Well,  I got to the wedding After 2 weeks of traveling around NY and had a great time with the rest of my family and even recorded the entire ceremony and threw together a video of it.  The Ceremony was just 20minutes long (though it seemed like hours) and was very touching.  The person presiding over the ceremony was a friend of the bride’s. And so in the ceremony there were some good tidbits about the bride most people might not know.  My son and I knew, so it made for some good laughs. The Bride and Groom had a long reading section of their own, explaining why they wanted to get married and what they “vow” to do to make it all work.  I was going to do a “YouTube Short” about my objections to the entire marriage, but I decided I should think it over until at least after the wedding.  There are some issues to be worked out (hee hee hee).  Stay tuned for the video.

After the wedding they had a few informal parties and get together for anyone who could not make the actual wedding.  They wanted to enjoy time with their friends and family without the formality of the wedding.  So much planning and set up and photographers that weddings are always like being in the middle of a tornado for the couple.  After all that I split south to get back home.  We did stop along the way though.

My current travel philosophy is to try to plan for a four hour travel day using Google Maps.  With that plan, for me and Akela, it takes just around 6 hours.  We stop for gas, we might stop again to pee (those 64oz sodas at the gas stations seem to filter through fast). Maybe stop for lunch or sight seeing. And we don’t go over 60-65mph.  We also take the US highways if at all possible.  There is so much more to see and it seems the gas is often 10-20cents cheaper than at the exits on the interstates.

So Avoiding Interstate 81 south from Syracuse, we took Rt-13 through Ithaca and the Finger Lakes to Corning, NY.   We used to live in Corning, NY.  I had my first safety manager job there and my second son was born there (though I tell him we found him in a cabbage patch).  Lots of great memories in that area.

But after Corning you cross over the border to Pa on What used to be Rt 15, and is now I-99.  Still not as heavily traveled as most N-S interstates,  and a great road none the less.  I believe it is mostly 70mph, as cars zoom by us going 75-80.  Truckers following that increase when they can.   But the trucks are way less.  There is a car passing us every 5minutes, versus every 15seconds on I-95 or I-81.  And the trucks are maybe once every 15 minutes.

But just over the NY-Pa border about 12miles is a group of lakes, Tioga, Hammond, and Cowanesque.  I did a blog a bit earlier about support your library. That was done while camping and videoing while staying at Tompkins Campground on Cowanesque Lake.  This time I went past Cowanesque Lake and Tompkins campground and stayed at Ives Run on Hammond Lake.  They are just 15miles apart, maybe just 10 miles further down the road.  Both of these campgrounds are Army Corp of Engineers (COE) campgrounds. The lakes are man made flood control lakes.  As a side note it is too bad they don’t seem to have any hydro-power on the dams.  Wonder if maybe they can retrofit them in the future.

But like all COE campgrounds these were pretty much first class built and very nice campgrounds.  I was at Tompkins on a busy August weekend coming up north and it was packed with people over 60 in 5th wheels.  The line at the dump station was long Sunday.  But it does have a really nice “no hook-up” area on a flat piece of land that it really quite cheap and that was less than 1/3 full.  So if you think you can manage it, stay there.  Closer to the boat launch and beach anyway.   Check out that video. There is a lot to do at Tompkins Campground on Cowanesque lake

But heading South we stopped at Ives Run. And like every other campsite we stopped at, it was raining.  The rain was nice enough to stop every so often, So we still got out and around between the storms, but it did cramp our style just a little.  The hosts at Ives were also not too helpful.  There is an amazing cut through the mountain that separates Hammond from Tioga lake.  A photo of it was on the reservation website. So I asked the host if she knew where that was and how to get to it.  She barked back at me that it was a restricted area and you can’t get there.  Well, maybe she thought I wanted to boat or swim there, because poking around I found out there is a great picnic area and overlook at the edge of the cut.  Check out that video.  It really is a cool bit of work.  I have no idea why they did that!

Well, not much more I can tell you that isn’t in the videos.  We only stayed at Ives for one quick night, and got up and left when they opened the gate at 7am.  Ives was nice and clean with great campsites for big rigs and not too bad for little rigs, but I felt sorry for the 2 tenters.  They had to listen to A/C or Heat Pumps running all around them.

Remember to look around the rest of the website.  I have a few Affiliate links if you feel like buying some solar of lithium batteries.  I get roughly 3-5% if you use my link.  Amazon tossed me off their affiliate program.  So the Amazon links are just for good products for your convenience.  My affiliate links should give you a discount on anything I promote.  That usually makes it cheaper than Amazon.  So there is good reason to check it out.  Also of course, there is the $Make a donation$ link at the top of the page.  The reason for that is if you use the YouTube “$Thanks” button they slice off a good size commission for themselves(30-40%).  If you use the $Make a Donation$  link I get all but 15-25cents Paypal charges as a processing fee.

Hope that wasn’t too crude or boring, Its just the business of travel and videos. Truthfully, if I wasn’t doing this I would be sitting on the couch getting very fat and destroying my brain with old western movies and news!  Just shoot me if it happens!!  Not that there is anything wrong if someone else does it, but Akela won’t let me!!

Stay Safe,  Stay Happy!
Rick &Akela
GoingNoWhereFast