Baby Samantha Lynn

Well, I it looks like this new baby girl is in charge already!! She decided to come early, I guess this baby did not want us to leave without meeting her first.

Samantha Lynn Norton was born Monday at 23:23 on the 23rd of August. She weighed 5 lb 7 oz. and was 18 inches long. Both mom and baby are doing fine and they came home from the hospital on Thursday.

We were able to get together with Kristy and the kids last weekend for dinner, and we all had a great time. The kids are all growing up and doing very well in school. Their school started just a few days before Kristy went to the hospital to have number seven, so needless to say she has been very busy. She still has one at home during the day, 2 year old Jonathan.

We have visited the service department over at our motor home factory, and talked to some of the people there. We feel they are making some very positive changes and we are a lot more optimistic about the future of the Mandalay Travel Club.

Four Winds and Damon are both owned by the same company (Thor) and they have merged their manufacture and service departments. They have also decided to have one club for all of the diesel coaches (Mandalay and Damon). So, we have now decided to stay in the area until the rally in October. We want to attend and I'm sure we will learn more about the future plans for the factory and for the club as well.

We will be staying at the Elkhart Fairground in Goshen from now until the Rally starts. We will need to be out for a couple of weeks in September (they have 2 rallies planned for the fairground during this time), but we will be having our awning installed at Charger anyhow, and will just park somewhere else until we can return to the fairground on the 20th.

Ohio visit and Lake Erie

We went to The Thousand Trails Campground near Jefferson Ohio to spend a week. This is a nice RV Park and we always enjoy being here. There are a couple of covered bridges in this area, so we have to be careful where we drive the motor home, but once you get into the park it is great. We took a drive in the car up to Geneva on The Lake one day and had lunch, The lake is so pretty, and it is so big it looks like the ocean !! Mostly, we did nothing at all, just rested and relaxed a lot.

We plan to visit our friends who live in Akron Ohio, while we are passing through the state, so we will be happy to see them again.

Our friends Ken and Shirley live in Akron Ohio. We had met up with them at Thousand Trails in Orlando Florida this past winter. We wanted to spend a few days with them on this trip, so we headed for their house. They have a Mandalay, and made arrangements to park it over at their son's house so we could park in the driveway beside their home while we are visiting.

Ken and Shirley have two sons and a daughter who live in the Akron area also. Their son has a pontoon boat and Ken and Shirley took us out on it. This was a very relaxing day, we toured part of the lake, wow what a beautiful place. There are hundreds of wonderful homes built right on the water. We will check out the other part of the lake on another day.

We went to the Football Hall of Fame in Canton Ohio the next day and had a great time there. This place is so big and well laid out, it is well worth a trip to Ohio, just to see this.

Well, back to the pontoon boat....we spent another relaxing day heading the other direction cruising along and seeing all of the beautiful homes on the water. This was so much fun, and so relaxing. We had such a great time here in Ohio, who would know there was so many things to do and see here, we had no idea.

The next day we drove up to Lake Erie. We took a jet boat over to Put N Bay an island in Lake Erie, just a short way from the Ohio coastline. That was a lot of fun, the boat went so fast, only took about 45 minutes to get over there. We rented a golf cart for an hour or so and toured the island. Had a great time that day, then took the jet boat back.

We sure did hate to see our time in Ohio with Ken and Shirley come to an end. We have to head to Elkhart Indiana because we have an appointment on August 19th at Charger RV Service to have some work done on our coach. By the way, the work we are having done is not repair work this time, we are having our oven/stove vented outside the coach and installing a window awning above the windows over the sofa.

We are not planning to attend the rally in Goshen Indiana this October. It is the Mandalay Travel Club (now the Thor Diesel Club) rally, since we are a month and a half too early, we plan to skip it this year. Kristy (my daughter) is expecting another baby in September, so we will see her and the other kids, but not the new one this time.

Ferry to NewYork and Niagara Falls

When we left the Rally in Essex Junction Vermont, we had to go by Ferry to get over to New York. The bridge that goes over the water was closed for repair. So, here we are, sitting in the motor home with our tow car behind us, driving onto the ferry for the short 10 minute ride across the water. I have to admit I was a little nervous, but it was only a short ride and soon we were back on solid ground in New York.

We spent a month in the Albany New York area and had a great time with our family there. Joe's sister Cheryl and her husband Chris took us to a few concerts on Thursday nights, and of course we had to go to the horse races at Saratoga Race Track. We did not pick the right horses this time but had a lot of fun at the races anyhow. We always have so much fun with them.

We spent a little more time with sister Luanne and her family this year and had a lot of fun. Luanne and Joe took us out to eat at a great resturant in Lake George. On another night they took us to a ski boat show on the Mohawk River. Their grandkids went with us, they are twin boys about 8 years old, so they got a big kick out of the water ski show. We all had fun there, and it reminded me why I never have wanted to water ski !!!!

