Hershey, PA

It's the sweetest place on Earth! It's true, the town smells like chocolate when the wind is right. Here in Derry Township (though the Post Office is named Hershey, the town has never officially changed its name), the main street is named Chocolate Drive and the street lamps are shaped like the famous kisses. There are no tours of the actual factory anymore, but you can tour a mockup at Chocolate World, so of course, we did!

Our plans to head for New England for the fall colors had to change when I was summoned to jury duty. But we headed east anyway, and have found that the Allegheny Mountains are beautiful this time of year. We'll be in Lancaster for a day or two, then we're off to Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley for a week. It's perfect fall weather in this part of the world, cool and sunny...most days, anyway.

Skokie, IL

We stayed in Illinois a lot longer than orginally planned--I was called to jury duty in late September, so our plans to head to New England for fall colors are on hold. But it meant we had more time to spend with friends and family there. JoAnn and Irene have a new pug puppy...now, get this right, to say her name properly, throw your head back like Marlon Brando and yell, "STELL-LLA"! She's shown here in the Halloween sweater her Aunt Cory picked out for her!

And of course, we visited with our godsons--growing like weeds, they are. We made our annual trip to Magic Waters in Rockford, where they each got tattoos...the kind that last about four days. That's Jim on the left, Joe on the right.

La Pine, OR

The snow was still blocking the road to the top of Paulina Peak the Sunday we drove out to visit "the highest flush toilet in Oregon," but we had a great day, anyway. Dad and I climbed up the obsidian field to look down over the valley while Cory and Mom stayed in the car down below. It was a steep climb, and just between us, I was considerably more winded than he was.

Our stay in LaPine extended several weeks longer than we orginally planned, while we waited for an appointment to repair our trailer's bedroom slide in Bend. But with those beautiful Cascade Mountains surrounding us, the thick, tall Ponderosa and jack pine forests all around, and our ongoing double-deck pinochle tournament with the folks to entertain us in the evenings, we had plenty of reasons to enjoy our stay.

One of our favorite haunts turned out to be a restaurant that recently opened in LaPine, Angel's Thai. Yup, we're big fans of Thai food...and Angel's serves the best we've ever tasted. It's run by two sisters (neither one is named Angel), one who cooks and one who manages the front. If you're in the area, make sure you try the Yum Nua (beef salad)--and trust us, save room for dessert. For weeks, we saw "mango and sticky rice" written on the board as the dessert special, but we didn't try it until we were leaving LaPine and the sisters gave us a serving to go as a good-bye gift. When delays on our repair took an extra day, we went back just to have more!

Piedras Blancas, CA

See that white blip, farthest to the right, out on the cliff? That was us, right on the Pacific Coast, just about 7 miles north of Hearst's Castle on CA-1. It was a totally primitive site, no water, no electric, no cable TV, no bathhouse or even outhouse, just parking. We had our portable generator, our satellite dish and a little water in the freshwater tank, though, so we were fine.

Was it a spot we'd have picked? Probably not--we whizzed right by here nearly three days earlier on our way north. But that was before we broke down for the second time this month and had to leave the trailer for several nights in a turnout at the top of a mountain road. After help from one of the really good guys (if you know Craig Isom of Cambria, CA, tell him the ladies are still saying 'thanks'), we limped down the hill to the first safe place we could find. This was it, and for three days, until we could get to the nearest repair shop...

...this was the view from our front door. Sometimes, circumstances force you to slow down a little...and listen to the surf. Lesson learned.

San Simeon, California

On this short stretch of beach on the Pacific Coast Highway, elephant seals come to mate, molt, and bath in the California sunlight.

It reminded us just a little of the Chicago beach on the 4th of July...

During our drives back and forth along CA-1, we saw a lot of these fellows.

30 miles north of Cambria, California

The Escapade over, we headed for San Francisco. On the Pacific Coast Highway, coming out of a hairpin curve headed downhill, I applied the brakes, something snapped and we were smoking again. Thank heaven there was a turnout big enough for us only 100 yards ahead.

This time, there was no way to limp, and no help was available until Monday, so we were stuck on the side of a coastal mountain road, out where the cell phones wouldn’t work and the nearest town (Cambria, only 6000 people) was 30 miles away. We stopped at a Chevron station there, where a nice young man spent almost an hour on the phone trying to find a mobile mechanic or road service that would go up on the mountain to help us. No dice. And because of height restrictions on that highway, a low-boy wasn’t an option even if we could find one! So we took a motel room in San Simeon. The thought of trying to sleep in our trailer on the side of a dark, deserted, twisty-turny mountain road made Cory too nervous, so she stayed there and manned the phone so someone could reach us. The thought of leaving our HOME 30 miles away and obviously deserted made me too nervous, so I went out there and stayed the nights with the dogs. We had purchased a small generator at the Escapade in Lancaster, so I had lights and could watch movies on the VCR and work on the computer.

Monday came and we still hadn’t found anyone to help—then on my way down the mountain, I passed the nice man from the Chevron station, going the other way. Seems he’d spent the whole weekend worrying about us, so he was going out to see if he could do anything to help. He wound up spending both Monday and Tuesday (his days off) chasing down parts to help us get rolling and get down the mountain to a repair shop 50 miles away. There, we learned that during the last repair, the last U-bolt hangers installed apparently weren't tightened down properly.

Santa Clarita, CA

Well, here was the solution to our problem. The shop and the manufacturer agreed that the original suspension design failed, so a beefier solution was installed that included welding a reinforcement to the frame and shortening the leaf brackets to stiffen them. So we're off to Lancaster, to the Spring Escapade, a week of social activity and seminars just for full-time RVers.