just a ducky small town

A perfect small town America scenario.  A cool (60 ish degree) Sunday after what seemed like weeks of rain.  The community gathers to let the ducks out - at the Duck Race - an annual event here in New Boston, NH.  Until "researching" links for this post I had no idea what exactly the event was about other than a couple thousand rubber ducks (as many of you know, since Rick and I were married on a "Duck Boat" in Boston, I have a love of all things yellow duck like!).  I digress ... the duck race in New Boston is actually a benefit sponsored by the Community Church there in memory of a young man who passed away a few years ago - what a wonderful way to remember him.

Not only is the event about the ducks, it is about a community coming together 

with thousands of ducks in the bucket of a bucket loader

and precious Princess' sitting on the edge of said bucket

as well as face painting

and games for small children

including a fishing derby (her first I'm sure) oh T-T those aren't fish she is fishing for, they are, of course, ducks!  Silly T-T!

and finally it's time - the big event .... the bucket loader of ducks is on their way, with Police escort, mind you, to be put in the river about a mile down the road for their race!

 about 15 or 20 minutes later the first of them round the bend in the river

some get caught on the curves (yes, after the race is completed, someone comes along and gathers all those that made stops along the way!!)

Some travel in large groups ...

After the race is completed and the winners are announce and the prizes awarded, the booths packed up, the ducks bagged up and put away for next year, it is time to go to the playground

and practice climbing

and seeing if the old folks still know how to have fun on the big kid swings!  Yes, we still know how!

Now, since I have been so, shall we say lax about blogging .... here is a brief update.

We arrived at our volunteer position here at the Quechee State Park on May 23 and have been trying to adjust to it - not a difficult adjustment but an adjustment, the worst of which is that we have to "work" every weekend (not so good, in fact not good at all - we'd much rather be with our families when they are off for the weekend ...)

stay tuned for pictures and details of this chapter in our lives ...

trying to settle in

I will I will I will do a post soon - I PROMISE.  I loaded pictures some days ago and just haven't gotten to the text.

We are (well I am trying, Rick seems to be able to more easily) settling in to our volunteer/host position.

Be assured we are alive and well (and Marsha, we are no longer in Africa without electricity).

crazy, crazier, craziest

Yeah yeah yeah ... these pictures have been loaded waiting for accompanying text for nearly a month I'd guess!

I'd planned on adding a couple of  Easter festivities of grandchildren Connor (in NC) and Paige (aka Princess Muffin in NH) but didn't have the photos in jpeg and they were very poor quality so only Princess Muffin in the Easter bonnet she created and that won her the blue bunny she is hugging in the photo below.  She won for her age group in the local make your Easter bonnet contest!

We'd been in MA for five weeks (we left there a week ago today and have been in NH).  Most of the MA time was insanely crazy - with doctors appointments and meeting up with old friends and and family.  If nothing else, we did get a great deal accomplished and King Richard is waiting for his vision to complete the healing process from his two cataract surgeries that were done while we were in MA!  Amazing how "easy" and quick those surgeries were!  I am fairly certain that Sir Arlo constantly at his side helped as well in the recovery!

The weather for the most part of the last month and a half has been cold and rainy, and continues to be such.  Fortunately it was a gorgeous, perfect for running a half marathon day on May 1 when Chad ran in the Providence Marathon with Dreamfar (please note at the bottom of that website who designed and created it!) ~ the group he's been "mentoring" with.  One of the "kids" from Dreamfar is in the orange tank top just behind and to the right of him in the photo below.

Providence has always been one of my favorite small cities, and it was especially so on such a beautiful early spring day.  We used to enjoy going down for their Water Fires a couple times a summer and spending the weekend at a Marriott property overlooking the river.

The photo below shows the hurricane barriers along the Providence River in the "Fox Point" section of the city.

We will be leaving NH on Monday heading to VT to start our five month (oh dear five months) volunteer stint with the Vermont State Parks!

Stay tuned ...

Happy Birthday to ...

Himself ... Camelot's Sir Arlo.  He will be six years old on Wednesday April 27.  

