Chestnut Trees, Pretzels, and Solemn Moments

A couple weeks ago we visited Codorus State Park. Codorus is located in Southern York County near Hanover, Pennsylvania. Codorus is a beautiful State Park featuring a fantastic, but busy swimming pool, a large limited horsepower lake with great fishing, and American Chestnut trees.

Yes . . you heard me. Real life American Chestnut trees. I noticed them right away as we drove into the campground. Pete hit the brakes and we stopped and read the sign board about the Chestnut Orchard. The story of the American Chestnut sure is a sad one. It is amazing how many destructive, invasive species have come to the United States on foreign goods. I sure hope nothing rode along with me from the Mercedes Benz plant in Germany. In a nutshell (a bit of a pun there) the American Chestnut was a signature product of the New World when America was discovered. It was used for everything from houses, to furniture to gun stocks and everything in between. The American Chestnut covered over 200 million acres from Maine to Georgia and Westward to the Ohio river valley. In the late 1800s the Chestnut Blight appeared from over seas and by the 1950s every singe American Chestnut had been wiped out.

But there is hope!!!! The blight didn't kill the roots . . only the trees. So every year new Chestnuts spring up, grow for a few years, blight and die. Enter the The American Chestnut Foundation. They are working on a cross-breeding project with the blight resistant Chinese Chestnut that, if successful, will produce a strain of trees that is 15/16ths American Chestnut and 1/16" blight-resistant Chinese Chestnut. A very satisfactory conclusion. It is kind of neat to think that some day an RV much like myself could be crusing down a winding road through a dense and tall stand of American Chestnut trees!. You can help too! The Chestnut orchard at Codorus State Park is maintained in conjunction with The Pennsylvania Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation. You can go to either the State or National link and make a donation. The American Chestnut Foundation even offers The Chestnut Store where you can buy lots of neat stuff and the proceeds benefit The American Chestnut tree! How neat of a present would THAT be for your relatives this holiday season?


Sadly, we haven't learned. While I have a nice dry drawer to carry firewood in, we don't do that any more. There is a new aggressive insect called The Emerald Ash Borer. It is destroying Ash trees across the Northeast. It is beleived to have arrived in the US via wooden shipping crates from China but nobody is really sure. Campers are asked not to carry wood around with them either to or from a campground for fear they will unknowingly carry the little green beetle around with them further spreading it. Pete thinks the cat is out of the bag and that it is probably only a matter of time before the Ash goes the way of the Chestnut but we are doing the right thing any way and not carrying wood around. It would be nice though if the State Parks wouldn't charge a wheel and an axle (or an arm and a leg for you humans) for a few chunks of barely cut green wood that won't burn. That certainly doesn't encourage people to do the right thing.

One of the other features of the Hanover area is the Snyders of Hanover factory. We were at Codorus Park over a weekend but during the week you can apparently get a tour of the factory and see how they make those tasty little baked treats. Pete & Janice didn't get to take the tour and since they don't make diesel pretzels I wasn't really interested, but we did go to the factory store. Pete & Janice got a giant bag full of snacks for under $10.00. They had all sorts of things there including .25 snack bags of pretzels. Pete got a laugh when he went to read the nutrition information and discovered it was in Chinese! I guess that is why they were .25.

There are a bunch of other factories in the area too. Utz Potato Chips is also in Hanover offering a factory store and tours and The Harley Davidson Motorcycle Factory is right up the road in York. That is supposed to be a really good tour. In fact, Saturday night a couple pulled in the site across from us with a Harley Davidson and a little pull-behind pop-up camper they towed with the Harley. It was really neat!

