Upstate New York

I had no idea there was so much physical beauty in this part of New York, west of the finger lakes all the way to Pennsylvania. This is the land of abundance. You have to see it to understand my astonishment. The farm stands are everywhere. 

The locally grown stuff is explanation enough to illustrate the richness of the soils here. 

Everything is lush and bursting with life. 

The forests produce lumber for the Amish and firewood stands for campers. Help yourself to a roadside bundle of logs, split for your convenience at five bucks apiece. 

The roads are smooth for the most part and wind endlessly up hills and through valleys filled with crops in fields cut out of the forests. 

I was reading the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition and as they came up to the largely treeless prairie filled with game the comment came up by contrast that the East was overfilled with trees! 

During the summer the Sunset View Creamery teaches youngsters about animal husbandry and how to look after calves and how to milk cows, just like Betty: 

Had I children I’d drive them around these hills all summer to see how cows sleep on air beds and are fed a precise diet for the best milk. How they spend their days free to roam inside and out and how they are milked and how cheese is made and ice cream in human sized quantities.

I am not cut out to be a farmer but I appreciate the work that goes into making food.

I suppose it would be unfair to ask would you prefer to eat cheese from these happy cows… if only because most people (including us) don’t have access. And for some people the cost is prohibitive. But the more I age the more I prefer to eat less factory products and more of these types: 

It was a lovely stay, made better by a long chat I had with Mrs Hoffman and we talked for a long time about dogs, the rescue and training there of, the need for tourists to expand the possibilities beyond nearby Watkins Glen, her Italian ancestry, and the richness of the land around her. 

We stopped for lunch in Bath a town that lives in the modern era as you’d expect but in such a way as you can recreate in your own mind what life must have been like in the heady days of revolution. 

Rusty just enjoyed the walk but I had my mind on those people who settled here all those years ago carving homes out of the forest. 

Genesee Fever is now believed to be typhoid or malaria diseases long since eradicated by science so you don’t have to worry about them. However, polio is making a comeback in New York so if you want to see how life evolves without vaccinations you will now have your chance. 

I am really glad our meanderings brought us this way. An area worth exploring.

New York Amish Country

We never meant to find ourselves in Amish Country in western New York State, but these things happen in the best regulated families and ours is not one of those.

We had no idea there was a wide ranging community of active Amish farmers in New York State; we thought we had left them behind in Indiana and Ohio but here we were, on a road clearly labeled “New York Amish Trail.” To our astonishment we were driving a genuine all American tourist route! Cool! Layne got her camera ready and shared her images from her passenger seat with me.

I suppose one could say the Amish have learned to tolerate us, the English, they wave solemnly and smile and say hello but the whole experience makes me feel a little uncomfortable, as though the inmates in the zoo have been trained to please the visitors.

They live their lives and we live ours and I wonder how they shake their heads at our antics. Visitors to the Keys get short shrift from locals tired of being observed at their daily tasks so why the patient Amish farmers and craftsmen, the gardeners and bakers would feel any more cheerful about us driving through their horse droppings I cannot say. 

But let me tell you they bake a superb molasses cookie!  They won’t sell them to you on Sunday but six days a week you can dive into their help-yourself roadside farm stands. Check out the size of their tomatoes, and you know they taste as tomatoes should, like they did in your nostalgic childhood. I have never seen larger ones. 

I find the communal living ideal of Amish life interesting as much as it is obviously not to my taste. However choosing to retire into a nomadic life leaves me discovering that in the day to day practical aspects we have more in common than at first appears! 

We used to hang our clothes in the house instead of using a dryer but we don’t have that option now of course. But like young students we are always on the lookout for a decent communal laundry! And our pleasure when we find one… has to be seen to be believed. Oh joy! 

When we traveled by sailboat we did a great deal of walking. Everything required walking somewhere with our dogs. I empathize with the locals… During the 1973 gas crisis in Italy my sisters hitched a horse to a pony trap we had in our vast inherited home and we traveled on “no gas days” by horse and trap. I thought it was fun the first time but I missed my motorcycle in short order. 

There are lots of farm stands across this region and not all Amish. We stopped at many of them slowing our progress between rain showers as we meandered across New York state. 

