2012 Big Truck Across the Northeast, Day 13

OK, this may be the shortest post of the entire trip, and rightly so.  Our agenda for day 13 - get home.  Because of that, there is one picture, but it is rather fitting.

We spent a fair amount of time at these fine establishments, which leads me to the trip stats.

I'll keep these brief, as they are likely of little interest, but I'd like to capture them here for future reference.

Total miles                           2,843

Flat tow miles                      2,395

Dinghy (Jeep) miles                448

Avg gas price                 $3.88/gal

Avg mileage                    7.71mpg

National Parks - 1

State Parks - 3

RV Parks - 3

Total micro/regional breweries visited - 7

Trips to hardware store in 2 weeks prior to leaving - 8

Pictures taken - infinity

Near misses - 1 (thank you elderly FLA driver)

Incidents - a few, like forgetting to put the Jeep in gear before unlocking the towbar arms, or leaving the valves open on the gray/black tanks and screwing the cap on (you RVers will know what that could have led to had I not realized it before removing the cap...)

Problems - zero.  Extremely fortunate here.  I would like to believe this is due to extreme levels of preparation, but realize that can't prevent everything.


Our setup:

2002 Coachmen Catalina Sport, Triton V10

2009 Jeep JK Unlimited Rubicon 6spd

Ready Brute towbar, Ready Brake cable actuated braking system (Craigslist find)

Roadmaster tow cables

Warrior products D-ring adapters - custom rigged to PureJeep bumper, no tow plate required

Cooltech JK Wrangler-specific wiring harness (pull the IOD fuse + M1 fuse)

 

Final note - thank you to our family & friends for the prayers, thoughts, emails, comments, phone calls, etc.  We couldn't have done it without you. 

One final pic to sum up the vacation, it captures the spirit of our trips, we just happen to be sprinting toward a bigger playground.

2012 Big Truck Across the Northeast, Day 12

Day 12 started pretty early, as we had a bit of a drive to get to our intended destination.  We had the Big Truck/Jeep combo hooked up and ready to go before 8am, but of course the dreaded visit to the dump station took its toll.  At Button Bay the station is in the 2nd loop of the park, and since everything is One Way and 5mph, it is a bit of a ridiculous proposition.  If you have ever seen the Kevin James bit (from Don't Sweat the Small Stuff) about the bank teller line,

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAUZl1tdlis&feature=player_detailpage#t=93s

you would then understand the slow crawl through the campground, especially dragging the Jeep behind us.  Button Bay is worse, because once you finally reach the dump station, you are forced back around the same loop in order to exit the park.  Once again, you are giving the same nods to campers who are assuming you have no idea where you are going, since they just saw you a couple of minutes ago.

Anyway, after getting out of the park, we must have mistakenly set the GPS on Max Difficulty, Mininum Achievable MPG, or Least Straightaways, because the next 4 hours involved more elevation change, 25mph zones, and roadside streambeds than I have ever seen.  We followed the southern shore of Lake Champlain (No, E - we didn't see Champy)

until we crossed over into upstate NY.  Ok, a few things about upstate NY.

1.  The gas pumps - the powers that be have removed all latching mechanisms from the pump handles, and have slowed the pumps down to the point that you can watch the thousandth (3rd decimal point, for those of you who really, really want to be precise about how much gas you use) digit climb from 1 to 9.  Since the pumps also limit out at $125, I spent 13 minutes (yes, I timed it) holding the pump handle for one fillup.

2.  The red traffic lights - perhaps those same powers that be have altered the red lights to include a seizure-inducing white LED strip across the center of the red light, as shown below.


OK, maybe that's not it, but that's exactly what it reminded me of. And for those of you that don't immediately recognize that (shame on you), it's the Cylon helmet from the original Battlestar Galactica series.  I know, right?  Who doesn't know that...

3.  Tank tops - the only logical explanation I have is that there must be a constant "Buy 1 get all the rest of the stock free" sale on mens tank tops, because that's all we saw.  And at the risk of offending at least one East Coast resident we know who fits into this category, I am willing to wager that my wife Kimberly is taller than 90% of the adult men we encountered in upstate NY.  This may as well be the state license plate:

Now, on to the important stuff.  Brewery Ommegang. We arrived at our campsite (you have to compromise a bit when you're looking for a 1 night stay during Labor Day weekend with about 4 hrs notice.  I won't mention the campground, but suffice it to say the word 'hilljack' was used in our description of it and its inhabitants more than once), set up shop, and motored through roads like these

to get to this place

which revealed this on the other side of the arch...