We always have a great time when we visit our family in New York. We will not be back for a couple of years now, so said our farewells to everyone and hit the road again.

Our next stop is Niagara Falls. We have visited here a couple of times, and it is one of the most beautiful places we have seen. Absolutely fascinating that so much water can flow over the falls all of the time. We stayed in a campground near Lockport NY about 25 miles from the falls.

We went on a tour bus to the Canadian side. Our first stop was to an observation deck behind the falls, these pictures were taken from there. The first one is of the falls from behind it. The one next to it was taken from the top of the falls near the same area. The other two are of the people dressed in the plastic raincoats we all wore there, and of the "Maid od The Mist" boat that goes down to the base of the falls.

We are going to Ohio for a few days at the Thousand Trails near Lake Erie. We stayed there for a week or go last year and it is a nice quiet park. We need to rest up a little and catch up on some cleaning of the coach, inside and out. Then we will go on to Akron Ohio to visit our friends Ken and Shirley for a few days. We are looking forward to seeing them again.

White Mountain NH and Essex Junction VT

We arrived at Tamworth Campground near White Mountain New Hampshire. We had a good drive through the state to get here. This is a very nice state, green and lots of streams and rivers winding through the mountains and beautiful lakes. The water is so clean and fresh looking, makes you want to jump right in.


We got a big kick out of these warning signs all over the place. I could not help but to take pictures of these two signs. The first one says "Bear Crossing" and the other one says " Moose Crossing". I have to admit that after our Deer encounter in Missouri last year, we did not take these warnings lightly, we were very careful.

We are here to visit with our friends, Andy and Virginia, they are working at a campground in North Conway for the summer, May to October. Their campground is about 15 miles from the one we are staying at. We will get to see them tomorrow.

So today we just drove around and saw some of the lakes and mountains. We arrived at one pier and the Mount Washington a Sunset Dinner and Dancing Cruise was just getting ready to set sail, so we decided to buy our tickets and go along. It was great fun, very good band, beautiful sunset and good food too.

We met Virginia and Andy for lunch the next day and after we ate, they showed us around. We went up to their campground to see what a nice place they have. Now I see why it was full when we called to see if we could get in for a few days. It is a beautiful park. We spent a fun filled day with them and they helped us plan what we were going to do the next day.

We will keep in touch with Andy and Virginia and we may even consider working at a camp ground like they are doing, sounds like a great idea. Maybe when we get tired of moving from place to place. If we decide to stay in one place for a few months, it would be a great idea.

The next day we decided to take a train ride. We selected the trip with lunch in the dining car on the train as it travels through the valley and along the rivers and streams. This was a lot of fun, and we met some nice people along the way.

The rally in Vermont starts in two days, so have to be on the road again. We are planning to go in one day early so we can get set up and check out the area before the rally starts. We wanted to stay on the interstates because of the mountains, so it took us a little longer to get to Vermont, but we arrived and headed across the state toward Essex Junction.

The rally in Vermont went very well, we attended several seminars, and of course bought a few things that we simply could not live without (Ha Ha). We got our coach washed, got our tow bar serviced, and our TV antenna fixed. We even got a DVR for our Direct TV and another receiver for the back TV. All in all it was a great rally !!! The nightly entertainment was very good.

We even saw a double rainbow on our last night there. You have to look closely to see the second rainbow on the right.

Now we are going to visit family in New York. We have found a short ferry ride to cross over Lake Champlain from Vermont to New York.

From West Virginia to Conneticut

We drove through West Virginia and Virginia on our way to the FamCamp at Fort Meade Maryland to stay for a week or so. We enjoyed our drive through the mountains of WV, what beautiful scenery there. Virginia is also a very pretty place, we took lots of pictures.



We had a great time at Fort Meade last year, so decided to stay and locate a doctor to have our physicals taken care of while we are here. Everything was A-ok, but, we have a couple of followup doctor visits that we are scheduling during our stay in New York visiting family in July.

We spent some time here just relaxing and catching up on some things around the motor home. Our plan is to leave here and travel along the South Coastline of Connecticut and into Rhode Island then on up toward Boston.

We left Maryland and went to Connecticut. We stayed a couple of nights at an Elks Lodge in Milford CT then went on to Mystic Seaport area and found a great campground in East Lyme CT called Aces High RV Park. We only stayed there for one night so we could check out this beautiful old area. We enjoyed this trip along the coast of Connecticut, it is so calm and relaxed here, and the people are all so friendly.

We are heading for Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts now for a few days, then on to White Mountain New Hampshire. We will then be going to Essex Junction Vermont for a FMCA Rally starting June 30th.