The Colchester Causeway - A Rail Trail with Magnificent Views in Every Direction

When Alan and I were in Burlington, Vermont, nearly three years ago, one of the activities we enjoyed was biking the Burlington Greenway.  The Greenway is the City of Burlington’s portion of the 13.4 mile Island Line Rail Trail.  We began at North Beach Park which, if I remember correctly, is roughly in the middle of the Greenway.  We continued north until the Greenway transitioned into the Colchester Bike Path and Causeway.  At the time, we were just interested in the Burlington Greenway BUT, if I had only plunged a little bit deeper into my research, I would have discovered that the Causeway is actually the highlight of the Island Line Rail Trail.

Lake Time!

Yet another housekeeping update (so sorry!):  Anyone who subscribes to posts via email may have received two emails for the most recent post I published.  I had transitioned to FollowIt for email subscriptions, but Feedburner has continued to deliver posts even though Google indicated that it would stop doing that in July.  Now, they say August.  I wish they had just announced a specific date and stuck with it.  Since I don’t want all of you to continue receiving two email notifications for each new post, I deleted my Feedburner option.  You should receive notifications only via FollowIt from now on.  I do empathize with those of you who preferred the format of the Feedburner email notifications.  Truthfully, I much preferred the Feedburner format, too, since it allowed you to read a little bit of the post and decide whether or not you wanted to continue on to the blog for the rest of it.  However, FollowIt’s only options are (1) title only (which is how you received the last post) or (2) the entire article (which is how you should have received this one, assuming I made the correct adjustments).  Even though you may receive the complete text of the post, you’ll still need to click through to view the photos or access other features of the blog.  I know it’s not perfect, but it is what it is.  My apologies to all for the annoyance this transition may have caused.  If you’re not annoyed by this, no worries.  I’m annoyed enough for all of us.  Now, on to the good stuff.  Or, at least, the better than this stuff . . .

Didja miss me?  Our family just recently returned from our annual camping expedition to Northampton Beach Campground on Great Lake Sacandaga in central New York.  I know you’re probably tired of me talking about “the lake” as it’s known in our family but, well, I just can’t help myself.  Not only is the lake, itself, gorgeous, but the campground is full of large and beautifully wooded sites.  Our trip this year, though, was a little bittersweet because it was the first year in the thirteen we’ve been making a pilgrimage to Sacandaga that one of our kids didn’t make it at all.  As a result, I spent quite a bit of time this year reflecting on our experiences at Great Lake Sacandaga and the family memories we’ve collected over the years.  So, this post really is more about matters of the heart, than an actual documentation of our camping trip.  The photos included in the post span several years' worth of visits.

Seven Points about Seven Points - Raystown Lake, Pennsylvania

A quick housekeeping update:  Subsequent to my transition from Feedburner to Follow.It for your email subscriptions, there was a bit of difficulty with several of your email addresses.  The folks that staff the Help Desk at Follow.It were extremely courteous, professional and, well, helpful.  I believe that the glitch has been corrected, but I’ll be following up with the individuals affected to be sure that new posts are being delivered to their Inboxes.  I would ask all of you who subscribe via email to please pass along any feedback you wish and, of course, let me know if you run into any trouble on your end.  I believe all is well at this point, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way.

Also, please note that, despite my best efforts to determine the reason, John Hinton’s blog, "On the Road of Retirement," is no longer updating.  It stopped updating before I transitioned to Follow.It, so I don’t think I lost him there, and I’ve deleted the blog and added it back but, still, no dice.  Be assured that John is actively writing; he and his wife, Sharon, are in New Mexico as I draft this post.  Last item . . . Although Bob Lowery is no longer publishing new posts on his "Satisfying Retirement" blog, you can still access a wonderful list of mostly retirement-related blogs from his site.   So, even though publication has ceased, I'm leaving "Satisfying Retirement" on my blog roll for your (and my) reading pleasure.  Now, on to today’s post . . .

According to HuntingdonCountyHistory.com, “Raystown Lake is a reservoir in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. It is the largest lake that is entirely within Pennsylvania. The original lake was built by the Simpson family of Huntingdon as a hydroelectric project. The current 8,300-acre Raystown Lake was completed in 1973 by the Army Corps of Engineers.  Raystown is around 200 feet deep in the deepest area near the dam. The lake was created primarily to control floods, provide electricity, and support recreational activities.”

