BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (I think?)

It has been an unsettling nine days. I can’t believe I so lost track of time I missed posting the blog! Two days before we left Holland, NY a severe storm moved through the area about thirty miles south of us and did some serious damage. We were so lucky to be out of the direct path but felt the edge of the storm for about half the night. It had all the bells and whistles of the typical northeastern storm. There was lots of wind and lightning with booming thunder and rain coming down in sheets. Fortunately, the worst of it passed us by midnight so I could get some sleep. We didn’t know about damage south of us until the next day. We went for a drive and heard later that Gowanda had been evacuated and it as well as Springville was declared a disaster area. These two villages in particular really got hammered.

We had intended to go NE from Holland, NY but changed our plans when we discovered one of the main reasons for going no longer existed. In 2005 we found a wonderful buffet restaurant in a tiny village named Moriah near the shores of Lake Champlain. With the memory of the wonderful meals we enjoyed at Gloria’s Restaurant on our minds; we had hoped to repeat the pleasure. Not to be … it closed last year so since we had explored that area extensively in 2005, we decided to head east and south. We had over 300 miles to our next destination (somewhere close to Philadelphia and New York) so we broke our usual pattern and drove a little over 100 miles and stopped for two days at Camp Bell Campground in Campbell, NY then drove on to Quakertown, PA on Friday.

You can see the results of that last stop in my pictures below. What a joke! Earlier, when Phil called, the owner of the campground assured us he had a spot where we could lock on our satellite in the southern sky. Wrong! There wasn’t a square foot of open space in the canopy of this thickly wooded campground. I had no Internet because my desktop is hardwired into our Datastorm but Phil connected to the park’s WiFi with his laptop and found the place where we are staying now. It was another 17 miles south, in Hatfield, PA and is named Village Scene Mobile Home Park. In addition to the many permanent residents, it has about 25 RV sites with full hookups they rent on a daily or monthly rate. Once we got here and hooked up, we could finally relax!

I received an email from my cousin in SC with a couple pictures of his granddaughter, Erin telling me about her success in the America’s Next Top Model competition. I asked permission to put the info on my blog and we are all rooting for her. Not even the family knows who the winner is even though most of the segments have already been taped. They must swear the competitors to secrecy. Although I have never watched the show before, you can bet I will be tuning in this season.

I hope the delay in posting hasn’t discouraged you from reading my blog and again I apologize and thank you for stopping by! Remember you can double click on my pictures to enlarge them.
Until next time,