A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

The last two days there have been clouds in the sky, which makes for a nice sunrise. Yesterday I scattered my mother's ashes as I threatened promised my mom several years ago to do. It was something the two of us had agreed upon and with coffee mug in hand (as my mother had always done for a Myrtle Beach sunrise) I carried her ashes out in a cut-crystal bowl and scattered them in the surf. When my mother was hospitalized this spring and had to undergo the pain of blood work (she and I have tiny veins) I'd tell her to go to her "happy place" on the beach in Myrtle Beach. And now indeed she's in her happy place.

Heat Seeking Missile

That's what Denny calls me when I've spent a cold night curled up tightly against his back. The temperature outside is currently 39 degrees--it's time for this snowbird to migrate again.

Today we'll be taking red roads down to Myrtle Beach. Don and Vicki should already be there by the time we arrive since they are already in SC. I've checked today's forecast there; 59 and windy, but tomorrow it will hit 70 degrees and start warming up from there. Right now that sounds heavenly. I know it will get much cooler there before we leave the area but if I have a couple of weeks of sunshine and warmth I'll be happy.

This week wasn't a good week for photographs because there was fog and drizzle for much of our time here. Today's pics are just a couple of snapshots taken on our brief walks around the campground.

You've seen this one before; it's the old tobacco barn on the property.

I much prefer this type of a pot for plants and flowers.

Even vibrant pink is muted on a gray day.

My fascination with spider webs continues.

I wish the two-tone aqua and blue of the sky showed up better. It was taken as we drove through Virginia on our way here to N. Carolina.

I Found the Perfect Job

Sorry for the crappy picture but I took it with my cell phone as I forgot my camera.

Today we ran over to the Childress Vineyards, located just 8 miles or so from our campground. We didn't take the tour since we've done several over the years at a variety of wineries, but we spent an enjoyable 1/2 hour tasting a number of their classic and barrel select wines lead by a young lady who is a transplant from Akron, Ohio (and forgive me for not getting her name because she was excellent; the winery is not answering their phones on this busy weekend day to get her name). She followed her parents down who followed their first grandchild down and really enjoys what she does. When I complimented her on her knowledge of all the varieties of wines produced at Childress she told us that she was taught at an all day "boot camp" where they drank wines all day. Let me repeat that; they drank wines all day. Give me an application, I can DO this!

The winery is of course, owned by Richard Childress, the race car driver and is styled after a Tuscany villa. Inside there is an intimate little restaurant with live music on the weekends, as well as tours of the winery itself, along with the separate wine tasting/store area.

North Carolina prides itself on its use of Scuppernong and Muscadine native grapes, which are used to create a sweeter wine with an earthy, grape-y flavor. Denny leans towards these, while I lean towards the drier varieties. My regret is that we are a week too early for the Barbeque festival here, as they will be introducing their "Fine Swine Wine" for that weekend. Dang! That would be worth it for the bottle label alone!

So if you are in the area, stop by, look for the slender blonde from Akron, Ohio to lead you through a very educational and well informed introduction to the Childress wines, and enjoy the scenery that surrounds the estate. It's a great way to spend an afternoon.

File Under: What Were You Thinking?

I apologize in advance for the blurry photos that follow; I had to take them quickly since our neighbors were inside their trailer at the time I took them.

The scenario; a wet, gravel-over-dirt campsite that slops downward from the back going down towards the front. Which means an unstable base for your RV. Most RVs have jacks of one type or another to stabilize the RV and keep it level. However, they are not meant to hold your vehicle in place.

Non-campers may not "see" what I'm referring to but anyone who has set up a trailer or motorhome should pick up on it right away.
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Do you see it? No? There are no wheel chocks to prevent this trailer from rolling down the hill if the mud underneath shifts at all. Inexperience? Stupidity? Nonchalance? Who knows? We will be leaving before our neighbors do so we'll miss the show that may well happen if they crank up the jacks before they hitch up, losing what little anchor they have. Good luck with that.

Cold

Is the entire northern continent inundated with rain/snow/cold? I fear I made a serious mistake in donating all our winter clothing to charity before we left Ohio. I thought we left the cold weather behind us--HA! Do you think if I purchased new winter duds the weather would instantly turn warmer? I have a sneaking suspicion it would.

I did take advantage of the wet weather yesterday by staying inside and starting to gather up the necessary paperwork for finishing probate on Mom's estate. I can think of more fun things to do, which is why I'm dragging my feet on this, plus I'm not quite sure just what all I need to do in what order because my mother's attorney hasn't been really helpful. The house needs some additional work done to pass inspection, since it is 52 years old but that has been arranged and we hope it will be finished in time for closing. *Crossing fingers*

More of the same today.