I won't bore you with the details of the tour, because I may have blacked out in my excitement to be at the actual brewery of all those Belgian Ales that have inspired my beer choices over the past 10 years.  Seeing the brewing, bottling, and packaging process up close was really cool, and our tour guide Rachel (see below)

did a fantastic job of describing the entire process to our group. You can definitely see that the employees here are passionate about their craft.

The payoff after the tour is the tasting, where they take you through the 6 varieties brewed on site.  Here is the tasting room, followed by the cafe, followed by the outdoor seating area.  The whole setting is really cool, set back in the countryside surrounded by woods.



Overall this was the highlight of any of the brewery visits, and even Jordan got in on the action, having a locally brewed root beer out of one of the tasting glasses once we returned to the Big Truck.

Things got a bit quiet for a while after that, then we decided to listen to the Michigan - Alabama football game.  Unfortunately, the signal wasn't very good, and as far as I know all footage of that game has been completely destroyed. No further comment.

This concludes the entertainment portion of the blog.  Day 13 will cover our return trip home from Cooperstown NY to our house, along with a few nerd stats from the entire vacation.  More to follow...







2012 Big Truck Across the Northeast, Day 11

Day 11 started with a pretty laid back morning, in keeping with the countryside around our park.

Button Bay is a very interesting park - it covers a lot of ground and, and the 2 camping loops feel quite isolated and private.  The setting from the road is also cool, the orignal stone gates create a striking image, as well as a challenge for well meaning RVers such as ourselves.

This trip has offered nothing if not variety, and today would be no different.  We decided to check out the nearby Shelburne Museum.  It is a very odd and interesting collection of structures, art, historical references, etc all locating on a pretty sprawling campus right off the lake.  It's a beautiful setting, and it is striking right off the bat with this classic round barn.

The engineering nerd in me was fascinated by the structural details, especially since this thing had an enormous span and was wide open save for the central column.  Here's how they did it.

I found it to be very impressive, especially give the choice of materials and tools available when these things were built. The others in my party were more interested in getting to the carousel and circus figurine exhibit.

I won't go into detail on every single exhibit we saw, but suffice it to say that we burned through 4 hours very easily, and still missed many things.  Here are a few quick highlights:

In the 50's the museum purchased this huge steamship and relocated it from Lake Champlain to the museum grounds.  I can't imagine that was an easy task.

There were ample opportunities for the whole family to get involved, and nobody likes dressup (well, other than maybe J. Edgar Hoover) more than a 4 year old - more specifically, our 4 year old.

A couple more - they actually moved an entire covered bridge to the museum grounds as well.  This thing was cool, especially this sign.

A couple more nerderies - there was an exhibit on robots, toys, and steampunk artifacts. Yup, as always, huge nerd.  But, I'm writing this, so these are here to stay.

Yes folks, that's pure Mimetic polyalloy staring at you. Come with me if you want to live.

...aaaand of course who wouldn't want to see a steampunk rendition of Vader and Boba Fett. Why?  Why not.

And finally, after a visit to the authentic jailhouse, a sight I hope (If we do our jobs correctly) I never see again in my lifetime...

As we worked our way back to the campsite, we stopped at a couple of the roadside tourist traps to snag some Vermont-y stuff for back home.  While Kimberly took 25 minutes to check out at the Vermont Flannel Co (dude was chatty, but super nice), I snagged a couple of shots of his '49 International, which he had just driven to the DMV to renew the tags a few days before.  Pretty impressive.

Just before we got back to the campground, I convinced the family to stop at the public boat launch for a shameless sunset pic, and also because I had vowed to drive the Jeep on a beach somewhere during this trip.  Well, I got my wish for about 30 seconds, but long enough to capture this.



We were pretty wiped out, but still managed a good campfire and cookout of some good old fashioned Maple-cured chicken sausages from right up the road.  Awesome.

Tomorrow - I'm pretty excited, we visit and tour my favorite brewery in the US, Brewery Ommegang.  Should be pretty cool.  More to follow.