On some of the blogs I follow, people have names for their RV. I’ve never been one to name my vehicles, but we’ve been trying to come up with a name. This morning I woke up thinking about our trip out west coming up. I thought about the settlers heading west in their Conestoga wagons. I think we’ll call our RV “Connie” as it’s our modern day version of the Conestoga wagon heading west with all of our possessions aboard. What do you think?

Painting depicting a Conestoga wagon

The Conestoga wagon is a heavy, covered wagon that was used extensively during the late 18th century and the 19th century in the United States and Canada. It was large enough to transport loads up to 8 tons (7 metric tons), and was drawn by horses, mules or oxen. It was designed to help keep its contents from moving about when in motion and to aid it in crossing rivers and streams, though it sometimes leaked unless caulked…

Yesterday was a move day. We were still trying to dry things from the disaster the day before. It poured rain overnight. This didn’t help with the things we had hanging to dry.

In the morning, I rode the scooter to the FedEx office in the village to overnight the title to my BMW motorcycle. I’m really happy that it sold; it’s been on consignment at the BMW dealership for a few months. Donna’s Beemer sold after couple of weeks there.

Packing up to move took a lot of time. I had to rearrange much of the trailer before I could load the scooter. We didn’t hit the road until 1PM. We followed Rt 73 out of Lake Placid through Keene Valley to I-87 (the Adirondack Northway). The first section of 73 to the village of Keene has a few steep downgrades. This was part of the Ironman cycling course. Driving 11+ tons of RV requires attention when going downhill. I used lower gears to utilize engine braking and braked with the service brakes as necessary to maintain the desired speed. The worst thing to do is to ride the brakes all the time, they will overheat and become ineffective.

We arrived at the Lake George Escape Campground a couple of hours later. While we were on the road, I realized I hadn’t eaten anything except for a cup of Greek yogurt all day. In our estate sale, I sold pants that were tight fitting and only kept a few with a 36″ waist size. After one week on the road these are loose and falling down. I’ll be wearing 34″ again very soon!

We checked in and found that Donna’s brother-in-law, Tom, had set us up with a nice pull-through site. The Lake George Escape Campground is a large private facility with all of the amenities. We have full hookups with 50 amp service and cable TV. The site is large, level and the trees and shrubs make it relatively private. We booked our stay here several months ago and neither Donna or I can remember what we paid; we’ll have to check our records.

We’re thinking about tubing on the river today. The campground is located on the Schroon River which runs from Schroon Lake to the Hudson River. We plan to make today a mostly lazy day as we had a fairly busy time in Lake Placid.

Tomorrow we’ll move to Thompson’s Lake State Park where we’ll visit with Donna’s parents, her brother Mark’s family and some old friends (she grew up and lived in the area for many years).