Oswego, New York

Sandi and I headed up to Oswego, New York for Memorial Day weekend and a family wedding. My cousin Fred Vigeant and Michele were getting married. We were able to find a campground right on Lake Ontario just a few miles from the church.

Their recption was help at the ELKS Club and it was a wonderful event. Great family fun and food and a wonderful way to celebrate their wedding.

And here are the lovely Bride Michele and her husband Fred, who is looking more and more like his father every year.



Mom and DAS joined the fun but they decided to stay at a local hotel rather than join us at the campground.



Every night on the lake was a light show. the sunsets were wonderful. A shame to say we never saw a sunrise since we slept in late each morning.

Sandi and I are usually drawn to the ocean rather than large lakes and this was a very large one. Here is the light house at the port entrance to Oswego outside of Fort Ontario.

We were treated to a special day at the fort. The local Civil War Militia was set up on the parade grounds in the center of the fort. It was pretty exciting and loud and we pretty much had the whole fort to ourselves.

I did say loud right? From the second floor of the officers housing we could see and hear the canons firing.

From here we are looking down from the embankments onto the parade grounds. Behind the gun crews you can see the entrance to the fort and to the left of that the enlisted mens quarters.

Herkimer Diamond Mine

We ran up to the Herkimer Diamond mines for a weekend with the Colimore's in New York.

It was our first visit and we came prepared with hammers and other impliments

of destruction and had a really great time.

Yes, there I am in the middle of a bunch of rocks looking for diamonds. There more rocks you crush the more diamonds you find. Or so Sandi told me.

We had two sites side by side right on the river. Very small sights so good thing the Colimore's were our neighbors.

Need I say more? It is a wonderful river and I would look forward to going again and bring our canoe for a good run down.

Gee, the truck looks bigger than our Airstream!

Thanks to a customer of ours, Don and I were able to enjoy a very expensive bottle of beer together. Who ever knew a bottle of Belgium beer could cost so much?

I don't think Donal really believed us that there were diamonds in the rocks but he had a great time making gravel.

Stella was busy digging for diamonds but she never found any.

Sunday morning Don treated us to a wonderful Mother's Day breakfast.

First '09 Rally

For the first NEU rally of the year we had a wonderful time. We took a moment to take a photo of all the units dogs, oh yea, we included their handlers too!

There is never a food shortage when we all get together.

Nor is there ever a shortage of silliness!

Easter 2009

Our first weekend out was Easter again this year with the new truck.

We camped at a local CT campground, Braile for the first time.

It was a cold rainy weekend but we did get out.

Sandi and I checked out the rally field and we will most likely hold

the Lost Dutchman 2010 rally here next year.

They did have plenty for the youngsters to do over the weekend, Easter Egg hunt, horseshoes,

speed sledding, and a scavenger hunt.

Did I mention a fishing derby?

Good-bye Dad

It is never easy to say good-by to a parent but today I lost my father.

He was a speacial man as all parents usually are.

Not to say we didn't have our differences but we always found our way back to each other.

One of the biggest reasons this blog exsists is that Dad always wanted pictures

of what we were doing and where we were.

So I say Good-bye to my number one fan and I will always keep

posting pictures because this is what I did for Dad.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in Plimouth 2008 with our Airstreaam friends. We have the tent all set up and turkeys started cooking this morning. We decided to try something different, cooking our turkey in a garbage can.

Turkey getting readied for the garbage can.


So, you pound a stake in the ground, wrap everything in foil and set the turkey on it.

Place the garbage can over the turkey, place white coals on top of the can and all around the bottom edge. They say cook eight minutes per pound. We will get back to you all later on how it worked out.

Salem 2008

Another great time with our Airstream family camping at Winter Island in Salem, MA.

Some of us had a better time than others but all want to do it again next year. We had all sorts of fun and a really good time just being together.


We also had all kinds of weather! Thursday night we had temps down to 22F, we had sunny days in the low 70's, cloudy days, very heavy rain and winds up to 60 MPH as noted above. We lost both of our EZE UPS in the storm. I took most of the best parts home and maybe able to rebuild one.


Kevin, Donal and Sandi enjoying the sunny day at camp on Friday.

Friday night we had a pumpkin carving contest. This was my attempt which did not win.

One of the really great things about Salem is that the town is truely haunted. Several times Kevin has captured auras in this cemetary. I set up one of the Nikon's with special ghost night vision in which you can actually see the energy of the cemetary. The National Enquirer has offered me tons of money for this shot. I am holding out for more.

For those of you who haven't seen us in our October State, here Sandi and I are in town.

Here it is the winning pumpkin with original special effects carved by our friend Nancy. She did an awesome job and really spent a very long time doing it. I think I burned my steaks waiting for her to finish! But with the fog it was worth it.

OK, so we over did it a bit. Actually it was Don who was out of control. Here is one of his three entries, the flaming horned stick your tongue out pumpkin. It was really very cool and burned for over 45 minutes!

Fun in the Country

Traveling around in the fall is always a wonderful experience each year. Part of the fun is not knowing where you are going or when you are goin to get there. You suddenly find yourself really enjoying the simplist of things.
And of course you never know what you will find when you get there. Almost Twilight Zone, in the middle of no where passenger cars from the long ago Connecticut Valley Rail System. These cars were in really great shape and perhaps someday they will find themselves back in service.
I had often thought wouldn't it be really cool to refurbish one of these old cars into an apartment on wheels complete with a kitchen, bath and living area and just piggy-back your way around the country. They certainly are big enough.
Fall produce is always great, green tomatos, pumpkind, squash and such. Just a wonderful time of year to fill the cellar for the coming winter months.
This is one very serious pumpkin cannon. The barrel is over thirty feet long and it's powered by two 500 gallon air tanks!
Good farm stands are easy to find the further away from cities you get.

Columbus Day Weekend

We always enjoy getting out this weekend of the year. The cool nights and the trees changing. We had planned on staying in Hyde Park, NY but when we arrived the campground was full. We ended up higher in the hills further north but it was a nice peaceful place to camp with full hook-ups. Problem was we weren't sure where we were so our plans changed a bit.

A rare photo of Sandi and I together. Not that we are never apart, it's just we never set one of the cameras up to take a timed photo.

Part of our original plan was to get to Rhinebeck Aeridrome which we did. It has been fifteen years or so since my last visit and nothing had really changed all that much.

The old planes were still flying and the Black Barron and Sir Percy will still at it fighting over Trudy True-Love, dropping bombs on each other and getting a little dog-fighting in.

One change was that they now have two 1949 Specials flying so plenty of folks were able to take to the skies for a ten minute flight.

Standing along the flight line, many of the same planes were on static display. They still have the original 1920's cars and did get a few of the early replica aircraft up in the air which still sport the original motors.