Sunday morning Pete got up and went for a run. He ran quite far as it was a nice morning. He told me a little private story when he got back. Here it is in his words:

"I ran to the main highway, after circumnavigating the campground. At the highway I turned around and decided to follow the track of the cross-country race that the park apparently held the day before. (Lil' Nav's Note: This was actually an annual event held at the park where athletes run, canoe, and bike ride). The race trail led me to a section of road I hadn't walked somewhere down behind the pool. There seem to be a lot of roads and trails at Codorus. While jogging downhill, I saw a road going to my left with a large American Flag guarding either side of the entrance. Then I noticed the little brown sign . . . "Veteran's Memorial". On a whim, I turned left and ran up the hill. I expected perhaps a small plaque along the road with some flowers or something similar. Instead I found a beautiful little chapel-like pavillion with a well maintained wall with many plaques and many names, presumably local veterans who lost their lives fighting for our freedom".

"As I ran by the memorial I could hear kids screaming and laughing at the swimming pool. I could smell bacon cooking over a grill. In the distance I could see the lake with a sailboat and several fishing craft floating in the sun. I thought how lucky I was to live in a country where I could spend my weekend so peacefully. I thought at that moment of the young men fighting and dieing in Iraq, of those that fought in Vietnam (I know many), and in World War II including my own father."

"It struck me then that the first I knew about this memorial was when whatever twist of fate struck and had me turn down the muddy racing track taking me to this back stretch of roadway. Upon check-in you hear about the pool hours, get a marina boat rental price list, directions to the disc golf course, and receive a hiking map and instructions not to feed the birds or animals . . . but no mention of the memorial. However, it was clear the park personnel were proud of it. It was well kept, had a parking lot to itself, and each and every name tag glistened with polish. I wondered how many families throughout the park that weekend would stop what they were doing and take a moment to visit the memorial and remember those lost. At this thought, I turned and ran back toward the memorial. Normally, I don't stop during my run if I can help it . . but that didn't seem so important at the moment. I took the time to read every word and every name tag. Then, not knowing what else to do I stood back, gave the names on the wall a silent salute and returned to my run, vowing to remember that memorial and those names when the Evening News reports the number of troops killed that day in Iraq".

Friends & Relatives

Well, I'll just tell you right up front that there won't be any pictures now or later from this weekend. It appears someone (that would be Pete) forgot the camera.

This weekend we drove to Pennfield, Pennsylvania and went to Parker Dam State Park. In case you don't know where Pennfield is, it is near DuBois, Pa off of interstate I-80 . . . a road Pete vows we will NEVER travel again . . but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We left for Parker Dam on Friday afternoon stopping only for Diesel along the way and made the trip there from Reading in about 4 hours. Other then the inenvitable construction delay on I-80 it was a fairly uneventful trip. Parker Dam State Park was REALLY nice and it was apparent right off the bat that they had done a lot of work recently and that work was continuing. All of the sites were paved and reasonably level. In fact, Janice and Pete walked through and crossed off sites on the map that weren't level. There were far fewer unacceptable sites then good ones. Pete even said most of the "unacceptable" ones would be okay too but there were so many good ones why settle? We camped on site 18 which was easy in and out and right next to the campground host. Parker Dam State Park is one of the few State Park campgrounds that actually includes accurate descriptions of each site on the reservation website.

The history of Parker Dam State Park is kind of neat. The original dam built there was a splash dam built in the late 1800s for logging. Basically water and logs were stockpiled behind the splash dam and then released to be floated down Laurel Run to bigger water and onward to lumber mills far, far away (as far as Baltimore). When you look at Laurel Run, it is a tiny woodland creek that you can hardly imagine could ever have logs floated down it.

Later, a recreational dam was built (and later re-built after storm damage) at the site by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was a product of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal that helped pull the United States out of the Great Depression. There is a CCC museum on-site but it is not currently staffed and the park is looking for volunteers to run it.

The park features some great hiking trails. While Pete did see a couple of deer they certainly were not running rampant around the park. In fact, there were very few tracks. Apparently, members of the nearby Pennsylvania elk herd occasionally wander through as well.