Friends told us about Raystown Lake years and years ago.  They said it was our kind of place.  Unfortunately, it’s just far enough from home that it wasn’t really feasible for a weekend jaunt while we were working.  Since Alan and I escaped from the workforce, we’ve had so many other destinations on our travel list, the lake never quite worked its way into priority status.  That changed this spring when cabin fever reared its ugly head.  I was poking around trying to find the perfect spot for a quick getaway that one of us desperately needed.  (Yeah, okay, that would be me.)  I thought of Raystown Lake and Seven Points Campground, the Army Corps of Engineers facility located directly on the lake.

I Never Did Like Housekeeping

I love writing about the stunning destinations our family has visited and the countless memories we’ve made during our travels.  I do not love writing about cookies and copyrights and other legal gobbledygook.  But, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

As you may have read on other blogs that are on Google’s “Blogger” platform, Feedburner (the email subscription service that sends new blog posts to your email inbox) will no longer be operating after this month.  That means that any bloggers who used the Feedburner option will be transitioning to another platform if they want to continue to offer readers the option of receiving new posts via email.

I’ve researched a number of email subscription options and found none to be perfect.  But I’ll be transitioning before my next post goes live, keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well.

If you already subscribe to posts via email, please know that I have your email address on file and will just shift you over to the new platform.  If you link to my blog via someone else’s blog on the Blogger platform, please note that I do have a concern that my blog posts will not update properly on the other blog’s “blog roll.”  Please allow me to suggest that you subscribe via email now if you wish to remain in touch, or immediately after I transition to the new email subscription platform, if you prefer.  If you do subscribe and find that you’re not receiving new posts, please check your spam folder and then contact me at reflectionsaroundthecampfire(at)gmail(dot)com if there is, indeed, a problem.

Okay, now that we got email subscriptions out of the way, let me point out the brand new page that can be found next to “About Mary” just above this post.  Yup, “Legal Gobbledygook” is just what it sounds like – no fun at all.  But I did try to make it entertaining, and I would appreciate it if you would take a gander at it.  If you’re a fellow blogger and are aware of something that I should have included but didn’t, I’d appreciate a heads up.

Okay.  Glad all that’s done.  I never did like housekeeping.

As soon as I’ve recovered from having to write about all of this legal gobbledygook stuff, I plan to share with you our first visit to Seven Points Campground, an Army Corps of Engineers facility on Raystown Lake in Pennsylvania.  I hope you'll join us for the excursion.

“Housekeeping is like being caught in a revolving door.” (Marcelene Cox)

 

 

Acadia National Park - The Adventure Continues

In the summer of 2011, our family of four enjoyed our first ever visit to Acadia National Park in Maine.  At the time, our son, Ryan, was 17 and our daughter, Kyra, was 12.  (That awkward “tween” age would explain the response I received from Kyra when I asked the kids if I could post a particular photo of them in Bar Harbor – “Oh my God please no!”  That, my friends, is the reason I always ask first.)  My previous blog post covered some of Acadia’s history, the hiking trails we tackled and a bit about the carriage roads that we enjoyed biking.  This post details our experiences with water sports in the Park, our pilgrimage to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, some touristy fun around the town of Bar Harbor and a favorite tradition at The Jordan Pond House.

Acadia National Park - The Lure of the Land, the Call of the Sea

I nearly choked on my morning coffee when I realized that it has been four weeks since my last blog post.  Alan and I spent most of the past month getting our ducks in a row for a couple of not-so-easy real estate transactions.  But I’m also happy to report that we managed to sneak in a short trip to Seven Points Campground, an Army Corps of Engineers facility on Raystown Lake in Pennsylvania.  (Watch for a future post on that long-awaited excursion.)  Since life finally seems to be quieting down a bit, I’m really happy to settle in at the keyboard again and share our Acadia adventures with you.  Our first visit was so full of exceptional and delightful experiences that it might take more than one post to deliver all the details. We’ll see how it goes. 

This post is dedicated to my cousin Anna who, I’m pretty sure, really, really wants to visit Maine, and to my cousins John and Janine who go there often.

