"Sliding" Over to St Louis

I am very surprised to say that I actually did not mind the Hudson River Valley area of New York. It is very wooded just like home and has some great "mountains' in the Catskills, not so much like home. I can imagine trying to drive some of their twisting, turning roads during the winter....it must be quite interesting considering the fact that people from New York seem to think that the posted speed limit is merely a suggestion. I will take back everything nasty I have said about Illinois drivers! People who live along the I-95 corridor take the blue ribbon in the "Assinine Psycho Driver" category for sure.

Here are a couple of views looking east across the Hudson River from Newburgh New York towards Beacon New York. As with most of the areas near the Hudson there is a toll bridge if you are heading east. Thankfully it only cost us $5.50 with the rig and Avalanche unlike the Tappan Zee Bridge farther south which was over $25!

We spent the two weeks at Clarence Fahnestock State Park a few miles south of Fishkill. It is located in an awesome area but for obvious reasons I guess, the park's amenities are really run down. Part of the Appalachian Trail runs through the park so it is geared more to tenters than anything. There are no hook ups whatsoever and the sites are quite small. For some ungodly reason Reservations.gov let me reserve a site that we didn't even fit into although I had entered 36' at the RV size. Upon arriving they moved us to a larger site down in the hollow next to the crazy, drunk Russians. It would have been nice to stay put there as there was room to throw ball for the dogs but unfortunately the internet reception was nil so we had to move further up a hill. They then put us in their overflow site which doesn't even show up on the online reservation page. They were nice enough to let us stay the Saturday and Sunday of the 4th of July weekend although the park was full and they didn't mind the truck camper being on the site like most places do. So all in all we were able to stay for almost 2 weeks for $130 when the only other campgrounds nearby, the KOA, would have cost that or more per week per campsite. Would I go back to that park? Definitely not because of it being soooo run down. I realize that the State of New York is "broke" just like Wisconsin ;-) but the park had big ruts in the roads, campsites did not get cleaned up well when campers left and the bathrooms! The bathrooms were as bad as the bathrooms at the dumpy campground west of Atlanta that we stayed in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Fahnestock_State_Park

Because Bill worked on Thursday night we didn't hit the road until later afternoon on Friday. He will be working next in St. Louis on a week long Family Dollar remodel. Prime had said that after New York they would be "sliding him over to St. Louis" and then probably back to Atlanta for a bit. Well, in my book a 1000 mile trip is not exactly "sliding over" anywhere! Fifty miles ok, but 1000? Nope, definitely not a slide