Postcards from Tioga-Hammond Lakes: We're Back!

Yes, back from the wilds of our northern Pennsylvania vacation.  Over the next several days or weeks I'll be blogging "Postcards from Tioga-Hammond Lakes" about our various adventures while away.

We were fortunate to have planned our return to home on the day before Storm Sandy hit our area.

For those of you that regularly read this blog, you will remember that this was our maiden voyage with our new camper.  And may I say that all went well, and we were pleased from start to finish.

We had an uneventful departure Friday a week ago.   Engaging the easy-slide feature of our 5th wheel hitch provided us with a much easier experience getting out of our tight parking space than our previous parking effort backing into the tight space.

My husband felt that the camper towed easily, even in spite of the additional weight in the bed of the truck due to the firewood we were hauling.  It was completely possible to forget that there was a behemoth box chasing us down the road.

At times the mountains seemed to glow.

It was a beautiful two hour drive up into the northern central part of Pennsylvania, not far from the New York border.  At every turn of the road the vistas were stunning, and every Fall I am amazed again at the beauty of nature in this area.

At one point I turned around in my seat (I guess to check if the camper was still following us), and noticed some unidentified thing flapping in the wind behind the hitch, lifting in and out of the truck bed.  Not a moment later I watched our black sewer hose lift up and over and fly out and down the road behind us.   My husband saw it land and immediately get run over by a car, so we will be shopping for a new one.  We have definitely learned our lesson about leaving things in the back of the truck that do not have enough weight to stay there, and we'll be smarter more careful in the future.  Apparently the wind dynamics of towing a 5th wheel are different than when towing a regular trailer.

We headed for the Ives Run Campground of the Tioga-Hammond Lakes area.  This campground and the dam is a project of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, and is nicely maintained.  The paved sites are spacious with quite a bit of shade, and about half have full hook-ups.  Many of the sites have a serene view of the Hammond Lake.  

We had an easy park into our site once we arrived.  The campers in the next site were somewhat of a greeting committee, and informed us that the previous tenants in our site had drug half of the tree away with them when they left that morning.  Apparently that guy figured the paved roads in the campground were for decoration only.

 Must have created quite a stir in the campground, and looking at the tree, we did see a huge scar where a large section had been torn off.  The tree is now X-rated, apparently to be taken down.  Geez, I don't want to ever drive down the highway anywhere near that guy.

Once we were parked, unhitched, and completely set up, we set about to relax a bit and begin exploring all the features of our camper.  For a while we sat reading and watching our electronic fireplace.  (The weather had changed outside, and cold, windy rain is the reason we had opted to include an indoor fireplace.)

We experimented turning on every switch in the place, like two little kids.  There are more than enough lights, and even though the majority of them are LED lights, it still feels cozy and warm in there.

At the end of our evening, the husband/lover/best friend informed me that a very large weight had removed itself from his shoulders.  Ever since bringing this new camper home and having such a difficult time parking it into our space, he had worried about being able to get it back out or not when the time came to make our first trip with it.

Our first night we slept fairly well, and we were glad the heater worked well and kept us comfortable.  Unlike our previous trailer in which we could easily hear the heater kicking on and off, in this camper we were blissfully unaware of those sounds as its location is more under the "downstairs" living area.

In the morning we made a joint decision to keep the bedroom television unplugged while not in use.  That little blue power light and its reflection in our closet door mirror definitely lights the room up and catches your attention if you roll over or open your eyes during the night.  We are not big tv watchers anyway, so we are still scratching our heads as to why we have one in the bedroom at all.

So, let the adventures begin.  We're here.  We're set up.  We love the new digs.

Gettin' to know the new camper, oh yeah.  More postcards to come.