Stan and Connie Spielbusch's Web Site

StanAndConnie.com

August 2000

Heading East...

August 1st-4th, 2000

We arrived at the Newmar factory to get some minor repairs done, and got the last open spot in their free camping area -- great timing! They take the motorhome in to the service bays at 6:00AM each morning and return it by 2:30, so you're on your own during the day. They have a great 24-hour customer lounge with internet access, TV, vending machines, etc., which was a nice surprise.

Since we arrived early Tuesday, we visited Amish Acres which is about one block away from the factory. They have several things to do there, including a buggy ride, tour of an Amish home and farm, bakery, fudge shop, a "Threshers Dinner" restaurant, and a "round barn" live theater. We did everything but the buggy ride. Connie kept herself busy trying to eat fruit off of the trees.

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The dinner was a home-style dinner where they bring out lots of stuff and you can eat all you want. We did! Shoofly pie is apparently an Amish specialty, and is pretty good -- it has lots of sweet stuff like molasses, brown sugar, and honey. I think I know how it got its name!

The theater show was the best part. We saw "Plain and Fancy", a play that started in broadway about a New York couple who come to an Amish farm and end up staying with them for a couple days. It was pretty funny.

Wesnedsay we went to Shipshewana, which is a large Amish community and has some touristy things. They also claim to have the largest flea market in the country, or something like that. We went there first, of course, "just to look". After going through about half of it, our shopping bags were getting heavy and we decided to go see some other sites.

The downtown area was similar to Amish Acres, with restaurants, food shops, buggy rides, and lots of flowered landscaping. There were also a lot of real Amish people riding their horse-drawn buggies down the street (watch your step!).

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Thursday we went to Elkhart to visit some museums. We went to the RV Heritage Museum, which had a lot of old RV's on display, back to 1913 or something like that.

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We also stopped by the New York Central Railroad museum (yes, in Indiana!). It's pretty small, and the most interesting thing to me was the video of Lionel train commercials from the 1950's. The locomotive made out of toothpicks was pretty impressive too.

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Finally, we went to the S. Ray Miller Auto Museum, which is a private collection of 40 antique cars restored to perfection. This place was very impressive, and we had a lot of fun looking around. They do a great job of displaying the cars, too, with period artifacts, clothing, awards, historic information, and more. The collection is worth over $15 million, and each car is in working condition -- they are taken out for a drive a few times each year.

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I made a screen saver with 30 great antique auto photos from the museum -- check it out here!

Friday we stopped overnight in Ohio on our way to Pennsylvania. We actually stayed at a camping area in a turnpike travel plaza -- basically a parking lot with electrical outlets, but good enough for getting some sleep. We really like the travel plazas on the Ohio turnpike, they are huge, clean, have just about everything you need and are brand new (some are still being re-built).

August 5th-17th, 2000

We stayed at Fort Bellefonte campground in Pennsylvania for awhile to get caught up on things, and had a phone line set up. It was a pain to get the phone line going because Verizon (which just swallowed up Bell Atlantic) decided to go on strike. They finally got it working, though. The campground owners Henry and Ann were very gracious to let me use their FAX line in the office to get online when I needed to, even when I had to be online for 3 hours. They are really great people, and we hope to stop by here again soon.

It's very scenic around here, and I suppose you would say it's in the mountains. Not like the Rockies, though -- these look more like high rolling hills and completely covered with trees. The weather has been great, mostly in the high 70's and occasionally low 80s, with occasional showers.

Here's our rig nestled in the trees, with the mountain behind us:

Looking the other way (down the hill), we can see mountains on the other side of I-80 (it's down there somewhere, generally heard but not seen).

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There are some public caves nearby, even one that you ride a boat through, but we didn't get a chance to visit them. There are also some Amish communities (I think we're in or near Pennsylvania Dutch country) -- an Amish couple even come around the campground with their horse-drawn cart on Saturdays with bread and pastries that you can buy cheap, even Shoofly pie! Yum! I really like the molasses cookies too.

One day we "accidentally" drove through the historical town of Bellefonte. Unlike the flat areas like St. Charles, this town was built in a very hilly area with a fast-flowing river at the bottom. I had a lot of fun driving the Jeep up and down the roads, especially the little side roads that seemed to go straight up. I don't think Connie enjoyed it as much as I did, though ;-) I just wish I had my camera with me! (We were just going to get some groceries so I didn't expect scenery.)

We're also near Penn State college (in the town of State College, go figure!). I'm not that crazy about college towns necessarily (although historic colleges can be interesting), but it does mean that there are plenty of shopping areas available -- 3 Wal-Marts, lots of grocery stores, a nice new mall, etc. all in about a 10-by-10 mile area. The college must be known for agriculture, as there was a huge "garden" next to it with tons of flowers and vegetables, and they even have their own creamery.

New York, New York...