On Saturday we visited with cousins Jane and Jim on their farm near Luthersburg, PA. They are some of the worlds sweetest people and served Janice and Pete lunch and dinner and took them to an open house at Yoder's Amish Furniture. There was some great furniture there for very reasonable prices. The weather was beautiful and they spent a good deal of time enjoying the company, the weather, and the antics of Jack the dog and an un-named farm cat that seemed to relish in harassing each other.

On the way to Jane & Jim's from the campground we did see a BIG bear along route 322 just West of route 153. I think the bear must have regular appearance times because there seemed to be quite a crowd gathered with cameras.

As usual we met some nice people in the campground and enjoyed some pleasant camp fires. As always the weekend was over much too quickly and we headed home. What an ordeal that was. It took nearly 7 hours to get home with traffic. I-80 was at a standstill for miles. Pete said we will do anything we can to ever avoid traveling that road again. When you can move along at 65 mph it is great but then you wind up parked for 2 hours so it may as well be a gravel logging road. And Pennsylvania is talking about putting a toll on it!!!! That would be just wonderful to PAY for driving aggravation!

Next week we are off to another archery shoot with our friends Joe & Anne. Stay tuned! Lil' Nav signing off . . .

A little Field Archery

I think something horrible has happened to Compey the computer. Pete has often threatened physical violence against her because of frequent slowness, updates, patches, and stuff. You would think Pete would've just acknowledged the fact that Windows is slow, awkward and bulky but I'm afraid he may have over-reacted and done something terrible.

But for now the other appliances have convinced the laptop that Compey always let me post to my blog. So . . where did we leave off? Oh yes . . the last thing I told you about was the bears and stupid campers at Hickory Run State Park. The following weekend, June 30th & July 1st, we drove to Cumberland Maryland and went to the Cumberland Bowhunters Hillbilly Field shoot. This has become an annual event that originated as a basic club shoot but has been sort of built up via the internet.

Field archery was developed in the US many years ago to provide great practice for bowhunters. Basically, the archer traverses through the woods and shoots targets of different sizes at varying marked distances from 20 feet to 80 yards with just about all distances in between. There are several variations of the game and the targets used at different shoots. You can read more about field archery on the National Field Archery Association's website.

We dry-camped at the archery club. For those that don't know the lingo dry-camping means we had no hookups for water, or electric. But I had no trouble with that. I can carry 32 gallons of freshwater, 18 gallons of propane for my generator, stove, and refrigerator, and can store plenty of gray & black water. We were only there one night so this was easy! We could have stayed a lot longer.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and setup next to a nice family from Florida. It was their first field shoot. The club created a friendly atmosphere especially among those of us camped on-site. We had so much fun with our campfire and camaraderie I bet a lot more people stay on-site next year.

We stayed overnight Friday night. Pete shot on Saturday. The Cumberland Maryland area is quite nice. Cumberland itself has a refurbished downtown area and every Friday evening they have sidewalk cafes and live music for all to enjoy. From Pennsylvania we elected to drop down Interstate 81 and pickup route 70 & 68 West to Cumberland rather then taking the Pennsylvania turnpike. It was a beautiful ride though there are quite a few hills to climb up and down.

If you aren't interested in archery there is quite a bit of sight seeing that can be done there and also some very nice places to stay. Rocky Gap State Park is nearby and it is where Pete & Janice camped last year with their tent. Rocky Gap has a full-featured campground, swimming lake, fishing, and an 18 hole golf course with resort.

After Pete shot on Saturday afternoon we packed up and headed East to Nottingham County Park in Chester County, Pennsylvania. We wanted to see Freedom Fest 2007 sponsored by Herrs potato chips. They only charge $10.00/car (or RV) and guests are treated to a FANTASTIC fireworks display and live music. The nice parking lot attendant let Pete park me in a great spot and the weather was perfect. We met Mark & Linda Huber and they all said the fireworks were fantastic as usual.

From Nottingham, we went home to Reading arriving around midnight. I'll post pictures at an undetermined time in the future. Don't want to push my luck with the helpful laptop!

