Ahead of Schedule
August 21, 2025 — Day 1
Keene NH — East Greenbush NY
So, we’re blogging again? We hated that we left you in a lurch, but it was needed. It was taking up a lot of time and we were having a lot of fun birding. (susan here: Which would be boring for you, dear readers… “We saw a checkered blue-billed teal-tufted diddly-squat!” Can you imagine post after post of that. We can’t either.)
But we miss it and we think some of you enjoy it as too. (susan here: yes, we believe that’s true so don’t disabuse us of that notion.) This time, we’re going to try and blog faster. So fewer words. More photos. (susan here: Call it our austerity program.)
This trip marks a first for us: A trip traveling with another RV! We’re traveling with Susan’s cousin Donna and her partner Bill. They’re partly responsible for us buying ours. We’re meeting up in Paterson, NY tomorrow and going to the NY State Fair, camping in the “Pink” lot which costs $26/day, no services. Think parking lot for RVs running generators and you have a pretty fine idea of what our luxe accommodations will be. BUT! There is the fair with all the things that a huge fair has, so that’s a total win. Susan and two others not named Paul can get in for free because they’re of a certain age.
But why are we ahead of schedule? Let’s back up to Monday. This is Paul’s month to cook. He hates cooking in the RV. Over the next three days he cooked up storm, freezing all of it.
That’s 45 cups of food, 11 days of 2 person eating. Not pictured is the 46th one that Susan ate for dinner yesterday. The menu has White chicken chili with salsa verde, Harissa and White Bean Chili, Slow Cooker Hoisin Garlic Chicken, Indian Butter Chickpeas, & Curried Red Lentil-Chickpea Stew with Tomatoes & Spinach. Susan thinks this explosion of energy is bizarre, she’d rather cook in the RV. Paul hates cooking in the RV. (susan here: I don’t love cooking in the RV. I just don’t like committing 3 days of my life to cooking meal after meal after meal after meal. To each their own. I’ll be happy to have those yummy things to nosh on.)
So today is Thursday. We need to bug out Friday morning. After breakfast we figured out that we really wanted to take care of our water and sewer tanks today, not tomorrow. That takes a fair bit of time and we’d really have to rush it in the morning. By 3pm it was clear we could leave today. So we did! We pulled out the driveway at 5:00 and 15 seconds.
See? Fewer words? LOL. (susan here: honest, I’ll clip them severely. Tonight I’m just too tired to do more than add comedy and edit.)
We immediately saw our problem: We were hungry! This is NOT the way one starts out a 2 or 3 hour journey, arriving around 8-8:30PM. So we stopped by the Market Basket in Swanzey and bought a few slices of pizza. And some paper bowls because we won’t have hookups for the next few days. Water is PRECIOUS. Trash isn’t. Paper plates for the win! Ahh the glamorous life no dishes!!!
It wasn’t long before we discovered the second problem. We were heading west at sunset. Sometimes the road was like this:
And you’d go around the corner and BAM!
But then we had some pretty stuff.
We were surprised to find that the Cracker Barrel parking lot was full of RVs! Most of them were short and not in the RV spots. We don’t fit in the RV spots so we take up a million spaces out back. The shorties can park anywhere but we can’t. So, as Paul was outside, double checking that all the bay doors were locked and the Class A that parked where we wanted to be just started up and left! So we did another lap of the parking lot. And here we are in their spot.
Long time readers of the blog will notice we never take the Mass Pike. Route 9 from Keene to Brattleboro VT has been having an increasing number of serious accidents. So we went a down and out and discovered it took not very much longer, maybe 10 minutes. All in all it seems to be a better way around to Albany.
Day 1 math is so easy!
Daily: 145 miles
Total: 145 miles
Driving miles/Day: 145 miles/day
Overall miles/Day: 145 miles