More New York

Aug 20th

It was a good night. The drone of all the crickets, frogs, cicadas and other creatures helped me sleep really well. We are staying at an RV park outside of Amsterdam, NY for the next couple of nights. McConchie’s RV park is not ideal, but they had space for us, and the cell service is good, because Kathy has to work for the next two days. New York has been getting a lot of rain, and all of the rivers are swollen and the ground is all soggy. Our campsite is on grass, and it is wet and soggy. A third of the campsites at this park are underwater. And with that much water, the bugs are out of control. We stayed in all evening, with the AC running, to beat the humidity.

Aug 21st

Kathy worked most of the day. I did routine maintenance on the truck and trailer. I am trying to find us a new place to stay, as Hurricane Henri is bearing down on us. We can’t stay here, because we would get stuck in the mud if rained on our site. The RV park is having an event this evening, so they have bounce houses and food trucks in the field across form us. Mia played most of the day in the bounce houses. Only one food truck showed up but we opted to cook our own food. The event tonight is Outhouse Racing. That’s not a typo. People have made small outhouses with wheels on them. One person sits on a toilet in the outhouse while four others push the outhouse through the obstacle course. They even had the local sheriff come out to lead a parade of the outhouses. It was interesting.

Aug 22nd

I have located a winery to west of us, through Harvest Host, that will let us stay two nights to ride out the storm. Grapevine Farms in Cobleskill, NY. They came out and greeted us when we arrived and told us where to park. They also informed us that they are letting two other RVers stay two nights too. There is supposed to be a lot of rain coming. We have a nice gravel spot to park on, with no chance of flooding. The farm doesn’t actually make wine, they have cellar of only NY wines with tastings, a restaurant, and store. We had lunch at the restaurant, sitting on the back porch overlooking the grounds. It is beautiful and tasty. We are parked near the chicken coop, and when Tim (host), came out to feed the chickens, he gave us a half a dozen fresh eggs. To the east the skies are very dark, and they are moving our way fast. By 4pm the rain started. At times it has been very heavy, but there hasn’t been much wind to go with it.

Aug 23rd

We did not sleep well. The other RV parked next to us at the farm, ran their diesel generator all night long. The noise was bad, but the diesel fumes that were being sucked into our trailer were much worse. Kathy and I both woke up with headaches. Kathy went and talked to the owners, and in the afternoon, we moved our trailer to a different spot away from the generator people. We did some wine tasting this afternoon. We were told of all the differences between California wines and NY wines. Niagara and Concord wines are very popular in NY. It’s like drinking grape juice with a kick.