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!

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!)

The Winnie Has a Summer Job

So, why no blog posts since April?  That's because the Winnie has a summer job this year - campground hosting at West Thompson Corps of Engineers campground in CT.

So, as bad luck would have it, my parents were on their way up from Florida to host again this summer and were about an hour away from Thompson when they were in a fender bender on the highway.  Luckily traffic was moving slowly and nobody was hurt, but their Fleetwood Bounder got crunched and will be in the shop for at least a few months.

Since we had a pretty light spring and early summer camping season scheduled it was kind of a no-brainer to cancel the handful of reservations offer the Winnie to salvage their summer and allow them to fulfill their summer commitment.

So the Winnie is full-timing it as a host, with the bonus of having a certified RV tech living in her (my dad).  He's doing a few mods and upgrades for us in his down time! :)  Plus,we're finally getting to some much-needed garage and basement cleaning at home that has been too convenient to put off by heading out of town!

TN - Up the Creek RV Camp: Pigeon Forge and Great Smoky Mountains

Up the Creek is a great little campground in Pigeon Forge!  Off of the main drag, so it was nice and quiet and plenty of elbow room between the sites.  Very clean and well kept as well.  No bathhouse, so you have to be a full-up self contained RV and not tenting, and no pool or game room or anything, but nice and laid back.  We were in site #1:

It was rainy and overcast for most of our stay, but we still enjoyed the area very much.  It was so beautiful!

No luck seeing anything from Clingman's Dome, but it was cool nonetheless: 

We enjoyed driving Newfound Gap Road and stopping a few places to get out and explore: 

(I love when Google enhances the photos and makes them look cool!)

We saw a whole gaggle of Minis drive by us, like well over 20 of them in succession - very cool!

We also did a hike to the Chimney Tops, quite an ascent!  

 

The only critters we saw were centipedes, which were pretty cool.  

We also heard a Ruffed Grouse doing a wing thumping mating call, that was a mystery until we got home and Kevin happened to mention it to a birder friend!

Since it was rainy and wet and presumably pretty dangerous, Theo and I stopped short of the final peak (much to his chagrin...he didn't speak to me the whole 2 mile hike back to the car).  Kevin went a little further, but not much.  He snapped some great pics, though!

The peak at a distance: 

The view from nearly the top: 

We also did some touristy things like go karts, laser tag, glow in the dark mini golf, and the Hatfield & McCoy Dinner show, and a magic show - fun stuff and it made Theo happy since he doesn't love hiking as much as Kevin and I do...we all got a chance to choose our activities, plenty to choose from in this area!