As much work as he is, he is equally as much fun ... 

And he sure loves to swim and play in the water, be it an ocean, lake, pond or puddle!

or romping in the desert

or just chillin' while enjoying the surroundings

or trying to figure out just how he got that "pollen face"

it is a tough life but some one's got to do it ... unfortunately he has no clue how lucky he is!

Oh my, what a handsome boy he is

a photo of the birthday cookie (one of them) he enjoyed last year in NC

well he enjoyed it after staring at it for a few minutes while trying to figure out what it was he was suppose to do with it (he isn't a bit fan of cookies)

Happy Birthday Sir

Rich rich Richmond

After we left New Bern, NC we headed to the Richmond, VA area where we stayed at a great lodge in Glen Allen.  Glen Allen is about a 10-15 minute ride into what I believe is the "downtown" area of Richmond.

The area of the Lodge property that had electric and water hook ups was outstanding and we had it to ourselves most of the week and a half we were there ~ Arlo was delighted to say the least!  Yup, we were too, as well as delighted that the Lodge was full of fun and friendly people ... too much fun and friendly on a couple occasions!

We headed into Richmond a couple times.  One warm and sunny afternoon and one evening for dinner.  Downtown Richmond has a river running through it (that would be the James River, I believe).  We've been to several "river walks" over the last six or so months (San Antonio being my favorite by far).  Richmond's seems to be a work in progress and at its beginning stages as there were many vacant "store fronts" and/or restaurant areas available for rent.  Hopefully within a few years it will be well on its way to be a close second to San Antonio!

As I've said many times before, history just "isn't my thing" but this may be another case in point where I'm mellowing a bit ... check out the lovely brick street in the photo below.  

As well as this interesting shot of raised rails running through/along the river walk area (perhaps an example of why I say it is a work in progress?)

The Poe Museum (no we didn't go in) ... so I can't critique it!!

Below is a photo of Richmond's Main Street Station which really intrigued me.  What a beautiful old building, inside and out with such a history.  Built in 1901 it has survived fires and floods.  I had two very informative booklets I picked up while we were there, but darned if I can find them now that I am finally (yeah) doing this post.  The link I've added here has a bit of that information as well as a nice photo taken in 1971 showing the tracks going into the station - looks much nicer back then than it does now ... now there are many over passes and not such great views of a beautiful old building!  Foolishly, I didn't take any photos inside the building - DAH, what was I thinking?

Sadly, much of Richmond's history is based on the slave trade.  As I felt when we were in Charleston, SC a year or so ago, the horrors man kind subjects on another to just baffles me.

So we left this very interesting area on April 9th and spent that night in a service area on the NJ Turnpike.  I have been strongly opposed to rest area/service area stops since we hit the road three and a half years ago.  If Sir Arlo wasn't with us I wouldn't care at all where we stopped, but I have huge issues walking Arlo in the morning in rest areas.  This stop along the NJ Turnpike however was really a good stop (especially since we were pushing the envelope on a travel days maximum mileage and there were NO campgrounds for miles and miles and miles). 

We arrived in Middleboro, MA (our old "stomping grounds") on April 10th and will be here until May 13.  We've had many doctors appointment etc. in the time we've been here, as well as seen family and many friends.  The weather, however, has been less than delightful -  we went to New Hampshire to visit Pat Beth and Princess Paige and spent the night, waking up to snow on Saturday morning!

That's all for now ... gonna do a quick spell check, but no proof reading, I'm beat and headed to bed.

Hope everyone enjoys a delightful Easter with loved ones.

Stay tuned ...

fun fun fun in NC

Yes Chester, the big peach was getting a bit old huh!  It's only been two weeks since a new post  -- what's the problem?

After we left Gaffney, SC (the previous blog post) we headed to my son Joshua and his family in New Bern, NC.  We stopped along the way and spent a night at a Moose Lodge in Selma, NC just down the road from Rick's favorite cigar source (JR Cigars), so of course we had to spend some time there to stock his humidor!  Not only do they have a HUGE humidor (that smells awesome), they also sell assorted "junk" that you had NO idea you wanted or needed!  This time it was a good source for "tacky" flip flops for yours truly, the tackier the better!

