29. Apr, 2016

TUESDAY 23-09-08 

Rosina slept well last night having suffered backache for most of yesterday, something she occassionally suffers from, and yesterday was one of those days. Having scrubbed up I left The Chef resting whilst I popped across to the ‘Home Center’ store for some white mastic and a mastic gun as I wanted to improve the seal around the top of the shower tray, we also needed a quality sponge with which to wipe the shower unit down after use. We’d previously bought a pack of four coloured cheapies from Wal-Mart but when using one for the first time the dye came out, so we had pink water droplets everywhere. I concluded that a quality decorator’s sponge should do the trick. 

We hit the streets at about 09:00 having missed the rush hour. The journey was pretty uneventful, apart from getting screwed for toll fees again. We’ve had this problem each time we’ve joined I90 since crossing in to New York State, and we’re fearful that we’ll be paying all the way along it until we reach Boston. 

I regret there not being an I-Spy book of ‘Road Kill’. There’s an awful lot of it along the highways and sometimes it's difficult to know what it was, though we do know we’ve seen deer, both large & small, armadillo’s, skunks, squirrels and racoons. 

Once we left I90 on to Hwy98 North there were lots of pretty rural communities with their clapboard houses and front porches, one particularly attractive town was Albion. It would have been nice to stop and look around but it’s all about parking space for an RV and the need to keep pressing on. 

On arrival at Hamilton Beach State Park campground everything appeared shut down, they really don’t seem to waste any time in shutting up shop here just as soon as the peak season is over, no matter that the weather is still glorious. We had to register at the park office as this was the only building open. We were allocated a pitch and when we went to it decided there were better ones available and since we were the only people camping in this loop of pitches we may as well pick our own. All of the pitches went off either side of four loop roads amongst fairly dense forest beside Lake Ontario. 

We chose pitch 190, parked up, and then decided that as we were amongst shady trees we would take the RV down to the public car park right near the lake and have lunch there and soak up some sunshine, returning to our pitch later in the day. I popped in to the campground office, told them of our pitch change and asked if they sold firewood, the answer was "no", but we could buy it outside the campground though heaven knows where. Talk about giving business away, there was a real ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude about the place. The large public car park and surrounding picnic area and walks by the shore of Lake Ontario was very nice indeed, it was the campground side of things which were lacking. 

We parked by the shore and again had it almost to ourselves; we took our lunch to a picnic table near the lake and sat there in the sunshine, watching the numerous groundhogs scurrying around, and enjoying views over the Lake which is so big you’d think it was the ocean. After lunch we began collecting firewood, it’s amazing how much you can find when you need to, I had collected a large plastic box and 4 carrier bags full, much of it small pieces of dry driftwood. After a walk along the ‘promenade’ we relaxed by the RV until about 17:30 when we decided to make our way back to our pitch where we’d get hooked up to water and electricity then prepare the BBQ grill and camp fire. 

On arrival at the pitch I went to hook up to the electrics to discover that it was only 20amps, the original and now almost obsolete RV electrical hook-up system over here, and we needed 30amps. The Chef told me she did tell the disinterested member of staff this when she booked us in. We could have got away with a drain of only 20amps if the plug had been the same size but it wasn’t and I didn’t have an adaptor. Since the staff had not said differently we assumed that there must be some 30 amp pitches around and so we found ourselves touring the forest campground checking out the electrical boxes for the power supply. We had no luck on three of the four loops of the campground, there was only the loop for pet owners left to check and we weren’t prepared to go there, not for just one night’s stay. We had not seen any other campers on our tour around, which meant we had at least 75% of the campground to ourselves. In the end we picked a pitch on the edge of the forest and which, like all the rest, had no dedicated water tap. 

After our barbecue we sat by our real wood fire which burned really well. We even treated ourselves to a dessert of sliced banana and ice cream covered in maple syrup followed by a hot drink made from boiling water heated on our campfire. 

We will be booking out of here in the morning and making our way from the shores of Lake Ontario to Boston on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles to the east. I’ve allowed two days to make the journey, during which time we want to find an RV dealer or Ford agent who can give us an oil change, and we also have a couple of minor problems to sort out. 

LOCATION TONIGHT: Hamlin Beach State Park, 1 Camp Road, Hamlin, NY 14464 (GPS: N43.359120 W77.950128).

29. Apr, 2016

29. Apr, 2016