New York - Day 1 - Unadilla

Unadilla KOA
Tuesday, 1 May 2018

¡Feliz Primero de Mayo!  Happy May Day!  and Happy Labor Day! in many countries (including Mexico).

Last night on our bedtime walk I saw a luminescence in the trees that I thought at first was the stars showing through the branches.  But instead it was something on the branches of the trees, glowing brightly in the black night.  Almost as if lightning bugs stopped flying around and sat on branches and grew to about 3" long and started glowing steadily, instead of in short bursts.  There was a whole grove of trees that looked like they'd been decorated for a party.  It was beautiful.  I tried to take a photo but haven't spent the time to figure out how to make the camera take a nighttime pic.  Too bad.  I'd love to show you.

In that park, and elsewhere up here too, I've noticed the squirrels look almost silver.  I finally looked up grey squirrels and that's probably what they are.  They look sort of like our regular squirrels went to the beauty parlor and got their hair frosted.

I rarely saw a ranger at that last park so couldn't ask, but I think all those bare branches were aspen and birch trees.  Southern New York looks a whole lot like northern Pennsylvania (not a shock) and I'm seeing a lot of bare branches here too.  If they are birch and aspen, this area must be beautiful in the fall.

When I stopped to get gas in PA near the NY border I saw a car with Ontario plates and a bumper sticker that said Viva Terlingua!  I couldn't believe it.  He had a bicycle and a kayak on top of his car, so maybe he's been taking a long vacation.

I stopped at the Welcome to New York center and told the guy I would be spending a month here and did he have a map and anything else.  He gave me about 2" of maps and brochures and all kinds of here's what to see things.  And that's just for this southern/Finger Lakes area.  It's amazing what you can get if you ask.

NY highway exits are numbered sequentially, not based on mileage as they are in every other state I've been in so far.  So I'm about 25 miles along I-88, and didn't pick it up at the beginning, and this campground is at exit 11.  I'm not 11 miles from anywhere.  This is just the 11th exit from Binghamton.

They seem to be serious about people not texting on the roadways: the rest areas are billed as text stops, and highway signs urge people to wait x number of miles to the next text stop.

I think I can blame the behavior of the critters on the full moon.  They have every one of them been driving me crazy, and I've realized one of the drawbacks of my setup is that it's really hard for me to get away from them.  Dexter keeps flipping out over squirrels so much I can barely walk him - like he's never seen one before; Gracie can barely keep from getting carsick and needs me to keep the heat off (never mind if the interior temp is really cold) for hours and prefers the window open and I just pulled a tick off her; Jasper keeps not using the litter box at any chance he's given but insists on eliminating bodily waste while I'm driving and scuffing up the pads I've put in their crate in case this happens so his output gets on my comforter instead of the pads (I've just been to the laundromat for the 2nd time in 3 days).  Actually, I guess Roscoe's not doing anything lately.  The others have been such a hassle I hadn't realized he wasn't contributing.  That's a comfort of sorts.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Finger Lakes.

today's route

[Note: A couple of years after I wrote this, I figured out where the luminescence in the trees came from: it must have been one of those lights you mostly see at Christmas that revolve to shine various colored lights or designs on something - most often someone's garage, though obviously trees can work just fine.]