And now the end is near.

Noooooooo!! Summer is almost over!! We usually spend the last weeks of summer at the Cabin and Raquette Lake to sort of ease ourselves back into society. Our friends Barbara and Frank came for a visit which was awesome. We took them to see Letchworth State Park which they refer to as the Grand Canyon of The East. We had a nice lunch at the Glen Iris Inn.

On this trip to Letchworth, Greg and I noticed an Olympic sized pool. We parked to check it out and Lo and Behold, IT WAS FREE!!

We have had the cabin, I think 13 or 14 years and never knew of this pool. What a find!!

our cabin is located in Western Ny, in a town called Caneadea, which we often times refer to as “CanaRAINea.” And this trip did not fail us . It rained pretty much every day or night and the clouds kept the sun at bay. This is not good for a van that depends on the sun for solar energy to charge our battery and run our accessories. We even went out of the woods and to the beach to try to get as much AMP HOURS as we could.

No such luck, so as our battery slowly drained we still had fun. We went to the Wyoming County Fair in a town called Pike. We went another Amish style auction. We found what we thought was a pick your own blueberries but really was a pick your own flowers farm, which was pretty cool.

At the fair, they have a great demonstration of Colonial cooking done basically in a fireplace. Because of the rain, we stayed and watched the whole demonstration. I’d give my first born (sorry Kenny) to have a kitchen like this one.

The county fair did not disappoint. We saw some pretty vocal animals.

We really love the County Fair. One day we will make it to the State Fair in Syracuse!

We left the cabin to drive to Pennsylvania to do a rail trail bike ride. Along the way, or battery got so low that the solar power was no longer able to charge it. The only option was to give it a little juice with our inverter/ battery charger and to do this we needed electricity. So we were in search of a reasonable campground nearby the area where we wanted to do the bike ride. We found a pretty interesting place. It had electricity and it had showers. It also had a zillion crammed in campers and it also had a pretty big black bear in the dumpster. Thank goodness our “neighbors” warned us of the Bear. Cause we had gotten a pizza and we were about to throw the pizza box out into the dumpster. That would have been quite a shock!!

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture of the bear, but we watched him empty that dumpster out for a good half hour.

The next day we headed to the Bike Trail. We bikes 17 miles. That would be 2 miles too many if you ask my butt.

Currently we are in Raquette Lake spending our last few days of summer before school begins. A couple of our friends came up for a visit. We did some hiking and Kayaking.

We had to cross over a couple of beaver dams to get where we were going.

Greg did an overnighter in the high peaks. A bear got into one of the bear canisters. Ate all the food and made quite a mess. What was supposed to be a two night trip turned into a one night trip thanks to the hungry bear.

The company is sending me another canister. Hoping it will last a lifetime and we won’t have to deal with anymore bears!! Even with the Bear mishap, this has still been a great summer!! Not quite ready for it to end.