As we begin our third year of full timing

We began our third year, back where we started in New Jersey, except this time we tried another campground in Jackson, Butterfly Camping Resort (click link for our review).

We had a great time visiting with family and friends, and I realized after we got to where we are now, that I didn’t take one photograph while we were there. I will have to set a reminder for next year when we return.

Our two-week visit started off with dinner with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew at a local diner in Manalapan.  It was great catching up on what has been going on this past year and telling them about our adventures in Arizona and Utah.

The next evening, we met Jenna and Emily for a Portuguese dinner in the Ironbound Section of Newark. It was an awesome dinner, and a great time with them both. We can’t wait to see them when they come down to visit us in Florida.

The following day we met our dear friends, Jim and Kim, for lunch at the Plumstead Grill and then went back to Butterfly and sat around picnic table and had a few beers.

It was a great weekend seeing everyone and the rest of the week was basically work and normal life chores. But before leaving the area, our nephew stopped by on Friday after work for happy hour.

Before leaving, I updated our “string” travel map (See featured image above) The yellow line is our first year of travels, and the fluorescent pink is year two.

It seems that we always have problems when leaving New Jersey. Last year the toll plaza at the Delaware Memorial Bridge decided to take off the passenger mirror. This year, the weather wasn’t cooperating, and we have rain showers most of the way on the Blue Route in Pennsylvania. No damage from it, but it was just a pain in the neck traveling. Especailly the last five miles on extremely tight, hilly, back roads. We finally we arrived at our first destination, Lakeside Campground in Windsor New York, as they were having their end of season cookout. 

We found our way to our site, # 27, and began to connect up when I learned that there was no power on Leg 2 of the pedestal and the progressive EMS would not allow power into the coach. I went back to the office to let them know and was told someone would come over and take a look. The gentlemen showed up about 10 minutes later, and after I explained the situation, wanted to know what the black box (my progressive industries EMS) was since he’s never seen one of those before. He said they never had any issues with the electric here and was wondering if it could be the EMS. Well, I said, it could be, but I have another one which is brand new in the box never been opened, so let’s give it a try. We did and after two minutes (self-test time) the EMS popped off with the same error message as before.  So after a few minutes of testing with his multi-meter, he decided that the breaker was indeed bad, and now had to go find a replacement. 

We sat around the picnic table listening to the band playing across the lake and realized that we had no cell service. Rut Row, Houston we have a problem. No cell service means no WIFI. No WIFI means no work. Hopefully when he returns, and we get the power on I can start up the cell booster and we get some service. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as we hoped. The power was restored, and I started up the booster and only got one bar while I was standing next to the antenna. When I moved three feet away, I was back to no service. Surprisingly, we did have satellite TV even though we were surrounded by trees. And the campground WIFI was strong enough to check emails and do a little web surfing to look for somewhere else to stay the week.

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About five miles east of Lakeside there is another campground right on the Susquehanna River called Pine Crest Campground. We drove over on Sunday morning and as we entered the park, we immediately looked at our phones and we had two bars of service. Awesome!  We called the office to find out what they had available and the owner came down and showed us a few sites that were open. After selecting site # 26, we returned to Lakeside, broke camp, and moved on over. Of course, the owner of Lakeside wasn’t happy he was losing us, his words, but he wasn’t too sad since he didn’t offer to return the money we spent for the week.

But in the end, it was worth moving since when I turned on the cell booster, our service went from two bars to four bars, and has been solid ever since.

But that’s one of the perks of full timing, if you’re staying somewhere that doesn’t work out, just put the key in the ignition and point yourself in a direction that does.

Saturday we’ll leave and head further north to take part in the Newmar Kountry Klub Full Timers Fall Rally in Alexandria Bay New York. This will be the farthest we’ve traveled north since hitting the road and should be a great time with the other club members. 

Until next time,