on the road with an easy trip into BWI to meet Nancy. Picked her up about 8 PM and we headed on north, it sure was nice to have her with me again! It had been a tough week.

We arrived at St Regis Campground in Potsdam, NY late Friday afternoon after spending the night a a Cracker Barrel in PA. The campground is small, but in a very pretty location with the St. Regis river running right behind our rear window.

Spent the weekend visiting with relatives, had a brief graveside service Monday afternoon and a nice wake with a small group of relatives at Dennis’ cousins house afterwards. On Tuesday we visited the small museum in the village of Russell where Dennis' mom lived when he was born. His grandfather was the doctor in the village, an old fashioned country doctor and the last one in the village since he died in 1947! We gave the museum some pictures of Dr. Teepell and made arraignments to send them some material from both the Teepell family and Dennis' father's WWII experiences.

We headed for home on Wednesday morning. The best route for traveling from far upstate NY to Chicago is through Canada, so we crossed the St Lawrence river at Ogdensburg and headed west on the 401 through Toronto. We spent Wednesday night at Prospect Hill Camping north of London, ON. A good sized campground with a lot of permanent and seasonal campers, but pretty quiet on a week night. Once again a pretty spot by a small stream. The only noise there was the lowing of cows a quarter mile away!

Crossed back into the US at Port Huron, MI, took I-69 west to avoid Detroit, dropped down to I-94 and then around the south side of Chicago. Got home around 5 PM Thursday. It took the entire weekend to get the trailer unloaded! We were living in the Mountain Aire just 9 days short of six months and it worked out very well. We are very pleased with the way the trailer stood up to full time living and in how comfortable it was for the two of us.

Our next trip will be in mid-August to Bristol, TN for the NASCAR race and then the Gypsy Gathering in Elkhart, IN. I’ll post once and a while between now and then as things of interest come up.