Making Do

My niece got married last week, which was the reason we returned to Ohio for a brief, wet and chilly stay. I called her to see if she needed anything done to help with the preparations the day before the wedding and was told I could help in the kitchen. Okay.

Friday morning (the day of the wedding) I called again to see what needed to be done that afternoon and my niece told me we needed to pick up the food, bring a wine bottle opener and OMG yes, she could use our grill. It seems that we were going to be preparing food for one hundred people on a single stove otherwise. Gulp. What followed after we arrived on site was chaotic, as the rental hall provided nothing in the way of pots, pans, cooking utensils or anything we needed. One of the groom's aunts shipped off her husband for some quick supplies, others had brought a cookie sheet or a pan so we started with what we had. Denny ended up cooking some of the chicken kiev on our little propane grill and later heated up frozen pans of macaroni and cheese on it. Folks, necessity was surely the mother of invention that day! With a lot of help from both sides of the soon-to-be-joined family, we got her done. It was a beautiful wedding, the bride and groom have no idea of the craziness that went on in the kitchen and the guests enjoyed both the wedding and meal. *Whew*

And aren't they just the cutest couple?

Snowbird Mode

The local weather forecasters were threatening the advent of snow on Tuesday of this coming week. No thank you. When I made our camping reservations here in Ohio I could only make them for a week. Now I'm rather glad of that. The cat is curled up tightly in my lap, which only occurs when it's cold outside. Last night when Darb and Net left after their visit the air was so crisp you could see your breath and the sky was full of stars. The smell of autumn was in the air as our neighbors had a bonfire going in an effort to burn their pile of firewood since they too are leaving today.

It is bittersweet to leave; we won't be returning to Ohio for a while which means we won't be seeing our sons and families. Sometimes that's a high price to pay for our lifestyle. But we have discovered over the last eleven years that all roads eventually lead to Ohio, which will always be home to me.

We do have fall this year. The top picture is of the woods across from our trailer the day we arrived a week ago, the second picture was taken yesterday.

And now it's time to pack up to start our snowbird migration. See you down the road.

Busy

Black Beauty's radiator has been replaced; there was a leak in a weld seam or some such thing. Denny and I have been running here and there, catching up with a few old friends, getting a dental visit in (I need a tooth pulled but there's no time for than nonsense) and today we'll be running errands for my niece who gets married today. We need a few more days here, but could only arrange to stay at this campground for a week so we'll be moving on on Sunday morning.

Denny and I haven't been at the campground much with all things we've had to do but I've tried to spend a half hour or so outside with Patches every day, just to take the time to breathe. So I snapped a couple of pictures of her in her hunting mode.

A hunting we will go.

I know there's something in here.

Wait, I see something!

There! I knew I smelled something!

That and This

Although I missed the pretty little gray snake in the tall bush in Pennsylvania last week, when Patches startled a chipmunk who was foraging at the base of a tall tree I had my camera with me. While all I saw was a tan blur heading up the tree trunk the short tail told me the critter wasn't a squirrel so I stood quietly holding Patches still while I looked to see where the little guy went. Before long through the leaves I saw the chipmunk twenty feet up the tree. Who knew a chipmunk could climb a tree? The proof is in the picture. You'll have to trust me that it was up that high. You'll see him just to the left (your left as you are facing the picture) of the orange leaf.

Little house on the prairie. The night we arrived two deer wandered across the hollow below our trailer. What a life, huh?

Something different for me; daytime clouds.

Today we met with the estate attorney to handled some paperwork and arrange to have him draw up a new deed for my mother's house; we have a buyer. Yay! When we came out of the office and walked to the truck we noticed a pool of fluid underneath the front end. Curses! We had plans to take Denny's aunt to lunch in Cinci, so we did that, but called to arrange to take the truck in to be looked at tomorrow morning. They have five days to fix it before we have to be out of the campground--there are no free sites after Saturday. We decided to drop the truck off this afternoon where they took a quick look at it and said it looked like the radiator is leaking, or rather the rear-most of the six radiators in the engine. Which means that they will have to remove the first five to confirm that. Sigh. It would have been much too easy for it to have been the first radiator, right?

This week will be busy with repairs, legal stuff, doctor and dentists, visits and of course, my niece's wedding. There will be people we don't get to see, places we won't get to visit, things that won't get done. Time to breathe.

