It's been a busy few days at the Aerie.
Terry and I have been shopping around for a used Class C motor home and that's had us driving hither and yon.
Friday we went up to Bath, NY to visit
Camping World and
Wilkins RV. Each had a couple of nice units listed on their web sites and gave us a good feel for the layouts/floorplans we would encounter. Unfortunately, the former had one unit that would have been ideal but for some (to us) serious damage to the linoleum floor and shower stall. The latter had a beautiful Endura that was not listed yet but that 1) was just a bit above our initial price range and 2) had a few thousand more miles than we would have liked.
Saturday we went considerably further afield and visited two dealers down near Souderton, PA:
Fretz RV and
Indian Valley RV. Again, the former had an older Itasca Spirit that meets our criteria and the latter had a Class B+ that held some promise, but those dealers are four hours away!
On the way back, we swung by Hamburg, PA to visit
Cabelas. As chance would have it, Saturday morning's mail had a 10% off coupon that would expire before I return from my fishing trip so we decided to take a slight detour. There were two more RV dealers in that area (
Tom Schaeffer's and
Boat N RV) and we stopped to see what they had. The answer was nothing that we were interested in.
Today we took the utility trailer up to Elmira, NY to pick up the Yamaha Prohauler since it was up and running again. While up that way, we swung east to Nichols, NY to stop at
Jim's RV Center. They had nothing that matched our criteria but the salesman later called to make a proposal on a new Tioga Ranger that sounds pretty good if well above our price range.
Well, we have our name out there now and we've let the sales people know what we're looking for. If they get a trade-in that matches our criteria they should call. Well, if they want to make a sale, they should call.
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I've got all my gear packed for the fishing trip. When Joe gets here on Wednesday we'll make some final decisions and toss our stuff in the back of the Tundra and start on our way. We have a flight out of Clova, Quebec at 7 AM Thursday morning. It's supposed to be a 15-16 hour drive from here. We shall see.
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Sunday morning I was sitting at the table eating my breakfast when a black bear walked up on the deck. It sauntered right past the screen door and the watching Julie cat and headed around front where I usually have the bird feeders so it's pretty obvious that it has been here before. I got up and closed the sliding glass door and the bear came running back around the corner, down the steps and up into the woods.
Then it rained some. Or I should say some more. We had 0.33 inches on Thursday night and ran into one hell of a group of T-storms while we were out on Saturday. This Sunday rain didn't amount to much leaving just 0.08 inches in the rain gauge.
When the rain stopped and the breeze had dried things off a bit, I went out an harvested beets and onions from the front garden. I've about a peck (quarter of a bushel?) of each. Some were the size of golf balls while others were as big as softballs. The onions are spread out in the garage to dry. Terry cooked up some of the little beets for dinner tonight and they are the sweetest. The greens were also cooked with a little olive oil and garlic and proved to be even better than spinach.
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Tomorrow I have to cut the grass. The buckhorn plantain heads are a foot high and they and the clover flowers are distracting the honey bees from the my zucchini and cucumbers.
