The Journey Begins

After many months of planning and looking forward to the our Alaska trip the day was finally here.

A few days before departing we managed to bring the trailer to our house to start the finally packing.

Today we worked all morning packing before we finally disconnected the trail from the power and did a final inspection and head off.

We planned on this first day being mostly driving, as we had been through this area of NY last fall in the trailer.

We covered some good distance and then took a couple breaks along the way. The traffic was very light and we made pretty good time.

The timing worked out very good and we ended up passing through Syracuse at dinner time and revisited The Dinosaur BBQ for dinner.

Luckily the weather was cool enough to leave Maxwell in the truck eating his dinner while we ate ours.

Plus we licked out with a great parking spot for the trailer which in a city is no easy feat. Luck for us the restaurant is in a quiet part of town

We haven't really seen anything in Syracuse except the Dinosaur so we took a little walk around some of the nearby buildings.

We enjoyed a beer in the outside patio area while we waited a bit for a table.

The BBQ was great again, if you are ever in the area check it out.

We are trying to be healthy so we didn't have apps or dessert.  But you should have the Fried Green Tomatoes if you go!

Driving all day we planned to stay the first night in a Walmart parking lot.

The local Syracuse Walmarts were both off limits to RVers so we drove another 45 minutes to Auburn, NY and tucked in for the night. No other RVs were there but we shared the lot with a trucker who was staying there.



Overall we covered 342 Miles used an astonishing 35 gallons of gas for terrible 9.7 mpg average. We were doing almost 65 the entire day and it was kind of hilly. Usually we do a little better on MPGs but with a fully loaded trailer and the bikes who knows.

Journey Home

Sadly after the airshow we have to start driving home. But we still have a few things to see on the way. It is a 2 day drive home so we aren't doing too much driving each day.

On the first leg of the journey we stop in Liverpool NY to his a hot dog place called Heid's, the line was long and slow but the dogs were good. We also take the dogs out and let them stretch their legs a bit.

Oh and get some Ice cream too!

After Heid's we are back on the road to Cobleskill, NY.  It isn't too much further and we arrive at our "Campsite", it is lush and green as there have been crazy amounts of rain in this area. The ground it totally squishy.

Of course this is a free campsite so you can't complain.

It is of course the parking lot of the local Walmart Super Center. Another 2 rows of parking to our left are some other RV's but we never see or hear them.

We are at a slight disadvantage being we don't have a dumpsite to stop at on our way home so we can't use out facilities. But we can cook and have TV, and heat of course we aren't savages.

In the morning I am sad to say we have breakfast in the Walmart and use their facilities.

We head out and drive down the road to Howe Caverns a cave I went to when I was a kid. It is quiet and we get basically a private tour along with 2 other people.

The cave is pretty cool although the childish names they have for the rocks is annoying because I'd rather learn something about the rocks and cave than know people think a particular rock looks like bacon or a witch.

The cave has almost gone under dozens of times and they keep managing to keep it open, the tour isn't cheap, I don't know how they lose money!

The best part about the cave is that someone found it because Cows used to congregate around an opening to it when it was very warm. Cold air came out of the opening the cows liked the air conditioning!

The country is nice too, you would never know there is a huge cavern under it.

Oddly if we had been a week early the rains had the cavern flooded to the roof and we wouldn't have been able to tour it.

The rest of the drive goes fine but it is sad to leave the trailer at the storage yard knowing it will probably be months before we can take it out again. But we have big plans when we do.

Welcome to Walmart (NY Trip Day 0)

With the camping season soon coming to a close we decided we needed to take longer trip. After checking into a few different directions we could go we decided to head west to Niagara Falls, NY via the Finger Lakes.

Since this will be our first longer trip (planned for 7 nights), we packed a bunch more stuff. Although really it wasn't a lot of stuff.

Our bikes we the big addition to the pickup truck bed as were more clothes and some additional kitchen stuff.

Here are the boys in the back seat of the truck, Maxwell our dog looking left in this picture was lucky enough to bring a friend along on the trip.

Gus is a big goofy dog and he was happy to be going on such a fun trip.

The two are kind of a pair of grumpy old men.

In order to maximize the time we had for the trip we left after work.

Our first destination was this lovely Walmart in Herkimer, NY. This would be out first Boondocking. Boondocking is basically free camping, normally you don't get any hookups or amenities but the price is right.

Many Walmart stores welcome RVers to stay overnight in their parking lots. We found this one which was about 275 miles on the way to our first paying campground.



It was a chilly night and we used out furnace for the first time all operating on the freshly charged batteries from the drive. There were a few other RVs in the lot and we found a nice spot to park off to the side.

Airstream Log: This trip 277 miles and 0 nights . Lifetime 1551 miles and 9 nights