To the Forests of New York

I had not calculated how far the drive was between Cherry Hill and the new campground in New York. I thought I'd looked it up and it was about 3 hours, but last night, knowing specifically where we are staying now, Brock mapped it out and it turned out to be closer to 6 hours. We routed ourselves a little out of the way through Pennsylvania to avoid several congested metropolitan areas. We decided to try to leave as early as we could this morning. That turned out to be about 10:40 am. It was already about 90 degrees at that time with about 75% humidity. Brock had all the outside jobs to do to get the trailer ready to go. We decided we do NOT like this humidity. It was miserable. Brock had to change his shirt before we could get on the road and I wasn't smelling too fresh and had to re-apply my deodorant before setting off.

The drive wasn't too bad. There was only one spot where the drivers really infuriated Brock and whipped around and wouldn't let him in and we missed our exit. Thankfully we had Tom to recalculate a couple of times until we could get reoriented on the correct route. After that, it was a fairly uneventful drive and not too busy. The roads were not in the best condition we've seen, but they weren't in the worst either.

We stopped at a Pennsylvania rest stop about half way and ate lunch. Then, about 30 minutes later we stopped for gas. Those were our only stops.

The states of Pennsylvania and New York are really pretty, very green and forested.

We arrived at the NYC North/Newburgh KOA at about 5:30. It is situated in a very pretty rural area. The campground is fairly full and seems busy, but has lots of trees and flowers and green. We got all checked in and I picked up our package at the office containing our new hub cap for the Yukon. How was that for quick shipping? :O) We got parked and set up in our site. We met our nice neighbors who came out and greeted us and introduced themselves while we were backing in and one helped me move the picnic table to a better location in the site.

Our energy was really sapped from the heat and the drive and I really felt like a lump for a little while this evening. I made a conscious effort to go out for a walk with Bryn and Sky who were taking Heidi to the Dog Park here. We hadn't been in the park for more than two minutes when Heidi lifted up the chain link and snuck out. She was off like a shot ignoring our calls to her for a couple of minutes and charging into the thick forest at the edge. We could hear her crashing around, but she wouldn't come when we called her and then, she did. She was filthy with mud so we came back to the trailer and I got to give her a bath in the bathtub. That wouldn't be my first choice for a hot steamy evening, but thankfully, we hadn't turned the hot water heater on and so she got a nice refreshingly cool shower/bath. It was about time for one anyway and she smells better than she did. Sadly, she won't get to run loose in Central Bark dog park anymore. I plan to let the office know that they might want to secure the bottom of the fence at least in that spot and possibly others.

We ate a snacky dinner as it was just too hot to even want to eat anything, let alone cook anything.

After the little boys went to bed, Brock and I and the older kids watched Lincoln together. We'd been wanting to for a long while and we picked it up a couple nights ago, but with being so tired from our excursions into DC, this will be the first time we've kept a Redbox movie for 3 nights! We all enjoyed the movie and I think it complemented our recent experiences very well.

Brock took Heidi out for her last potty break right after the movie and came back in saying that there are fireflies here too and how the trees looked all sparkly with them and all the stars were out. This is not what we expected when we pictured camping only 90 minutes outside New York City, but we are grateful to be here. We booked our reservations for a full day city tour on Monday and so we'll see what the immediate area has to offer between now and then.