A Blast

...a cold blast furnace, that is. Or more specifically, the Cornwall Iron Furnace in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Our day trip for the area was just a few miles down the road from the campground, but a world away in history. The Cornwall Iron Furnace was built in 1742 by Peter Grubb who took advantage of the rich natural resources of limestone, iron ore and thousands of acres of wood to create the company that would eventually become the Cornwall Iron Furnace. Mr. Grubb called it Cornwall after Cornwall, England where his father was from. The second owners, the Coleman family, revamped and renovated the business to create the complex that still stands today; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers says it is “the only one of America’s hundreds of 19th century charcoal fueled blast furnaces to survive fully intact.”

The complex has a small self-guided tour area but for a small fee you can take the 1 hour guided tour with a very knowledgeable staff member. You will watch a short video of how the blast furnace was fueled and the work involved to make iron back in the 18th century. It's an amazing process. The guide will take you through the various rooms of the blast furnace building where you'll peer down the 36 foot blast furnace itself, see the huge wooden water driven (later steam driven) wheel that powered the bellows that shot air into the furnace to increase the heat and see where the employeed poured the boiling hot iron into sand forms to create "pig iron". You'll be told that it took an acre of trees to make enough charcoal to fuel the blast furnace for one day, as the furnace was in operation 24 hours a day, and that the complex sat on 10,000 acres of woods that were used to fuel the factory. Very near the furnace was the iron ore pit which produced iron ore until 1972 when it started to flood after Hurricane Agnes passed over the area. Now there is a lake where once thousands of tons of iron ore were removed.

The Cornwall Iron Furnace is part of the National Historical Landmark District here in Lebanon, PA, but the sad truth is that the funding to maintain this fascinating historic site has been cut so much that being open is a day to day situation. The Iron Furnace is the last and ONLY complete blast furnace standing in the United States and it may have to close. Our country is not so old that we can afford to lose a site of such historical significance that is in such excellent condition. The Gothic Revival architecture of the outbuildings, the huge gear driven wheel that powered the blowers that still works, the dedication of the Coleman family who donated the complex to the state of Pennsylvania should not be lost. Visiting historical sites is part of the pleasure of RV travel for Denny and I; we have learned more history, geography and geology than from any classes we had in school. To see, to touch, to hear the stories is to make history come alive. It would be a shame to see this site shut down due to budget constraints and it would be a vast disservice to the public.

Okay. Off the soapbox.

Huge rooms stored limestone and charcoal to which were layered with iron ore in the furnace to create pig iron. The Gothic styling of the windows is church-like.

This water driven "hammer" pounded pig iron bars into workable iron to make wrought iron, cast iron implements and items such as horse shoes. The iron was pounded, heated and pounded again until it reached a more malleable form.

The room housing the blast furnace (the red area). The wagons were for hauling the charcoal in from the forests. It took workers several days to create a mound of charcoal in a complex system of creating a huge hive-like mound of wood covered with sand and leaves and they watched over nine mounds at a time. The making of the charcoal was a fascinating process in itself.

The "great wheel" powered the blowing equipment that was used to force cold air inot the blast furnace, adding oxygen to the flames to make the temperature in the furnace hot enough to melt the iron ore. The wheel is 24 feet in diameter and my picture gives no indication of the size of the equipment in this room.

A panel made for a cast iron stove. In the 1700s, there were no metal molds for the stoves, so wooden templates were carved with a raised design, which was then pressed into a box of wet sand (I'm really simplifying the process here) tamped down heavily and then removed, leaving a pattern in the sand. Hot, liquid iron fresh from the furnace was ladled into the mold which created the panel. An ironworker could make several panels a day (remember, they worked twelve hour shifts, 84 hours a week).

The Cornwall Iron Furnace sent a lot of their stove panels to Germany, hence the writing in German on the decorations. Again, these were made by pressing carved wooden templates into boxes filled with wet sand.

An outbuilding near the iron works.

The stone homes built for the iron furnace workers still stand and are part of a residential neighborhood today. Most are doubles and driving down the street is truly stepping back in time.

Leaving New Jersey

Images from Ocean View, NJ:

There was some interesting flora...

...and fauna.

We left too soon to see the full color of fall...

...but enjoyed sunsets at the side of the lake.

And of course, I always have to take a photo of some nice pink clouds; the sliver of a crescent moon was just an added touch.

I find that I liked the eastern shores (see John, I remembered, shores not beaches) of New Jersey quite a bit. We had beautiful weather for the most part, and once we got further south we escaped the mosquitoes (or the campground sprayed for them perhaps). There were marshes, bays, ponds, lakes, rivers and of course the mighty Atlantic to enjoy, scenic beach towns, touristy Atlantic City, lovely parks. For sightseeing, we enjoyed the fact that the price of diesel is 20 cents a gallon cheaper here in NJ.