While we were in New Bern we took a "field trip" one day to Oriental, NC, a tiny fishing town.  Unfortunately there were no restaurants open in town (I think the town has three) the day we were there, but Sir sure had fun playing on the dock and at the boat ramp at a nice little park we found.  Then we took the ferry (free ferry fun by the NC DOT) from Minnesott Beach to Cherry Branch, crossing the Neuse River.  We visited, sort of, the Elks Lodge in Morehead City, but after 15 minutes of waiting we couldn't get the bartender to acknowledge our existence, so we said the heck with it and left.  I did pick up a couple books from their book swap, so it certainly wasn't a bad stop in spite of lack of service.

Another day we had "the kids" over to the coach for dinner.  It sure was enjoyable to watch Connor do his homework.  I was shocked at the amount of homework required nightly in kindergarten these day!  It was about  1/2 an hours worth and that didn't include the required "journal entry", which was going to be done when he got home!  I will say that it was much easier and much much more enjoyable to watch a grandson do homework than it ever was to watch his father or his uncle "do" homework!  Ahhh one of the many joys of grand parenting!

After homework, Connor and Grammie (yours truly) played hide the toy (which was a stuffed animal that Connor brought with him).  It was a whole lot of fun, with Connor telling Grammie if she was "hot" or "cold" (far from or close to) said toy.  At one point he told me I was with the penguins I was so cold!  

It was absolutely delightful to see how Connor has grown and "matured" over the last few months.  He had gone through a very difficult time with my daughter in law (Trisha) when Joshua was in Yuma for some training a few months ago and was not particularly good for his mom!  Joshua had told me that Connor's behavior greatly improved when they switched one of his asthma medications.  

Obviously, from the photo above, Sir Arlo enjoyed having Connor visit as well!  We took Sir to the kids house one night and he played so well with their ten (or so) month old pup - "Bowser".

We stayed at a wonderful KOA in New Bern located right on the Neuse River.   Unfortunately, the weather was horrible while we were there - cold and rainy all but one of the days.

After we left there we headed to the Richmond, VA area.

Stay tuned .....

just peachy

Yup, we were back in Gaffney, SC last week for our chassis maintenance (every 15,000 miles or so).  I believe this recent stop was our fourth at the Freightliner facility.  Our maintenance can take four hours or an entire day, fortunately there's only been one visit that was eight hours.  We've always been at a loss to find much to do in the area that we can include Sir Arlo in so we usually go to a state park or something.  

We were so pleasantly surprised with changes we saw in Gaffney.  We'd always thought of it as a rather depressed little town (with a per capita income in the range of $18,000 I'd say our thoughts were correct).  There has been a lot of new retail development in town since we were there a year or so ago.

We did some "tourist" things this time we were there, one of which was to visit the "Michael Gaffney House".  What an interesting history this little building has!  Michael Gaffney came to the US from Ireland in the late 1700's and eventually settled in what is now his namesake town.  This recreation of his home does have 27 (I believe, but the brochure is still in the car!) boards from the original home which was vandalized and burnt.

After visiting the Gaffney home we went to the Possum Trot School built in 1880.  Apparently the restoration was an Eagle Scout project and what a great job they did.

After leaving Gaffney we spent a night at the Moose Lodge in Selma, NC then came to New Bern, NC to spend some time with Joshua, Trisha and Connor.  

We are leaving New Bern in an hour or so and heading to VA for a couple nights then on to snow covered MA.  We finally got doctor and surgery appointments scheduled on Monday, as well as getting our campground booked (that turned into quite an ordeal, but with the help of a very accommodating KOA employee it finally worked out).  It has been cold, rainy and windy all week here in New Bern so of course, as we are about to leave the sun is shining in my eyes!  We met with a realtor in the area yesterday to look at a property Rick had discovered ... nothing will come of that one for us but we shall see what develops down the road as the realtor has been sending me more listings!

Stay tuned ...