Happy New Year
Yet the Best Campground Ever
Saturday, September 4th, 2010 – We were debating if we should stay few more days here or start heading west, and decided to wait until after the holiday and celebrate with Patti’s sister.
We drove to Duluth to do some grocery shopping for the holiday and got some apples and honey, pomegranates and honey roast. We grabbed some stuff for tonight’s dinner, and stopped at the mall before we drove back home. Why the Mall – wait, it’s coming.
We had the best recipe for a successful evening – best food and best company. You can not beat that formula – this is a all time winner. We had Great time together. Patti made Hummus and Tahini, Falafel Balls (from scratch) and fresh Israeli salad. They loved it. We love it too :)
Good Bye iPHONE, Hello Android!
Before we came back from Duluth, we stopped at Verizon store at the mall. But in order to understand this side story I need to tell you a little background. Don’t worry, I said Little. So yesterday I receive an email from AT&T. They tell me, their very dear customer, that I exceeded my roaming quota for my data device, and they are stopping the service for the month. This did not go well by me. A company that brags about their national service punishes me that they can not deliver? Build a new tower! I am not planning my trip based on your non-existing coverage map. So I called them and vented out. I would not like to switch with that CSR that answered my call. Poor girl, probably drove home crying after this call… It ended up with AT&T letting me go without charging any early termination fees on both my phones and my data.
I didn’t like their service anyways, and I am not happy with their coverage, but with all those contracts we could not just stop the service. We had bad experience in the past with AT&T so we got our phones from Cingular, and a year later AT&T bought them…
So back to the Verizon store – we switched to a new service and got new phones. Patti got the HTC Android, and I decided to wait on my phone and just got a simple plain phone until I will decide what I want. There are too many new models and systems that are coming out now, and I need to see what is best for me. Windows Phone 7 is coming out, and I want to see what it is. It has lots of good reviews.
Patti Loves her new gadget. Much better than iPhone! and I could install some application on it that allows tethering without a data plan. Cool! I didn’t know that Android is Linux based. You learn every day!
New Year Dinner
שנה טובה – Happy New YearSaturday, September 4th, 2010 – It is New Year’s eve today! Patti spent most of the the day yesterday at her sister’s restaurant baking and preparing some good surprises for today. Patti learned how to bake Challa Bread – a sweet braded bread that Jewish eat on Shabbat and Holidays. She baked a special one today, and made some fresh Pitta bread too. Wow – it is going to be a killer.
Reut, my oldest daughter is going to join us too, so I drove all the way to the cities to get her. It is three and a half hours one way… I am not taking her back tonight, so she will get to sleep over with us tonight. That’s great!
New Year Dinner TableThe salad coarse included Hummus and Tahini, with Israel Salad and Pitta bread.
The main course is Patti’s top secret Mashed Potatoes, Mashed squash with Maple, beef roast and home made gravy. Oh – and sweet corn on the cob.
If you are not full just from reading it – so the dessert was irresistible. Simple yet delicate – Chocolate balls made with the real French cookies, covered with coconut, hmmm so good.
RVelocation (RV Relocation)
Friday, September 10th, 2010 – We slept like bears yesterday after this huge meal. Woke up slowly to a whole new year. This past year was a good year for us and we hope it will just get better. Happy New yeat to Y’all!After such a long stay here at Delta campground, it took us some time to pack everything and get ready to go. Finally around noon we were all ready to move. It was a little tricky to get out of this site – with all the trees and the narrow roads, but slowly we made it out.
Headed south to the cities to drop my daughter and from there – to Michigan – to get our new home. As you probably know by now – we have no reservation anywhere. We just go. We were anxious to get to MI but more than that, we did not want to drive through Chicago in the daytime – because even in the brightest day – it is still a nightmare, so might as well – drive at night. For the first time ever, Patti agreed to drive the truck with the RV hooked up, and after few minutes she was just fine driving through the endless miles of hwy 94 across Wisconsin. We switched again just before Chicago, and drove through the night. Our thoughts were to get to MI by Saturday morning – after driving Thursday and Friday. So here we are on Friday morning and we are already there.
We found this new unit on eBay Motors, and fell in love with it. Since that time, couple weeks ago, we are trying to make sure that all the details are worked out and all we need to do is come in, move all our belongings, and go. Huh. Wishful thinking.
The unit was not ready yet, and just today they got a lot of pressure on their service department. It is always just today… Like the recording “We are experiencing higher than usual call volume, your call will be answered within 6 hours and 34 minutes, you are number 76 in line”. They always experience higher than usual call volume. Wonder what is usual…Anyways – after few hours our units was finally ready with Solar panel, Slide covers and all the other goodies. It was already 4:00pm, which means we had to stay overnight in the store’s yard so we can move our stuff, and man do we have stuff. You have no idea how much you got until you have to move it.
They parked the RVs side by side, and I moved everything from the old RV to the new one. I left all the stuff by the door where Patti picked it up and put it away. It was 2:00am when we were finally done. last check in all the hidden places, to make sure we didn’t forget anything before we fell onto our new bed in the new bedroom of our new home.
PA here we come again
Saturday, September 11th, 2010 – We have to finish putting things away before we can drive. At least in a temporary place, and that is not an easy task. Couple more gadget (gotta have this front level on the hitch) and we were on the hwy again. This time with our new home! The truck didn’t have a problem with the few extra pounds and surprisingly it even had a better gas millage – just about 10 miles per gallon. This is better than the 9 we had with the Sandpiper.We had over 700 miles to go and we were not going to do it non stop. We decided to stop in Eastern OH on a service Plaza. We love those plazas in OH turnpike – they have an overnight hook-ups for RV’s and if you are just driving thru it is a perfect solution – you don’t even have to go out of the toll area. It was around 10:00pm, when we finally stopped just before Youngstown, had a fast dinner and went to sleep
Saturday, September 11th, 2010 – Woke up to a hot Starbucks coffee and Au Bon Pain breakfast. Patti woke up and brought home some breakfast. What a great start for a day! It was so nice of her. We continued East on I-80 and drove thru PA Wilds – I love those great big bridges over the rivers in this area, and the leaves are just starting to change their colors – lovely views! We enjoyed our ride and listened to our favorite station – The Highway on Sirius XM – New Country music.
We are headed to the same campground we stayed last year just around this time, before we started our Journey – The campground name is Secluded Acres, by lake Wallenpaupak, but this campground is a topic for the next post.
In the next few days we are planning to finish setting up our new home, get caught up on errands, visit with friends, and later this month – both my daughters are coming to visit for couple weeks – so good time is waiting for us before we head south for the winter. Life is good today :)
Congratulations on the new rig! Welcome to the Escalade family. Donna and I are sure you will enjoys yours as much and we do ours.
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