Post 1 Starting Out and Working Out the Bugs

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July 23-29

We started our trip on Wednesday, July 23.

We planned to stay close to home for a couple of nights to get a little practice living in the van and to say Good-bye to our best friends, Catherine and Nancy.

We spent two nights at the DAR State Forest in Goshen, Massachusetts. We'd been there before many years ago and were pleased with the many upgrades they had made to the campground. We practiced putting up our rain fly and using the generator solar panel. The generator is not providing as much energy as we expected especially in the hot weather we've had. It has struggled to keep the fridge cold for more than 12 hours at a time without a recharge. We're working on different solutions to keep the generator charging and the refrigerator cold.

On Friday, June 25 we had breakfast with Catherine and Nancy and headed out to our first stop, Seneca Falls, in the Finger Lakes region of NY.

Seneca Falls was the site of the original Women's Rights convention back in 1848. We visited the museum and learned a lot about the abolitionist and women's rights movements. Inspiring displays that sometimes brought us to tears. We checked out the local brew pub and made a stop at the Cayuga/Seneca canal lock system. Lucky us there were boats waiting to go through when we arrived so we got to see how the locks work. The Finger Lakes are also known as a premier wine producing area so we had to make a stop for a wine tasting along the lake.

We departed from Seneca Falls and headed to Buffalo to visit our friend, Donna. We hadn't seen Donna in almost 20 years and it was wonderful to re-connect with her. Staying in Buffalo provided an opportunity to visit Niagra Falls. We headed to the Canadian side to get the best view of Horseshoe Falls. What an amazing display of the awesome power of nature! The falls are huge and deafening when you're near them. As we walked the path next to the falls, the mist created by the falls spread across the pathways and kept us cool. We took the boatride up close to the actual falls and a tour in tunnels behind the falls.

We ended our first week saying goodbye to Donna and her family and heading to our first National Park, Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio.



























Comments

  1. ElaineAugust 22, 2025 at 9:53 AM

    I hope you enjoy Cuyahoga...I found it underwhelming! Didn't you just love the women's history of Seneca Falls!!! So glad you stopped there. Also hope you got the generator working better for you...I'm living your blog with jealous eyes (even though I've been to these places too!)... Safe travels and have fun!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChampaAugust 30, 2025 at 7:39 AM

    It’s amazing. The write up and the pictures explains everything. Also after meeting up with both of you and spending time makes me like part of your journey. Have a safe journey.

    ReplyDelete

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