Mr. Ranger Sir . . have you seen any picnic baskets?

Boy oh boy . . . this summer is just whipping on by. I'll be winterized before you know it. Pete plugged me in this morning and I checked my blog and discovered I'm way behind.

So lessee, the weekend of June 23rd & 24th we all went camping at Hickory Run State Park in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. It is a beautiful area and it can really be summarized in one word: Bears! Okay . . maybe two a 3 words: Bears! Stupid campers! I know it isn't nice to criticize other people but when you get verbal warnings about the bears and a piece of paper telling you not to leave food, coolers, or anything vaguely food flavored or scented out, in your tent, or otherwise accessible and you do it anyway . . . . well . . . stupid is the only word I can think of. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We headed North from Reading around 6:00pm or so getting off a little later then we intended. But it is only a 90 minute ride or so to Hickory Run from Reading which made it really nice. What a busy campground!! Lots of scouting groups and a fairly big place. Overall really nice though. Pete said he was happy I have bathroom facilities built in because while the campground was nice and well maintained, there was only one bathhouse for two fairly big loops. On the upside, nearly every site in the loop we were in and the adjacent one were paved and relatively level. I had no problem fitting in the site we were on and Pete said he didn't see any sites that would be difficult. Even in other loops the unpaved sites were still pretty level. Some of the sites were a bit narrow with a lot of trees. No problem for us Skinnie Winnies but the guy next to us with a 30' Trailer said backing in was a real challenge. They could probably do some tree trimming.

On another note, there are more electric sites then the campground map shows. If you go through the on-line reservation system just believe what it tells you as to whether a site has electric or not. It is more up-to-date then the campground map. It also appears more electric sites are being added.

Regarding the bears, as I said at check-in the ranger gave us a piece of paper about what to do and not to do so we didn't have unwanted visits from bears. They also gave us verbal instructions. They were very specific: Leave no food or coolers outside at any time. If tent camping, don't have food, shampoo, soap, or anything else remotely food smelling in the tent. Lock it all in the car. The instructions also included what to do and not to lest you run into a bear. Well, this RV wasn't going to let any bear in but you'd think the tent campers would pay better attention. But apparently not. Janice and Pete walked the campground Saturday morning and watched a bear go through a site in the middle of a tent area. He sniffed around the cooler that was sitting outside, licked the grill that was left on the picnic table, and then ran right up the road into the woods amongst a bunch of oblivious campers.

We found out later another camper had decided that his screen room was probably bear proof and left a bag of food in it. Needless to say the bears were not impressed with the screen room and easily trashed it on their way to another easy meal. The rangers came and chased the bear out of the screen room but not before he grabbed a jar of peanut butter and scampered up a tree apparently holding the peanut butter in one paw and climbing with the other 3. He sat in the tree for 45 minutes licking the jar clean. The campers not only had to buy a new screen room but also received a citation from the ranger.

People being irresponsible with their food is a big problem. The bears become acclimated to getting food when around people and lose their fear of them. It gets worse when they figure out they can intimidate people into leaving their food. One bear at Hickory Run has learned to peek in campers and if nobody is home, finds a way in and helps himself. There was a culvert trap setup to try to catch that bear. One young boy asked the ranger where the bear trap was. The ranger's answer was "I'm not going to give you that information".

On Sunday, it got even better. Janice and Pete were walking around the campground and there was a crowd gathered around with a couple of DCNR vehicles. There was another bear. A group of campers left all their food sitting out on the picnic table and the bear had helped himself to a bag of chips. Eventually, he climbed a tree and watched the people. He looked like he was ready for a nap.

The humourous/scary moment of the day was when one group of scouts pulled out and found out there was a bear. One of the adult woman in the group left her car in the middle of the road and grabbed her camera running down to the tree, past the rangers to take a picture. "Oh, there's a Bear . . get the camera quick"! Now, the bear hadn't moved for 45 minutes at this point. However, many people were packing up and heading home and got rather annoyed with the camera lady for blocking the road. But the worst was when one of the scout leaders remarked "I didn't know bears could climb trees". And he is a scout leader!!!!

