Baby Trailer Goes East

July 13, 2022

July 10

Hit the road mid morning after sorting and packing most of the weekend. Baby Trailer is sporting brand new tires and is ready to collect some new bumper stickers. Grateful for Fiona and Olivia who will act as zoo keepers for the next two weeks and hold down the Fort at home. 3/5ths of the McGee Clan are heading east.

The border crossing went smoothly. It took less than 20 minutes before we were waved across. It did cost us a bag of oranges DOH! It’s been 5 1/2 years since we’ve been to the US, I forgot about “the orange rule”.

Traffic was good and the company was great. We activated our Skyroam hotspot for onboard wifi. For less than $10 it provides 24 hours of wifi for up to 10 devices at a time. It looks like I’ll need to upgrade it soon. Mine relies on 3G access which is being “retired” across much of areas I travel.

We use the wifi for navigation. I had thought we would be able to use it to register our license plates as we’ve been using the camera controlled toll roads. No luck. I’ll figure it out later this week.

We were a bit tight of time in reaching our Harvest Host by 6pm so only one stop at Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse for some take out lunch. Pork sliders and beef brisket sliders were well received. But, it is the sides that really make the meal. Three cheese fans approved their Mac and Cheese!

A quick gas fill up and we were on the road again. Our destination was Home Range Winery in Canaan, New York. Harvest Host is a membership ($90/year) “club” for RVers. In partnership with micro farms, wineries, golf course and breweries, RVs can camp for “free” on their properties. In exchange we are asked to spend at least $20 on their products. It’s pretty awesome and we appreciate that they will welcome Baby Trailer, who would fit on the table of most RVs.

Our hosts Susan and ??? were amazing. We enjoyed some wine and craft beers when we arrived. They had just wrapped up a busy afternoon of live music and dozens of guests were departing as we drove in and parked.

We had some great conversation with a local couple, who were determined to convince us (as the representatives for all of Canada) that not all Americans were completely crackers and that what the world sees on TV is truly not the norm and what we do see is simply not normal either.

We discovered that the tiny packages of oyster crackers (often served at bars/wineries) are commonly referred to as Como Crackers. Governor Como legislated that any establishment serving alcohol must serve/sell food. So $1 was added to every bar tab for Como Crackers, whether folks ate them or not.

We enjoyed the farm after all of the other guests had left. We walked the property and met all of the critters, took in the beautiful views of their gardens and we were invited to eat our way through the rows of endless raspberry bushes. Our host ??? Gifted us a harvest of zucchini for the next leg of our trip as well.