Miscellaneous
Season 2 Episode 67New England 2021 trip, part 1.0So I installed the Maxx Air Fan 7500k in our bedroom. This RV had a fan but it didn't have a remote and it would only exhaust. We had installed and loved the 7500k in our previous rig. It's nice to have a remote fan in the bedroom. And it has a thermostat setting. https://amzn.to/3fplK5SThe install wasn't bad to do. So, the next project was ... solar ! I had installed solar in our last rig. Now this system is up and running. We have 800 watts on the roof, a 60 amp mppt charge controller and a 4000 watt pure sine wave inverter. We love solar and having an inverter. With the solar and the inverter it freezes us up to camp and more remote locations like national forests. Some places don't offer any amenities and they limit generator use so this system works great for us. I'll post a video on it soon.After that was done we cleaned and restocked the rig and finally hit the road on 8/20/21 for our Northeast 2.0 trip. Our 1st stop was at Boondockers Welcome location near Lyme CT. This had a reminded me of a book I had read a while back about the theory of the origin of Lyme Disease by Michael C. Carroll. Here's a link to that book.https://amzn.to/3m5YVIHThis drive was just under 3 hours from home which was perfect for us. On the way we stopped for gas. I was surprised when the pump shut earlier than expected so I restarted it and shut off. We had been getting 8 mpg when we bought the rig. I just rechecked it, we are getting 10mpg ! A 25% increase and again all because of the 5 Star tuner. This is a phenomenal product. It has helped the rigs transmission, which is why we had bought it. I had heard it will help with gas mileage but .... wow !! We love it even more now. Here is a link to the tuner.https://amzn.to/3jEGytbWe set up and our boondock are welcome host site. And via a recommendation from a host we drove over to Salmon River Park. We hike for about 5 miles. Then headed back to the rig cook dinner on the grill and headed over to Arrigoni Winery.The next day we visited Gillette Castle in East Haddan, CT. Wow ! Our friends told us about this place many years ago and we had to saved on our Google maps to visit. We did the self-guided tour of the castle which took about a half hour. Then we worked the grounds for another hour and a half or so. What a great State Park. Here's a link to pics of the Castlehttps://www.instagram.com/p/CS4_-f3p-cd/?utm_medium=copy_linkWe then met our friends Maureen and Jim who originally told us about Gillette Castle, for dinner. We ate at La Vita in Haddan CT. and had an excellent meal and visit. We then headed back to the rig. Hurricane Henri is expected in this area starting tomorrow morning so we hooked up the Jeep and got everything set to leave first thing in the morning. Our goal is to make it to Wordens Pond Campground in Wakefield, RI the next morning. Well we woke up early got on the road started calling the campground to make sure they were open and a half hour after being on the road they finally answered the phone and said they were open but they were encouraging everybody to leave and the roads to get to the campground we're closed by the state Rhode Island. So returned around I started heading west on 84 and we pulled up our Harvest host app and we found a harvest hose location near Waterbury Connecticut. To gravel parking lot and while they had no amenities they also had no trees to crush the RV with. So we contacted the host pulled in and set up. Rained on and off all day. The sore that the weather for tomorrow in Rhode Island wasn't going to be too bad so in the morning we hooked up and started driving east.Once we hit Rhode Island we sure the damage from hurricane henry. A lot of trees down some road closures. We got to the campground which is Worden pond Campground and we were told we may not have electric I didn't know when they were going to get it reinstated from The Storm. We pulled into the site a half hour later the electric kicked on and stayed on the whole time. This is a really nice campground. Fabulous wifi and Lots of big old trees unfortunately some of them came down during the storm and Campground staff were very busy coming up trees getting limbs off of campers. We're really glad we didn't come here the day before. In the morning packed up started heading east towards Massachusetts and we wanted to stop along the way at The Cliff Walk. We got into Newport RI and called the visitor center to find out where we could park the rig. They explained that there's a beach parking area that can accommodate bigger rigs so we drove there and found out the lot was closed because the hurricane had washed a lot of sand into the lot. So we called them back and they gave us another location to park. On the way to that location we found Newport casino and we said well that's perfect Park. We pulled in and the casinos was