But enough about bears. On Saturday afternoon we went to the Split Rock wine festival at Split Rock resort. That was kind of neat. There were something like 24 Pennsylvania wineries there as well as crafts, food, and live music. The Split Rock resort area is pretty new. Lots of expensive homes and a private toll road throughout. Janice and Pete were able to park me in a big parking field and take the bus to the festival so parking wasn't an issue at all. Janice and Pete paid the $5.00 non-drinking entry fee. If you wanted to sample wine all day it was $25.00 and you got a "free" wine glass. Janice had a good chocolate chip cookie and Pete had some really good homemade rice pudding. They also bought barbecue sauce and sparkling cider. There were a bunch of crafters selling wine glass holders you wore around your neck. There were all different kinds with different sorts of decorations and made with all different materials. The least expensive ones sold for around $8.00. Pete wondered what on earth you would do with one of those after that day.

On Sunday, Pete was up early and hiked several of the trails within easy reach of the campground. He said the nicest one was the "Shades of Death" trail. Why it has such an eerie name I don't know but Pete said it was a beautiful little trail and just right outside of the camping area. After that, we packed up and headed up a long dusty dirt road to Boulder Field. Boulder Field was a creation of the ice age and is the last remaining such field East of the Mississippi. Pete said the long road up was worth the experience. You wouldn't want to go up there in a Motorhome much bigger then a Skinny Winnie but I was fine.

After that we went and visited some of Janice's old family friends: Marge & Bobby Anthony and their dog Annie who live in White Haven, PA. We had a very pleasant visit including a nice dinner (still sticking with diesel myself). Before we left, a big whitetail doe came in and casually bedded down in the back yard and lay there chewing her cud.

Finally, it was back home to Reading to rest and recharge for the next adventure.

Family Relations

Boy I thought Pete would never plug me back in. He's been one busy guy.

Last weekend we went to a Skinnie Winnie rally at Sampson State Park on Seneca Lake in New York. That was the neatest trip ever! I saw brothers and sisters that I barely remember from the days at the factory in Forest Cit. I saw older cousins that I never met before, and I met a couple veritable newborns that just came off the assembly line. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Friday June 8th, Pete and Janice climbed aboard and we all drove up to Sampson State Park. The drive was good. No real traffic at all. We got there around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. As we were filling up my water tank 5 or 6 more Views & Navions pulled into line behind us. It was very fun to see. But it got waaaay better then that.

We met Kathy & Jerry from Bensalem in the registration office. Janice very much wanted to meet them because she grew up right near Bensalem. They were awesome folks and had a couple of cute dogs too! They were named Toby & Bailey.

We then moved on to our site. It was plenty level enough for me and I tried to tell Pete that but he said that with he wanted the levels to show level with this audience! We also had a shade tree which was nice. The electrical boxes were quite far from the pads but the rangers had assured everyone that they could park wherever they needed to as long as the trees were unharmed. But Pete had a long 30 amp extension cord so we were good! It was hot on Friday so I cranked my air conditioner up and cooled us all down.

Janice & Pete went right to the Friday meet & greet. There was plenty of food, and name tags, and everything! Above all there were LOTS of great people. It got pretty stormy and there were rumors of golf ball sized hail which sounded a bit scary to me but that never happened. It did pitter patter rain most of the night. The meet & greet adjourned to a covered building but everyone kind of turned in early after a long day.

Saturday morning there was a whole lot of RV touring going on. Doug from NJ blew a turbo resonator on the way to the rally and got up early to replace it. He grabbed a wrench, opened the hood and Pete said it was like sounding a dinner bell at a weight watchers convention. Suddenly he had an audience!