The country here is breathtakingly beautiful. It’s not the obvious crags and peaks out west or the vast open desert and endless open horizon. Yet I find the valleys and rolling hills comforting in a way. There is a great deal of poverty exemplified by tacky worn out homes and sagging trailers and trash but the farms, neat and tidy and active are a reminder that people here do continue that tradition of tilling the soil, most with internal combustion and that stubborn few with the original horsepower. 

We found a state forest with free camping so we stopped for one night under the thick dark canopy and fell asleep to the sounds of silence. We awoke to the sounds of a massive rainstorm battering our tin roof. A travel day became a movie day and in the afternoon I took my musket (a digital Panasonic camera in point of fact) and assumed the coonskin cap of Natty Bumpo and took my dog for a walk in the wilderness. 

We ate gnocchi for dinner and listened to more rain…and on into the morning. 

Well, we were refreshed and I was ready to drive the rain notwithstanding, thus we left the Stockton State Forest, driving past the stockade of the second amendment freak littered with angry aggressive suggestions that he’d rather die than give up his guns. It seemed odd as he was living far apart from his neighbors and I wondered who he thought might want his guns enough to risk getting shot for them. The forest apparently was named for Richard Stockton of Princeton New Jersey, one of the revolutionaries who signed the Declaration of Independence so maybe that made the man hiding behind his stockade think being loud about his guns was important. For others the forest is a trash can. Oh well, it’s there for all of us.  

We saw three vehicles in two days, two trucks leaving, but also  including one young van lifer driving by following the iOverlander instructions and later driving back out apparently not attracted to a damp forest parking space. 

The weather continued showery mixed with sunny spells, and we enjoyed puffy cloudy skies over rolling green hills as we followed Google’s “No highways” directions to a creamery Layne found on the Harvest Host plan. Zucchini pasta and cheese for dinner at Sunset View Creamery. 

Oh and don’t be fooled. We didn’t out run the rainstorms and once again we went to bed listening to the comforting pitter patter on the roof. Inside, our van is snug and dry and condensation free. 

Except now our fridge is bulging with raw milk and rich crumbly farm made cheese. Score!

Lake Erie

If you want to buy a brand new full sized van in the United States or Canada  you have a choice of three. In Mexico a Volkswagen model which looks confusingly similar to a Sprinter is also available. Nissan has stopped selling it’s van which leaves Ford and Ram vans alongside the Mercedes Sprinter. 

When we chose Custom Coach Creations to build our home he recommended the Ram for its square shape and more floor space thanks its vertical walls. For me the Ford fanatic after years of driving sedans into hurricanes I have up the Ford Transit dream with regrets. We tested our new home in the Ocala National Forest and were pleased.  

Front wheel drive is an innovation in North American van life with many loud detractors. I don’t really know why as I’ve driven cars with it for decades but my van can turn circles around the other brands with a 41 foot turning circle. Tight turns have saved me more than once in Mexico. The lack of drive gear in the back means the floor is lower to the ground and the lower center of gravity gives a very stable van. 

Spending time with Kip at Promasters Only has reaffirmed my choice. He has three and has driven them hundreds of thousands of miles and praises their low maintenance requirements and dependability. He found no issues with our van, not surprising he said with our “low mileage” at 52,000 miles…And he hasn’t seen some of the roads we’ve driven. Or the potholes and speed bumps we’ve hit. 

Without getting into boring van details I’ve known for two years that GANNET2 as designed by Layne makes an excellent home and I love living aboard. After spending time with an expert, and judging my terrible photos you know I was hanging off every word, I know that we have the best possible mechanical machine for our kind of journey. The drive away from Barberton on our way to Erie saw me feeling really good about our choice for a long term journey to Argentina starting in December. 

Our style of travel is not so much off roading as driving with a destination in mind. We’ve never been afraid of the road less traveled and over time I have developed a pretty good idea of what our low slung 9400 pound van can cope with but I enjoy city driving, beach camping and exploring fire roads in the woods. Four wheeling in mud sand or rocks has never been my desire and if it were I’d have a different vehicle (and most likely be traveling solo). 

We stopped, exhausted on the Ohio  Turnpike, a toll road cutting across the north of the state to Pennsylvania. Our Florida Sunpass Pro works in all 18 states where EZ-Pass is used which made our choice simple. We found a rest area unlike any other. They even have RV parking for $20 a night with full hookups, a dump station and drinking water. 