out of business. But there were a couple of trucks parked in the lot so we pulled the rig in we unhooked and took the Jeep over to The Cliff Walk. Here's a link to photos of the walk. https://www.instagram.com/p/CS-WMMKsAM0/?utm_medium=copy_link This is a 3 and a half mile trail (one way) that follows the cliffs. Some of it was paved like a sidewalk and some of it was a big rocks like a jetty and there was a couple of tunnels that you had to walk through. We really enjoyed it however it was in the low 80s and the humidity made it feel like near 90. It was definitely a worthwhile experience. We got to the end and you could either reverse it they had a shuttle bus it would take you back to the beginning but instead we decided to walk the streets back for another three and a half miles through neighborhoods with mansions. It was beautiful. We then hopped in the cheap and back to the rig hooked up and drove over by Plymouth Massachusetts to pinewood campground. We chose a campground for this stay over because we wanted 30 amp for the air conditioning. Again a great campground. Spacious sites. And again fantastic wifi. A neighbor just told me her son was listening to this podcast. That was really nice to hear. So hi to ...... and thanks for listening.4 hour full day at this Campground we took a ride over to Plymouth. Here pics of Plymouth https://www.instagram.com/p/CTAy1yjpcdn/?utm_medium=copy_linkWe saw Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower 2. In 2019 we stopped at Mystic Seaport ( here's the episode https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relax-rv-podcast-episode-22-we-start-our-2019-northeast-trip/id1499279142?i=1000465761573) and we them restoring this ship. Here's an article about the move to Massachusettshttps://www.mysticseaport.org/events/mayflower-ii-departs/From there we walked around for a couple hours. And then went back to the campground and hung out and relaxed.The next day we headed out to Coastal Acres campground in Ptown MA also known as Provence Town. This campground only offers full hookups. Walking distance to downtown Ptown. So the next day we have done our tandem bike route over into p-town spent the day hitting shops and reminiscing. We rode back to the campground less than a 10-minute bike ride. Cook dinner on a grill quick showers cuz it's been disgustingly hot. Then heading back downtown to hopefully see a piano player at a bar called Tin Pan Alley. We were here two years ago in May it was rainy and freezing out and we found this place enjoyed conversation with a couple so we went back and again enjoyed fun music and conversation.The next day we walked over the causeway/jetty. It's 1.5 miles each way. We tried to do it on our last visit but Trish had her broken toe and her foot was in a boot so we didn't quite make it all the way across the jetty. https://www.vacationcapecod.com/blog/walking-across-the-provincetown-causewayAfter we did that we rode the tandem bike 3 miles to the visitor center via the dunes trail. Then another 4 miles back to the RV. We then walked to P-town for dinner and a show..... a drag queen show at The Crown and Anchor.https://onlyatthecrown.com/The next day we ride the tandem bike for 2 hours in the CCRT (cape cope rail trail). We then walked P-town for a couple hours. The next morning we packed up and drove to our friends Bev and Axel in NH. It was great spending time catching up on life. They were allowing us to camp on their property so we took them out to dinner. We then sat in their rig and continued the conversations over the next 2 days. Thanks Bev and Axel.We left them on Wednesday 9/1/21. We drove 3 hours to Riverside Campground in Lancaster, NH. This is a pretty campground and is a Good Sam location. The next day we drove over to Mount Washington we drove our Jeep up to the top. I'm sure you may have seen cars with bumper stickers saying this car climbed Mount Washington years ago I had hiked up to the top but I was 20 years younger than so this time driving Jeep to the top he also have a cog train that will take you up but the price is more than what we were willing to spend.For the 2 of us it was $53. Which was 1/3 the cost of the cog train. We spent 3 hours on My Washington. It was beautiful ! And cold. The temp was 20 degrees colder at the top and the wind chill dropped that temp another 10 degrees. A great way to spend some time. Here are pics on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/p/CTVteJpsTeK/?utm_medium=copy_linkThe next day we drove to ...So what do you do to help manage your stress? Do you know someone who would benefit from listening to a stress mange exercise? I have 3 FREE Stress Management recordings at https://relaxrv.org/stressed-2-2/stressed-2/ If that ain't your thing I made some videos about the improvements I mentioned and I posted them on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel