Camping on the Erie Canal

It has been a while since we last posted so we figured it was time for an update. We are now proud grandparents of a little boy that decided to come into the world a little early. This prompted us to change our plans and get to western New York 2 weeks earlier than we had planned. So, we left our beautiful boondocking site in the Badlands of South Dakota and drove 1500 miles in 2 and 1/2 days to get to the Rochester area as quickly as possible.

We had to cancel reservations we had made, including a 5-day rally for DRV Mobile Suites owners in Elkhart, IN. The next order of business was to find places to stay until our planned 2 month stay at Red Rock Ponds began on July 1. We accomplished this with additional days at Red Rock Ponds sandwiched between stays at Southwoods Campground in Byron, NY. The nice folks at Southwoods allowed us to spend the busy Father’s Day Weekend in their storage area, which allowed us to concentrate on helping our daughter and son-in-law.

We spent one night in the parking lot of Wilkins RV in Churchville in order to be there first thing in the morning for scheduled maintenance. We had our bearings inspected and repacked as well as an overall chassis inspection. The work on the bearings cost more than expected due to the type of axle on our rig. The labor to get to the bearings with disk brakes is more than the traditional drum brakes. There was also some confusion on the type of bearings we had, but a call to support at DRV headquarters cleared things up quickly. We were very pleased with the phone support we received from DRV but thought the service department at Wilkins should have known more about our rig. In the meantime, Dan thinks he’ll do the bearings himself next time.

The service took longer than planned and we ended up spending a night at our daughters house before we could move into Red Rock Ponds for the months of July and August. While here, we plan on doing a lot of small jobs around the RV and stocking up on items from Amazon. So far we have replaced the universal locks that were on some of our doors. For those not in the know, the RV industry uses the same key, the “751” for a lot of the locked bays so almost anyone can unlock these bays if you don’t change out the locks. There are more chores to be done but we somehow can’t seem to find the time :-).

One reason we aren’t getting to the chores, besides visiting our grandson in the NICU, is the recreational activities on the Erie Canal. We have been biking and running on the canal path that is accessed right outside the campground. We recently purchased an inflatable kayak and have taken it out on the canal a couple of times. For those that are interested in the details, we got an Advanced Elements convertible 15′ kayak that can be either tandem or single. We’ve enjoyed our relatively short jaunts on the canal with the kayak and are happy with our purchase so far. We are looking forward to having kayaking as an option when we resume our travels around the country.

We will be here on the Erie Canal for another month and then plan to goto Maine for a few weeks before returning through western New York and heading south in late September. Until then, we will continue to enjoy the canal, visit friends and former co-workers, and see family as they come in to visit our newest family member.