The downside? Paying $3.75 in the truck to cross a bridge when cars paid $1.00. Driving up and down the Garden State Parkway pulling the trailer or just driving the dually truck cost us almost $60.00 over a two week period in toll fees. A bottle of vodka cost $9 more in NJ than it would in Ohio. It would be very expensive to live in this state. Unless you drove a small car, used back roads exclusively and didn't drink. Ahem. Kidding.

Complaining aside, I can see us returning for another visit. Mile for mile New Jersey had more roadside farm stands than we've seen anywhere else with some good apples and peaches. We passed on their corn because we're seriously prejudiced; ain't nobody has sweet corn like Ohio sweet corn. Don't even try to argue with me on this one because I won't listen. Unless you're from Indiana, which has the same kind of wonderful, rich soil pushed down by the glaciers eons ago as Ohio. And they have the ocean and miles of sandy shoreline, a fact too hard to resist. I think we'll be back.

Cape May Point Visit

The rains cleared up by mid-morning yesterday so Denny and I drove down to the Cape May Point State Park at the very end of New Jersey. Entrance is free and what a wonderful park the state has here!

Naturally, the first thing you see upon entering the park is the Cape May Lighthouse. Built in 1859, you may climb the 199 steps to the top for $7 per person. We didn't make the climb, choosing instead to wander over to the large platform filled with people.

That platform turned out to be the bird watchers platform. The park with its freshwater and brackish water marshes and heavy tree and marsh grass cover is a stopping off place for raptors and myriad types of birds migrating south for the winter. Bats and butterflies also stop here in their migrations. The park provides bird watching volunteers and the free use of binoculars for those interested in learning about the birds they are viewing from the platform. I've never seen such huge telephoto lens and expensive camera set ups in all my life--there are some serious birders who come here!

Standing on the platform and looking towards the ocean we saw a massive structure, so Denny and I wandered down a trail to see what it was. What it was is an abandoned WWII bunker used to protect the New Jersey shoreline. Originally, this bunker sat 900 feet back from the beach. As you can see from the picture, erosion is slowly reclaiming the land and eventually the bunker will self-destruct when the pilings can no longer support its weight.

Raptors weren't flying around on our visit, but there were swans on several of the marsh ponds. It was hard to get of shot of them as it was feeding time and they spent most of their time with their heads below the water, like the two on the left.

Yesterday's temperatures were in the high 70s and the air was thick with humidity; a perfect day for enjoying gentle breezes on the beach at the park. According to the park's website during the summer dolphins are a common sight along the beach.

I don't know if this pilot was showing off or just playing around, but he was flying awfully low over the bunker as we walked the beach.

I'm never able to figure out how people find something like this baleen whale jaw bone and know what it is. I would have mistaken it for a large piece of driftwood.

Many cities have festivals, but few would have one dedicated to the Darb's favorite vegetable (NOT!!)

Raining on My Parade

We have a noon tee time today which is when the showers we are currently experiencing are supposed to change to thunderstorms. That's not a good time to be waving a metal club around in the air. So golf in New Jersey might just have to wait until our next visit since the price to play goes back up tomorrow. We refuse to pay $180 for the two of us to play golf. Ohio golf courses spoiled us for life for being able to play great golf courses at extremely reasonable prices.

Yesterday Denny and I spent another afternoon with his cousin Wanda. Denny's culinary creation this time was a Dutch appie pie. The good news is, we left the pie with Wanda. The bad news is, we left the pie with Wanda. Which is one reason why Wanda is smiling in this picture.

It has been an enjoyable stay here in Ocean View, NJ. The campground has cleared out quite a bit since we arrived so it's quiet and peaceful. The maintenance staff has spent the past two days emptying out the water park's pool so I guess that means the camping season is officially over in this part of the state.

I try to find something to photograph each time Patches and I wander around outside (it's not always a "walk" when we go out). This time it was a spider that was crossing from one spike of sea grass to another. I missed that, but caught him going from one leaf to the next after he landed.

The diva sometimes just sits, surveying her domain.

So far, East coast sunsets haven't been very exciting. There hasn't been a lot of humidity in the air, therefore few clouds have popped up in the evening to reflect the setting sun. This is all I've gotten so far.

Very bright security lights here in the campground preclude any night time shots of the sky, but I did catch a sliver of the moon at dusk the other day. I've still got a lot to learn about my new camera, even though I've had it for several months now.