Thursday, June 9, 2011

Off to Colden– Hills and More Hills

(Colden, NY)  Hi 83 Lo 70 --  We got up at 8am this morning and were on the road by 9:40am. We’re getting real organized on hitching up and on the move.

Today’s trip of 180 miles was interesting. It was about 2/3 interstate and 1/3 state roads. We went through some more construction zones.

As we headed west on I-86 we dipped over the state line into Pennsylvania for a couple of miles, then back into New York.
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The countryside was beautiful! We were in the finger lakes region, and there were lots of rolling hills. Here's some of the scenery.
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One of the roads on our route was closed, so we had to take a detour. Of course that made our turn-by-turn directions useless. We were out in the middle of nowhere and at one point got confused by the detour signs.  Jim took a wrong turn.and we had to rely on our Garmin GPS to get us back on track. This is one of the roads we had to take back to the main road. I was eating dust for about half a mile.
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Once we got back on track and past the detour we both had a good laugh about it. We discussed how this would have really stressed us out back when we were first starting out on the road. Now, not a big deal... it's amazing how a little experience increases your comfort level in this lifestyle.

We finally got to Colden Lakes Resort, Restaurant, and Campground.
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We got one of the new big rig pull-thru sites they've recently added to the park. They are nice, level, open sites with gravel pads and full hookups.
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Some seasonal rigs are parked nose to tail along the side of the road behind us.
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There’s a restaurant on site, with a small grocer store behind it.
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And a pool
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We decided to have dinner at the restaurant. A popular sandwich in these parts is Beef on Weck. It's sliced roast beef piled on a weck roll, which is a soft roll with rock salt baked into the crust. It sure was good! Another local custom is to pour malt vinegar on your fries, or dip your fries in beef gravy. Neither of us cared for the vinegar, but the gravy was good.
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We needed some milk, and they were out at the on-site store, so we drove to a store about four miles away in the town of Colden. We went up and down a couple of 8-10% grades on the way, thankful we didn't have to pull the rig over them.

This was a pretty little church we passed.
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Jim got the satellite dish set up, and he also scanned for the local channels on our rooftop antenna. Along with all the network stations in Buffalo we're getting two Canadian stations. We got a kick out of watching some of their comedy programs.

We have so much planned during the next few days. Be sure to follow along with us.

6 comments:

mom w said...

I feel like I'm with you all the way.I get on the pc every night to see where we are.It is so interesting to follow along with you.You two are blessed. I love you Mom

JB said...

"Do you want gravy with your fries" is a pretty common question here in the True North.

We enjoy some of your comedy shows too, especially that one called CNN.

Enjoy your trip and welcome to the neighbourhood.

Mike and Terri said...

Looks like you two did a little bit of dirt-trackin' today. New York has some beautiful scenery. I google mapped your route yesterday, and it looked like it might be quite hilly. Dinner sure looked good too.

Rod Ivers said...

Gravy on the French Fries! Ewww I think I can feel my arteries hardening as we speak........

Good Travels
Rod and Loyce

owensontheroad said...

Yum, gravy on fries is terrific!! In Canada, it's poutine, which is even better :)

Along the Way with JnK said...

We too had a detour just the other day and had to dirt road it for about a mile. We too now laugh and just go with it, not like when we first started out over 6 years ago. Back then it was a total state of confusion, stress and no time to allow life to just flow...so glad we are in a different stage of our lives. Life is pretty dang great!

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