August 18th - 31st, 2000

We stayed in a KOA campground near Newburgh, NY for a couple weeks so we could visit friends and family in New York City. It's about 70 miles from the city, but there aren't any other decent RV parks closer. Rather than drive into the city, though, we took the bus -- it's about an hour and a half ride, and a good chance to read or take a nap! The Port Authority bus terminal in the city is pretty interesting in itself -- it's at least 4 stories with bus ramps to each level, as 7500 busses go into the city each day. There are several pigeons that live inside the terminal, flying around looking for hand outs, and the lower couple levels are like shopping malls, with lots of stores and diners.

One day we decided to take a guided bus tour of the city, which is organized by the campground -- the bus picked us up right at the campground. Although we both know the city pretty well and didn't really need a tour, we thought it would be interesting to see it from a tourist perspective, and fun to just play tourist and go along with a group. The tour took us to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Empire State Building, and South Street Seaport, and then drove around Times Square and other midtown attractions. It was a wonderfully cool and clear day. Here are some photos:

The Statue of Liberty: (no kidding!)

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A strange sight in such a modern harbor:

A view of downtown Manhattan from the Liberty ferry boat:

A ship/museum at the South Street Seaport:

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There were cows all over the city -- cows on parade, that is. I think it started in Chicago, but they are all over the place now, and obviously a big hit in New York. There is one floating in a fountain on an inner tube, a Moo Jersey Diner cow in the bus terminal, a stretch limoosine, and lots of others. Unfortunately this is the only one I got a good picture of:

The cows are created by local artists and students, and later auctioned off for charity.

It took 30 minutes to get through the line and get to the observation deck at the Empire State Building, which we heard was much shorter than most days (the line was shorter, not the building! ;-), but the view was great. There was a little fog toward downtown (they say there is rarely "smog" despite the traffic, because it gets blown away quickly). Notice the "flatiron" building at the fork in the road, and if you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, and nearby Ellis Island, in the harbor beyond.

By the way, do you know why the buildings are tall downtown, then short for a ways north, then get taller again? I heard that it is actually a factor of the geology -- the bedrock can support tall buildings some places and not others. I would imagine they would build more tall buildings everywhere if they could, so it makes sense to me.

As usual, pigeons were present, expecting hand-outs and not shy about it.

The Chrysler building was shining brightly, and I see there is a new building going up nearby that looks like it may be taller.

Some other interesting sights (there are a lot!) include a 3-D billboard that contains a complete set of apartment furnishings, and a multi-level parking lot (using elevators to make more parking spaces out of the available real estate):

We visited the new Hayden Planetarium, since we heard a lot about it on TV. It was fancy and pretty impressive looking, but I have to say that the show wasn't much better than the old one, or any typical planetarium show. It was interesting that it was all done with real photos and not artists conceptions (with lots of computer enhancement to make 3-D fly-throughs), but I think it was still too short of a show.

We also went to the World Financial Center, a fairly new place right across the street from the World Trade Center. It is really nice and includes a bit of a mall and fine dining places, but the best part is the atrium -- a huge glass enclosure that has palm trees (surely the only ones in New York) and a huge marble staircase. It is next to the river and has a great patio area outdoors with fountains, yacht docks, marble benches and shaded tables for dining, reading, or whatever. Here's an outdoor shot, where you can (almost) see the palm trees inside, and you can see the World Trade Center building through and above the atrium.

It's a really popular place to take wedding photos -- we sat there for awhile and saw numerous wedding parties take turns shooting photos and videos, without a break in between them. Here you can see one session in progress and another waiting in line.

Since Connie's son and his fiance' live in Chinatown, we spent quite a bit of time there. One day we had lunch with some of Connie's teachers from high school, which she hasn't seen in 10 years. It was a really nice visit, we just wish it could have been longer.

Newburgh Area

There are several historic sites, orchards, honey farms, and other interesting things to see in the Newburgh area, but we only had a chance to visit one, George Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site. It's basically a stone house with a nice view of the Hudson River, where General Washington spent 16 months commanding the troops. There is also a small museum, but it was temporarily closed so we just got the tour of the house. We were the only visitors there at the time (a slow weekday), so we basically got a personal tour. It's interesting to see how they lived (small quarters for about a dozen people!)

Thank you for visiting our travel site. Please visit our other sites too:

Campground Master -- A tracking program for your campground or inn. Easy to use and learn, but modern and powerful. One of the most inexpensive systems, great for small campgrounds. Designed by campground owners and full-time RVers.

MysteryPhotos -- Every week a new photo is shown, which may be a close-up of something, or a section of a common object or sight. Guess what it is and you might win a prize. Lots of fun for the whole family! Free screensaver and wallpaper too.

Awesome Screen Savers -- Cool photographic screen savers of the highest quality, for Windows PC's. Download FREE Lite versions of them all. Some are created with photos from our travels, some are awesome photos from NASA. (Contact me to have a screen saver made with your own photos!)

Cottonwood Software -- My shareware business site, currently featuring File-Ex 98: a Windows 95/98 dialog enhancement tool. Great for people who work with a lot of files.

Free -n- Cool -- Tons of Freebies, Giveaways, and Cool Sites -- all in one! You'll find a large selection of free samples you can get mailed to you, free games, screen savers, internet services, etc., plus hundreds of contests of all types, and a unique "intensely cool sites" list.