Labor day for most of my life has meant going to the New York State Fair. In 50 years I think I have missed the fair maybe 3 times. The New York State Fair is a huge extravaganza. It has always been touted as one of the biggest fairs, and largest Midway’s with a variety of rides in the country. And from what I’ve seen it may be one of the top 10 in size and things to do there. When I was in West Virginia last month they were having their state fair, and it was extremely small. I’ve been to the Pennsylvania state fair, the Vermont state fair, the New Hampshire state fair, and I believe Connecticut. None of them hold a candle to the New York State fair. So I’m spending just a little bit of Labor Day homesick for Syracuse. There are a lot of things in New York that I’m so familiar with that I miss down here in North Carolina.  And I’m not sure how to substitute something in North Carolina to take its place. But with every change comes memories and reminisces of THE “GOOD OLD DAYS”. So we will get by and move along !

Life at work got remarkably better this week. I finally got to hire an assistant. She isn’t really an assistant, but an equivalent with no experience. I have been trying to hire someone since February. So I’ve been reviewing applications, doing interviews, and filing paperwork to hire people. But the mucky muck corporate people keep vetoing my hirer choices saying they did not have enough experience or qualifications. This person was an intern at a Volvo truck plant, and has a Masters degree in industrial hygiene from NIOSH and West Virginia University in respiratory protection. Since our plant has roughly 50 spray painters and 10 welders we use a lot of respiratory protection to keep them out of fumes and vapors. So her experience and knowledge hopefully will be a big help in that area. But her lack of experience in business might mean that she could end up going head-to-head with production people frequently. Everybody knows the regulations and the requirements, but not everybody knows how to apply them in a business application so that your covering the health and safety requirements and still allowing a business to run efficiently. So we shall see how she works out and hopefully it will lighten my load just a tad.

On the video front, we have completed our trips to West Virginia for the time being. We already talked a little bit about some of the videos we put up from the West Virginia trips, The Best of West Virginia, and the Camp Creek Campground adventures. We have a kind of short in not so exciting review of the New River Gorge National Park coming up. I don’t think I did a real good job reviewing the park and all the possibilities because when we were there it was so incredibly hot, and Dakota is not up to hiking around in that heat. And really neither am I. Also the restrictions in the national parks are always a bit restrictive for me with the dogs, and of course drones are prohibited despite the fact that they are the best places in the world to fly a drone. So while we did a review of a couple places you can see the new River Gorge that are interesting, not really my best work I don’t think.

I do believe the best part of all the West Virginia trips has got to be our camping at Babcock State Forest Campground. The amount of stuff that they have at this particular state park, campground and forest makes it nearly impossible to not have a great time. We explored around, and did some hiking, and the boys had a ball. The weather and temperature was just about perfect, although the humidity was at 100% or better. I’m impressed especially with their cabins. It seems they have a cabin for any type of person or budget. And they seem to have a lot of miles of hiking trails/biking trails that go in either small loops or long trails, depending on what kind of hike you want. The one really funny thing that occurred while we were camping is that our campsite was next to another trailer where the occupants of that trailer left their shoes and socks outside by their trailer door. In the morning when I let the boys out to go potty at 6 o’clock, it was relatively dark and AKela went down in the woods to do his business. But when he came back up he had a sneaker and a sock in his mouth. And I’m not sure if he found it down there on the hill and some other animal dragged it down there? But I really think stealthily climbed around and grabbed it and carried it around to our camper. It was a little on the slobbery side. I could only imagine what the owner would think in the morning putting on a wet slimy sock with a slightly chewed sneaker. Thankfully we were long gone before they got up.

Oh by the way, I have made a cheap purchase for the trailer of an “Insta Pot” knock off and really think its a great RV essential.  It is in my shopping section here if your interested. I will have a video out in the next week or two showing what it Does !  I bought the COSORI 6qt model.  And I’m so impressed.  I have added a few other things to the shopping pages, encase you haven’t been there in a while.  Videos on the item will be upcoming. (Click on the menu at the top of the page).

Well, I guess I’ll end it here because I can’t get this done with Dakota and Akela chewing on squeaky toys next to me and bugging me to play. They keep putting their slimy nasty gross toys and dripping wet mouth on my lap. Causing my lap to be all wet. So I’m going to have to break away from this and kill them. So thanks for stopping by and reading my boring blog. I’ll try to have something better in 2 weeks at the very latest.  Maybe I will be puppy free and own a cat !

Stay safe folks, stay happy,
Rick, Dakota, Akela (Caesar 2.0)