We parked in the car area and discovered free hot showers and first rate laundry machines to do our wash for three bucks. No one else was in the “Truckers Lounge” area, rather forbiddingly named! We asked a trucker if it was open to car drivers and he laughed and said “Of course!” so we dived right in. We brought dinner, teriyaki chicken on noodles at a restaurant in Akron so we went to bed with chores in hand. It’s a funny part of living on the road, the freedom yes but only juxtaposed with the need to manage your time and get manual jobs done. 

I carried our toilet tank to the dump and then hand filled our water tank with our buckets and siphon. Easy in and easy out! All that fuss about hygiene to suppress Covid comes naturally when you don’t have a utility company to take care of your life for you. Van life requires a lot of attention to details in between the You Tube sunsets and diaphanous nymphs going surfing. We got our details taken care of before we set off for Erie, the city on the lake. 

We were last in Erie around 2001 walking in the beach with Emma who came before Cheyenne and had traveled with us on the boat from California. It was a cold stormy winter day and we moved on. This time was different. 

Erie in September is a pretty town with an abundance of green trees and thick lawns. The city was bursting with activity on a Saturday afternoon, gatherings on porches, food trucks, running races, dog walkers and anglers. On the water it was the same scene of activity. I guess in a place where you can’t take outdoor weather for granted you get out when you can. 

With no ocean swells to slow you down the slightest breeze can be enough to keep your boat moving. It looked like fun actually, edging the boat through light airs in flat water. 

I was astonished to see, on a side note, a 20 foot Flicka sailboat motoring into the marina. I lived on that model of boat for a decade and sailed (and motored it) up and down California as well as the Gulf of Mexico and the Bahamas. I sold it in Ft Myers when Layne, my new wife, decided it was too small for two and we cruised a catamaran. All that went through my mind standing on the edge of Lake Erie.

And that in a way is part of the privilege of van life, being able to drop in on life in progress. I have no desire to stop and settle in any one place but it is really a pleasure to find oneself in the middle of a sunny afternoon’s activities. 

Anglers in a boat came by close to the sea wall and started chatting with the fisherman standing next to his pole. Layne overheard them chatting as the boat idled. In commiserating with the fisherman on land and his lack of luck, the boater offered he’d been out ninety miles (!) looking for fish and shared his catch with the luckless man standing on the wall. 

Then I heard a woman ask another man fishing if he owned the Plymouth glistening in the sun nearby. He allowed he was and she noted he was dressed in matching teal…It turns out he’s owned the car since he bought it when he was 15 and that means he’s owned in for 39 years. He also volunteered at top volume he’s spent $200,000 on the car and doesn’t regret a penny of it! 

When Rusty had finished walking and sniffing we sat together at a picnic table watching the afternoon unfold on the lakeshore. Layne was back aboard GANNET2 washing Montana potatoes bought at the side of the highway for our dinner of bangers and mash, to be eaten at our wild camp later in a state forest in New York. 

We drove out through the city, past the lakefront mansions, under a thick canopy of trees, on crappy torn up streets in the poorer neighborhoods with families sitting on their porches, through a bustling restaurant going downtown and past the ring of brick industrial palaces of industry. 

It was a pleasant stop but we’ve been here in the cold, leaf-free winter days and we’re glad to be moving on. We’ll be far south when that happens this year. 

Highway 5 along the Lake Erie shore ran mostly out of sight of the water and gave us a taste of the sights of rural Pennsylvania, a mostly empty roadway rising and dipping through farms and woods. 

All we got to see of the Amish was the signs warning of their slow moving presence. 

Missionary zeal is on view reducing religious belief to a bumper sticker statement. I was rather more impressed by the cheerful neighborliness I saw at the lake. 

Ride on lawnmowers on steroids. 

I really like the neat and tidy homesteads. I would be an untidy embarrassment we’re into live in such a place. 

I think many of the fields that looked like watercress to my suburban eyes was probably soybeans. 

There was no mistaking the grape vines which grow thick and hearty in this soil. I was surprised how close together they plant the vines but there were miles of grapes along the highway both sides of the stateline. 

And then we found ourselves on Highway 5 in New York. I’d like to have seen more of Pennsylvania, a state of excessive beauty which I enjoy every time I drive though. 

This trip I’m keen to see the St Lawrence one more time on our way to Vermont.