Sunset RV Park at sunrise

It is quite lovely here, if dilapidated. The owner tells me our cabin dates from the 1890s and the newest cabins from the 1930s.

Journal Pages

Here are some more pages from the journal, to bring you up to date to the end of July, more or less. This stuff is somewhat redundant with blog posts, but it's much harder to read, so there's that!

Aunt Eva

Aunt Eva brought Grandma to our cabin this morning and stayed with us through lunch (at Rudy's, a lakeside restaurant that serves all the best lakeside fare, which means deep fried or served in a bun), a trip to Ontario Orchards for what Molitor describes as beautiful produce, and then icecream at Bev's, the other lakeside stand. (Actually, there's a third, an "oriental" restaurant, which I doubt we'll patronize).

Eva and Molitor are really enjoying talking Family, as they each have knowledge, insight, and experiences with various family members that the other doesn't have. Eva is damn near Molitor's only relative outside of his birth family, so this is really nice. We're hoping to see Brit, Eva's son, while we're here.

It also turns out that Eva attended what is now SUNY Oswego (whose campus abuts our campground) when it was a teacher's college, and she and her father stayed in this very campground in a cabin when they came to visit! No wonder these cabins look a little rundown...Eva went to college about 50 years ago!

Here they are, chatting in front our cabin. It was quite warm a few hours ago when they were chatting. In the few intervening hours, the lake breeze has really picked up, thankfully it's still sunny and blue skies, but I'm wearing a fleece jacket here in the shade!

Oswego,NY

We arrived at Sunset RV Park in Oswego, NY yesterday. Google maps told us it would take about 5.5 hours to get there. So, admittedly taking 3-4 breaks for the kids adds to that time, but I still think Google is oddly optimistic. We left Lazy Lions campground at 9:45 am and rolled into Sunset around 6:15 pm. Ugh. And then I turned around in about 30 minutes (after, among other tasks, downing some Chef Boyardee ravioli...oh yeah) to go fetch Mom at the Syracuse airport. She is staying with Molitor's Aunt Eva in Oswego, about 7 miles away from here for the duration of our stay. We plan to leave Saturday morning for Niagara Falls.

The drive here was fascinating. All these names that were so important in the history of the country (and in the "literature" of my fave James Fenimore Cooper): Seneca Falls, Mohawk River, Erie Canal (which technically I have now seen, at 65 mph).

We definitely have a "simple little cottage" (Alice vernacular). It is rather shabby (Molitor compares it to a sharecropper's cabin), and floor wasn't swept very well, etc., etc. But it has all the necessary amenities, including a shared bath house a few feet away and the world's most ridiculous kitchenette: there is a propane tank bolted on to the outside of the cabin with a tube snaking in through the wall, which attaches to a 2-burner stove, which is itself sitting on top of a metal rolling 3-shelf tray, which is bolted to the wall, with its wheels 3 inches from the floor. But good enough to make pancakes and coffee this morning! All the furniture looks quite well made and solid (mostly wood), but about 50 years of hard use.

The best thing, perhaps, is the view from our cabin. The picture below (from our front porch) doesn't do it justice, really, especially because it doesn't feature the sunset (the campground is aptly named). But Lake Oswego is Right There, separated from us by only a road and two stands for icecream and traditional lake-side fare. I have never seen a great lake before and good grief, they are BIG. It's like looking at the ocean, and they demonstrably have big waves that crash into shores and sea gulls and and and. They're just fresh water. I don't know if we'll go swimming in the lake. There's a pool on the park's premises, and while the weather is beautiful, it's not exactly beach-going: quite breezy, cool...a bit like a perfect autumn day in Norfolk. 

We plan to stick around the campground all day today but for a trip to the grocery store. We haven't had any fresh vegetables in about 2 days. Ugh. Grandma and Aunt Eva are slated to come over mid-morning, and Grandma will stay with us all day. Hopefully tomorrow we'll all drive into Syracuse so I can see where Grandma grew up!

Whoops!

Apparently we got two of the three clothing duffels out of Poppa's cabin. The grownup clothes were sort of tucked behind the futon after we set it back into the couch configuration, so our cursory check for Stuff missed it.

Mom took off at 7am for the 6 hour errand back to Lake Winnipesaukee. On the up side, she got some kid free time, is driving as I type through various and sundry gorgeous landscape without worrying about fussy kids, and she got to spend a little time with Taylor, an old Bartelt Family friend who we juuuust missed leaving New Hampshire yesterday.

As for daddy, well, the kids are being great and the campground is lovely and fun. There's very light rain off and on, but we're hanging out in the rec room now. B is playing with some dominos, while Alice watches some TV. Before that, B took a long morning nap, and Alice rode her bike and played in the "wishing fountain".

All in all, a more or less minor-ish failure. Not too bad. And we expect the mistake to be fully unwound at around 2:00, 2:30, when mom gets back.

Vermont!

We have made it to Lazy Lions campground in Vermont. We're all set up, safe from the rain (we think!) and full of chinese takeout. Meg's college friend Sara met us here, and we hung out for the afternoon and into the evening, eating and talking. It's gorgeous in Vermont.

Leaving Lake Winnipesaukee was a bit of a wrench, no doubt about it. We are resolved to make sure we can summer on a lake somewhere, though, in the sense of taking at least a couple weeks to go do that every year, or most years, or something. Driving away from Lake W we passed any number of smaller, but equally lovely, lakes. So, we have hope that within reason it's quite likely to be possible wherever we land. There are lakes all over the world, and most of them are lovely, and all of them seem to have the same collection of fudge shops, dubious and expensive restaurants, and endless cabins, motels, houses, and so on.

With so many available, surely one of them will suit us well.

internet desert!

No updates really for the last week. Poppa's cabin has little to no internet access! Pictures are being taken and the journal is being updated so there will be a flood of stuff soon.

We'll be leaving New Hampshire tomorrow and heading to Montpelier in Vermont. Right now daddy is doing some grocery shopping, which he feels includes a latte at the coffeeshop in Wolfeboro, and a little internet time.

Some photos uploaded to the road trip album as well, but not all. A little taste of our time with Poppa! Now having much internet access is good for us. At least for daddy.