Acadia National Park had been on my bucket list for years.  In actuality, it’s one of the National Parks closest to our home in the northeast United States.  Therein lies the problem.  Because Acadia is more accessible to us than the numerous Parks out west, it made sense to Alan and me to travel further when the kids were young and he could pull four weeks of vacation at a clip.  After all, it takes us at least five solid days of driving to make it from one end of the country to another.  So travel time alone often knocks off a week and a half of scheduled vacation time on our National Parks trips.  For a variety of reasons (none of which matter a bit here), we finally decided to visit Acadia National Park in the summer of 2011 when Ryan was 17 and Kyra was 12.  This exquisite Park immediately shot to the top of my favorites list.

Campfire Talk - Part 2 of 2

It seems like I’m forever collecting little tidbits of news and information that may (or may not) be of interest to others.  None are worth a full blog post but I’ve found that a “Campfire Talk” format provides a good way to share an odd assortment of items.  Please note that this post is not sponsored in any way.  I’m not affiliated with, recommending or receiving payment from any of the companies or organizations mentioned.  I’m just sharing what I consider to be interesting or useful bits of news with you – you know, the kind of stuff you might talk about around a campfire with friends, family and fellow travelers.  The photos in this post represent a recap of the National Parks trip series I so recently (and happily!) completed.

Before I begin the actual post, I’d like to add a follow up comment about Ryan and Anya’s engagement which I had previously mentioned in Part 1 of this Campfire Talk post.  We have considered Anya our “bonus kid” since early in her relationship with Ryan.  The two of them are a good fit, and Anya is sweet, polite, respectful and considerate of others.  Not only are we blessed with a great bonus kid, but Anya’s parents, Kim and Brandon, are warm, good-natured, fun loving people, too – and we all enjoy outdoor adventures.  So, Alan and I are gaining a terrific daughter-in-law and we’ll be continuing the great relationship we’ve developed over the years with Anya’s parents.  I’m telling you, people, this is a win-win situation for us, and we know that we’re extremely fortunate.  Now, on to our regularly scheduled program.    

Campfire Talk - Part 1 of 2

It seems like I’m forever collecting little tidbits of news and information that may (or may not) be of interest to others.  None are worth a full blog post but I’ve found that a “Campfire Talk” format provides a good way to share such an odd assortment of items.  Since I’ve recently been focused on completing the documentation of our second cross-country National Parks trip, and since Alan and I spent the first two and a half months of the year renovating a rental house, I have more tidbits than usual set aside to share.  Because I’m a kind and thoughtful person (under many, but not all, circumstances), I’m breaking down this edition of Campfire Talk into Part 1 and Part 2 for your reading (and my typing) pleasure.

Please note that this post is not sponsored in any way.  I’m not affiliated with or receiving payment from any of the companies or organizations mentioned.  I’m just sharing what I consider to be interesting or useful bits of news with you – you know, the kind of stuff you might talk about around a campfire with friends, family and fellow travelers.  The photos in this post represent a recap of the National Parks trip series I so recently (and happily!) completed.  Well, except for the last, very special one.

Arches National Park – Nature’s Creative Artistry on Display (National Parks Trip #2)

Wow!  It seems like it has taken me forever to document our second cross-country National Parks camping trip with travel trailer in tow, but here we are at the FINAL installment!  At the time of this trip in 2010, our son, Ryan, was 16 and our daughter, Kyra, was 11.  Reliving this epic journey by documenting it has reaffirmed my belief that these extended, month-long National Parks trips with our kids provided all of us with priceless experiences and exceptional memories that will last a lifetime.

You might recall from the prior post that our family of four was using a private RV Park in Moab as our base camp for exploring the section of Utah in which Arches and Canyonlands National Parks are located.  Sadly, none of the campgrounds in those two Parks have electric hookups.  Despite our preference for camping within the National Parks, there was no way we’d forego the electricity needed to run the air conditioner during our visit in July.  Thinking it would be a treat if the kids had a swimming pool in which to cool off, I had booked a site at the Moab KOA (link HERE).  For a couple of reasons, that turned out to be a bad idea for this family of outdoor enthusiasts.

