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Traveling in the now-times

Posted on July 13, 2020July 13, 2020 by Analise Zocher

We’ve moved! After two and a half months in Asheville, NC, conditions were finally right to go someplace new. And by conditions, I mean a combination of local public health guidance (state, county, RV park) and our own comfort levels. We’re now in Burlington, VT, having come from Asheville via Scranton, PA and Salisbury, NY.

Adventuring: then vs. now

As things change around us, our plans have to change too. Here’s a few of the adjustments we’ve made over the last few months:

THEN

  • Visit as many places as possible parking at campsites in 1- or 2-week stints
  • Check out local museums, restaurants, and weird points of interest
  • Learn about local culture, values, and goals

NOW

  • Stay in fewer places for longer using the parked RV as a jumping-off point for travel
  • Drive past museums, get take-out, and visit weird points of interest while masked
  • More specifically, learn how locals and leaders regard public health, protests, and diversity

Thus begins the photo dump

We can’t take the kinds of local attraction photos that we used to, but we’re still getting up to random adventures at home and within short drives.

Fun at home

  • Rifftrax movie night with pun-themed foods, movie posters, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and a pretty but tragically overbaked lemon cake.
  • Fabric-craft with homemade masks made from pillowcases and vinyl designs for a fun shirt.
  • FOOD: chili cheese dogs and s’mores over the campfire and homemade fondue.
  • Big truck: I feel like a toddler–oh look there goes the truck with the big wheels it goes vroom vroom! We spend a lot of the day watching the other rigs go past.
  • BEAR.
  • The future of work, remote video chats from a picnic bench.

Click the pic to see a bigger pic

Rifftrax movie night: "Some of the best movies are lemons" cake
Rifftrax movie night: "Nachos: the hands of fate" and "Bite of the lepus" popcorn
Rifftrax movie night poster: SHARKNADO! "All the terror and intensity of a no-touch carwash"
Rifftrax movie night poster: BIRDEMIC! "They're going to fix this in post, right?"
I KNEW that the cross stitch silks would come in hand
DIY mask out of a high thread count pillowcase
First of many "I'm definitely smiling under there" pic
Cricut for the win--homemade quaran-shirt
We spend a lot of time watching vehicles go by outside. This day was a cell tower crane truck.
Chili cheese dog and s'mores night
Make made fondue for Fondue Friday!
OMG A BEAR A REAL BEAR IT'S A BEAR (Tunkhannock, PA)
This is how you outdoor, right? (Salisbury, NY)

Special occasions

  • Easter, Mother’s Day, and 4th of July complete with Hamilton on Disney+.
  • ANNIVERSARY! We celebrated 6 years in June. It was a Tuesday, and both of us got stuck in looooong work meetings at the end of the day. After a late dinner, we needed to stretch our legs and unwind, so we stepped out for a quick walk. But right outside the door were fireflies, tons of them, all twinkly and golden. In the bushes, in the trees, flying in front of our face (the only bug I’ll tolerate doing so)–it was magical. I couldn’t get photos or video–they’re challenging for professionals to record. I’d gotten close during a summer in Kansas City, but Mark and never seen them before. And we saw tons. We grabbed our folding chairs, sat in a field by the creek and watched dozens, maybe hundreds of them.
MY BIRTHDAY--it was tea-riffic
EASTER--Night of the Lepus Rifftrax
MOTHER'S DAY--family Fibbage game for Dustie
4TH OF JULY--fancy dinner at Beardlee Castle in Little Falls, NY
Masks now, roast pheasant later
The taproom under the castle is built for a three-sheets-to-the-wind Mark
Inside the dining hall at Beardslee Castle
The upstate New York castle. Totally normal.

Buddy system

Our friend Heather lives in Philadelphia within a few hours of where we stayed in both Pennsylvania and upstate New York. Instead of parking Rexy near Philly (the original plan) where lockdown restrictions were some of the tightest in all of PA, we planned meet-ups with Heather and her new puppers Jax at in-between outdoor spots where we could maintain social distancing and follow local gathering guidelines. The resulting adventures:

  • Ringing Rocks Park in Upper Black Eddy, PA–bring your own hammer!
  • Delaware Water Gap near Stroudsburg, PA–we watched as Jax learned how to use stepping stones to cross the stream.
  • Cedar Creek Park and rose garden in Allentown, PA.
  • Nine Corner Lake trail in the Adirondack Mountains near Caroga, NY.
View this post on Instagram

Throw back to May for one of our first post-lockdown adventures at Ringing Rocks. All boulders in the field resonate, but only 1 in 3 can be heard by people. BYO hammer!

A post shared by Mark and Analise (@rexyfindsahome) on Jul 13, 2020 at 11:43am PDT

BYO hammer to the Ringing Rocks boulder field
Gotta find a good one--only 1 in 3 ring at a pitch we can hear
Jax could probably hear all of them
This feels like those old photos where no one was smiling, but we totally were!
It's not deep, but felling in wouldn't be fun
Jax figured it out! Mostly
Puppers in the park
Allentown Rose Garden
Nine Corners Lake trail in the Adirondacks
Nine Corners Lake (we didn't count them all)

Oh the places you’ll go (and look at through a half-rolled down car window while wearing a mask)

  • Wrapped up Asheville, home to a potent paper mill and the Blue Ridge Parkway scenic drive.
  • The graffitied Concrete City outside of Wilkes-Barre, PA.
  • The rolling hills and covered bridges of upstate New York. We shared the roads with tractors and Amish carriages alike.
  • The Volkswagon on a smokestack of Amsterdam, NY–it advertises a garage.
  • “Salt City” Syracuse, NY–a town founded on salt mining–with its salt potatoes, Irish traffic light, and Rosamond Gifford Zoo.
The paper mill in Canton, NC. Mmm, smells like essential productivity.
Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC
Bee motel on the UNC Asheville campus
Asheville water tower that read "Stay true" on the way out
Nice spot to have to pull over for a coolant tank refill (Asheville, NC)
Zochers crossing the Delaware!
Concrete City (Nanticoke, PA)
Concrete City (Nanticoke, PA)
Concrete City (Nanticoke, PA)
Concrete City (Nanticoke, PA)
Upstate NY--lots of farmland and wind turbines
The historic Salisbury Center Covered Bridge (Salisbury, NY)
Salisbury, NY's weather station: a rock.
The guide tells you how to use the rock to tell the weather.
The Volkswagon on the Smokestack (Amsterdam, NY)
Park and placard to hometown hero Kirk Douglas (Amsterdam, NY)
Red means stop (Tipperary Hill, Syracuse, NY)
Green means go (Tipperary Hill, Syracuse, NY)
Museum of Science and Technology, Syracuse, NY
Rosamond Gifford Zoo, Syracuse, NY

RV checkup

Rexy lives! We fill the coolant tank before drives now since she sits for longer than a couple weeks. Alan took on water through his hood vent–nearly two inches after a thunderstorm in New York. Our new vent cover seems to be keeping the wet out now.

Lilly watch

Cat tax: Lilly watches and judges everything within her sight.

Up next

We’re in Burlington, VT for the next month. On tap: maple syrup, maple ice cream, and maple beer. Maple is the state flavor, after all.

Share Rexy's adventure
Posted in DestinationTagged Asheville, Burlington, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Salisbury, Scranton, Syracuse, Tunkhannock, Vermont

1 thought on “Traveling in the now-times”

  1. Marie Pino says:
    July 14, 2020 at 8:38 am

    Thank you for the adventure with you. Places we have never seen but now do so through your posts. Enjoying life is priceless! ❤️

    Reply

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