CT - Mystic KOA

With Theo playing football, we aren't getting the fall camping in like we used to...but we found time for a final hurrah after a broken shoulder in the second to last game of the season.  Even with a broken shoulder, Theo and his friend Charlie took almost full advantage of all of the fun at the KOA.

This was shot right after we caught him bouncing on the big bouncing pillow...ugh!

Though the magic of Uber we hit Mystic Pizza II!

MA - Normandy Farms Campground

A regional favorite for fancy camping - Normandy Farms!  Tons of activities for everyone, so we literally only saw Theo and his friend Charlie at meal times.

A campfire and a glass of wine are always a good pairing!

One of the games was held in the field adjacent to our site, so we did catch a glimpse of them: 

And the dog park here is great for the other boys:

Even a little sprinkler feature that Daniel was brave enough to try (Kansas steered clear of that thing!)

Chilling at the site :)

We did do a little recon work and found the boys a couple of times: darts and candy bar bingo!  (I made them share!!!)

VT - Winhall Brook Campground

This is a beautiful Corps of Engineers campground, with several sites right along the brook.  There is a small swimming area and we tubed down the little rapids and had a ball with it!

The ranger station is really nice and has some nice wildlife mounts to look at and some furniture for relaxing.  We didn't get cell service at our site, so it was nice to have a place to sit and check email and voicemail (I know, I know, but we were in the middle of home buying and selling at the time...plus checking the weather every so often is always a good thing!)

They have a great playfield here with a playscape, sand volleyball, and horseshoes. 

We also hiked a small route around the park, but no good pics.  What we didn't take advantage of was the proximity to a rail trail that apparently goes both directions - next time!

MA – MassGathering in the Berkshires

Time for a girls weekend in the Berkshires!  It was a warm and steamy weekend, but we made the most of it.  Having the genny and A/C was awesome, and a real treat after the half marathon we ran.  The festival was held at Ski Butternut and there were quite a few good local/regional bands.  The headliner was the Gin Blossoms, but sadly a string of thunderstorms and flash flood warnings forced us to head for home before they took the stage.  Maybe next year!

NJ – Tall Timbers

This place isn’t really a campground and is 95% ownership lots/sites with trailers and park models that are semi-permanent…but it was the closest place to stay overnight for the NY Warrior Dash mud/obstacle race that we ran.  Plus, it allowed us to finally put on our New Jersey sticker!  The people here that we talked to were all very friendly, and the management office has at least one site that they allow transient nightly rentals on, so that’s what we did.

The race itself was great!  They just relaxed their age minimum to 12, so Theo was able to do it!  No more mamby-pamby kids races for him!

A Gash and a Fix!

Now that she's all fixed up and back at home, I'm ready to post about the gash I put into the side of the Winnie at the end of our one and only fall trip a couple of months ago.

If you read my post about Wilderness Lake Campground, you may have wondered what I was hinting at when I mentioned the small circular loop driveway that their dump station is on.

Well...here's what happened: Kevin and Theo had gone off to drop T off for football so the dogs and I said we'd meet at home after I did a quick dump and rinsing of the tanks.  Dump and rinse was done and I was navigating the rest of the curve, being careful about the right side berm and trees...but not being mindful of the GIANT CONCRETE DRAIN PIPE THING on the left side.  I didn't take a photo when I was hung up on it, but once I got it backed off of the thing I snapped a couple:

So in a showdown between concrete and fiberglass, it turns out that the concrete WINS. EVERY. TIME.

A few more pics of the damage, once the hanging hunk fell off: 

We have Progressive coverage on the Winnie, and I have to say they were wonderful.  From the claim intake person being compassionate and saying kind things and not making me feel completely stupid, to the inspecting adjuster telling me that as bad as I think it looked it really wasn't that bad. Flo's team did not disappoint!

Progressive provided us a list of shops in our area as suggestions, but it was ultimately our choice where to go.  Since we had good results from Arlington RV (the dealership we bought her from) when we had them do some body work on the Winnie before we took delivery, we turned to them for the work.  We worked with Vince, and he was fantastic keeping us apprised of the progress.  The thing that took the longest was the backordered storage hatch door from Winnebago, but it finally arrived and she's good as new now!  Phew!

CT - Wilderness Lake Campground

Since Theo is playing football this fall we really haven't been able to get out now that the Winnie is back at home, but desperate to get out at least once more I decided to book a campground that is only about 20 miles from home.  This campground is a lovely property and has really nice folks running the place, but we all agreed that it would be more of a gem if the sites were thinned out and not so close to one another...it wasn't really the closeness that was weird, but the irregularity of the sites - tough to know where ours ended and the next one began as we weren't really lined up..to the point where I wasn't sure which fire ring was ours (turned out that ours was the one that was literally 3 feet away from the neighbor's RV but the friendly staff guy moved it for us to a much better spot away from their RV).

We were in site 25.

Another thing to note about this place is that I'd say a good 80% are seasonal sites, the people we talked to were all very nice, but I have to be honest - when I see RVs sitting still I feel bad for them not out having adventures with their people.  Just my humble opinion.

We were in view of the little lake, which was lovely!  There was a tent site in front of ours, but being a chilly weekend there were no tenters braving it, so we could traipse through the site without worries.

Theo caught a little sunny right off the bat: 

And he built me a nice fire (Kevin had a work function, so he joined us later in the evening)

More fishing and chilling and fire building:

And also some gorgeous running weather and terrain (hilly!), but no pics from that :)

Another thing to note about this place - the sites are water and electric only.  The dump station is a tiny little loop that a big rig or even a somewhat large rig would never make it through (more on that in a different post in the future.)  Since so many sites are seasonal they offer a pump service that any rig of size would have to utilize...or go 20 minutes into East Hartford and hit Cabela's dump station (now $5, but would have been worth it!)