Goblin Valley State Park & Canyonlands National Park (National Parks Trip #2)

During the past two and a half months, while Alan and I have been renovating a rental property, nearly everything else has taken a back seat to the project, including my blog posts.  For a while there, it seemed like whenever we weren’t painting and repairing, we were shoveling and plowing snow - or sleeping.  We tried to fit a little of that in every once in a while, too.  Now that the renovations are complete and a few warm spring days have us anticipating the even more delightful weather to come, we’re both looking forward to resuming our “regularly scheduled programming.” 

This post represents another installment in the series detailing the second of our three cross-country National Parks camping trips with travel trailer in tow.  At the time of this trip in 2010, our son, Ryan, was 16 and our daughter, Kyra, was 11.

With the visit to Capitol Reef, we crossed off the eighth National Park of our month-long trip.  This epic journey, like our first cross-country National Parks trip with the kids three years earlier, was what we considered a “sampler” trip.  We kept our visits to each Park short so that we could see as many different Parks as possible.  By sampling each Park, we would learn which ones we wanted to return to for a more extensive visit.  In addition, knowing that Ryan and Kyra wouldn’t be traveling with us forever, we chose to introduce our kids to as many areas of the country as possible when they were young and excited about such grand adventures.  We figured that the more extensive our travels were as the kids were growing up, the better they would understand the geography, climate and opportunities in each area of the United States – providing experience that might influence their lifestyle and location choices as adults.  That being said, the fact that Ryan and his long-time girlfriend recently bought a house just 25 miles away in the same beloved mountain range in which we live does not disappoint me.  Wink, wink.

We left Capitol Reef heading north and east toward Moab and the final two National Parks of the trip – Canyonlands and Arches.  First though, a stop at Goblin Valley State Park was needed.  Who could resist a chance to play among a bunch of goblins?

Capitol Reef National Park - A Surprising Superstar (National Parks Trip #2)

This post represents another installment in the series detailing the second of our three cross-country National Parks camping trips with travel trailer in tow.  At the time of this trip in 2010, our son, Ryan, was 16 and our daughter, Kyra, was 11.

When travelers are trying to come up with the five National Parks that make up Utah’s “Mighty 5,” I’ll bet Capitol Reef is usually the last one that comes to mind.  Zion with the towering walls of its canyon and unique hiking experience up the Virgin River; Bryce Canyon with its fantastical hoodoos; Arches with its countless and unusual arch formations; and Canyonlands, Arches’ neighbor, with mile after mile of remote and rugged landscapes – these four are generally known for one particular feature.  Capitol Reef, well, Capitol Reef is a National Park comprised of many different features, each one as intriguing as the next.

RV Still Valentines? - Celebrating a Lifetime of Love for the Great Outdoors

I realized a few days back that it has been over three weeks since my last post.  All is well; it’s just that Alan and I are in the middle of a “refresh and repair” project at a rental property.  Between that and dealing with snow storm after snow storm, there hasn’t been much time to do anything other than shovel, plow, paint, repair and shingle.  Yup, Alan decided he wanted to re-roof the place himself, and we managed to somehow squeeze it in during a short spell of sunny weather.  Notice I didn’t say “warm, sunny weather.”  Let me tell you people, if you haven’t shingled a roof during winter in the northeast, you’ve missed a memorable experience.  You also haven’t frozen to death which, I’m pretty sure, is what nearly happened to me.  Thank heaven our son, Ryan, devoted a full weekend to working with us.  If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have finished before the next storm came along.  As it was, it began snowing three minutes after Alan wrapped up the project and climbed down from the roof.  Literally, three minutes.

The “refresh and repair” project is far from over, but I didn’t want to let Valentine’s Day go by without sharing a few thoughts about our camping lifestyle and the extraordinary amount of travel pleasure we’ve enjoyed throughout the years.  Of course, you all must know that Alan is my #1 Valentine.  I wouldn’t embarrass him (or myself) by going on and on about all of his finer qualities, although I certainly could.  We’ve never been mushy-gushy about our love and this is no time to start.  Instead, the focus is on a young couple who fell in love with each other and the great outdoors, and deepened that relationship with nature during more than 40 years of marriage.  Let’s get to it – before I have to start shoveling again.