Pete went for a run and said the park was beautiful. When he came back, he & Janice went motorhome touring and then went to the mechanical overview at Doug's RV. Pete learned about the oil & fuel filters, fuel/water separator, ECU . . a bunch of stuff. The agenda then brought them to our site. "Uh Oh", I thought, "What is going on"? Turns out Pete had bought me a brand new, shiny, aluminum turbo resonator eliminator. He and Leo from Florida installed it. Now I should never have to worry about resonator issues.

After the mechanical event we all fired up our MB diesels and headed to Ginny Lee's restaurant at Wagner Vineyards. The neat caravan was one thing . . but we really took over the parking lot when we got there. Janice & Pete said lunch was excellent.

After lunch it was back to Sampson. Some folks went wine tasting but Janice & Pete aren't big wine drinkers and decided to pass. I still prefer a good diesel! There was no shortage of "stuff" to see on other people's coaches and "yours truly" even got showed off a bit. I think Pete got some ideas to make RVing a bit easier for us all. The day FLEW by though.

One highlight was an impromptu convection oven cooking class taught by Suzanne Hoffmann. There were 13 people stuffed into the Hoffman's 23B! I can't wait for Janice & Pete to Convect something. The cooking lesson was followed by dinner & and campfire. We had a lot of folks at the fire and we made S'mores and told camping stories. It was great! It was sad when it was time to go to bed.

Sunday morning Pete & Leo swapped a couple more turbo resonators for folks. The first one was Magereta. Margareta is a very sweet German woman who travels with her companion Argo. Argo is one of the best dogs I've ever seen. Margereta gave Pete & Leo each a bottle of Chinese German beer. I chilled it down for Pete but he hasn't tried it yet. After Margereta's coach they did one more TR and then it was time to head for brunch.

The most fun part of brunch was the big long line of Views and Navions in the parking lot. Sadly, brunch was over all too quickly and we had to be on our way. I can't wait to do it again next year!

For more pictures you can see Pete's slideshow from the rally. 2007 Skinnie Winnie Rally

My first couple months of adventuress

Pete put together a slide show featuring my first few months adventures. Check it out! It's awesome. The adventures of Lil' Nav

French Creek With Friends & Birds

Now that camping season is here things are really getting fast and furious. I haven't even been plugged in long enough to update my blog! But with a little help from Compey the computer I'll see if i can bring you up to date on the latest happenings.

Lesseee . . . May 18th we headed back to my first campground (and my first campsite) all of 20 minutes from home at French Creek State Park. Oddly, it took us a long time to get there this time because Janice got hung up in traffic coming home. It took the poor woman an hour and a quarter to go 6 miles! Ugh! Then the same traffic affected us getting to French Creek State Park. What should have been 20 minutes took 45. But finally we were settled into our campsite around 7:00pm.

Pete's long-time hunting buddy Joe and his lovely family Anne (wife), Tori and Eric (ages almost-13 and 10) showed up with their pop-up. It was kind of a lonely weekend for me because everyone spent most of the weekend on the other site but that's okay. Camping is supposed to be all about family, friends, and fun. From the bits and pieces of coversation I got, Pete & Janice learned all about mountain pies and apparently we will be getting a mountain pie maker. They also played disc golf.

Pete taught Anne a lot about birds too. I sometimes don't like what the birds do on my roof but Pete had a lot of fun birding. There was a pretty serious migration occurring and all he had to do was step out the door with his binoculars and coffee and look and listen. From what I can tell he identified a pretty good list: Black-throated Blue Warblers, Blac-throated green warblers, Hooded warblers, Black & White warblers, tons of Red-Eyed Vireos and Towhees, Acadian Flycatchers, Ovenbirds, Yellow-Throated Vireos . . . and a whole bunch more. I have to admit they were very colorful (especially the Indigo Buntings and the Scarlet Tanager), and their songs were lovely!

I agree with Janice though . . the weekends go much too fast! Fortunately, the drive home was not a long one. Pete must have been too busy to take pictures that weekend.