2012 Vacation Day 2 - Saturday: and the skies opened...

No rush to pull out this morning as we only have about 4 hours driving ahead of us. Walked up and had a nice shower, in a well made, relatively new comfort station. Beautiful beam construction, with a vandal proof interior.
I am a bit of a comfort station observer, and this is a damn fine example. Nice big shower stalls, ceramic everywhere, and an adjustable low flow shower head. Well thought out.

Pulled out at 10:30, and hopped the 87 to below Albany, where we plan to cut across the 90 to the Taconic State Parkway. This runs all the way to the 84, which will get us to next destination, Kettletown SP, just north of Bridgeport, where we catch the ferry Sunday afternoon. Overcast day, with a bit of a drizzle... this was not to last long, as we soon found out.

Once we were on the 90 it started to rain, then it started to pour, then it started to simply pound. Traffic slowed right down, and a number of us put on our 4-ways... which helped keep track of the cars ahead. This went on for a few miles, then slowed somewhat as we took our exit onto the parkway. At the toll booth, we noticed a sign that stated "Passenger Cars Only". The toll guy did not say anything about our trailer, and let us through. This is very much a parkway, two lanes in each direction, kinda narrow, curbs... all very civil. We were not on it very far before it started to rain again, then in an instant, it was out of control. Torrents of water were pounding down, really dark out, thunder and lightning, the whole gamut of effects. On went the 4-ways again, and fortunately there was little traffic, except for the odd total clowns who were clearly oblivious to their surroundings. Then it got worse...serious white knuckle. The water was now flooding both sides of the road, and by this time, I am straddling the centerline as it was now a one lane parkway. I'm only doing about 40K by this time, but the water is coming up over the hood from the front wheels...simply crazy stuff. By now I am looking for any way off this parkway, and sure enough I spot an exit coming up. On go the waterlogged brakes, and somehow we wheel it onto a sideroad. It is still pounding, but now there is no one behind me and I can poke along to find somewhere to pull off. We spotted a big driveway
and wheeled right in. Turned off the car and it took a moment to pry my fingers off the steering wheel.

A simply gogeous house sat before us. Well maintained, nice big porch, great yard...and us.
We sat there a good 1/2 hour. The rain finally lessened, and the sky brightened up a bit. There was movement in the house, so Dale went and spoke to the woman who came to the door and explained why we were in her yard. Dale said she was quite nice, and had no issues with us being there. She did however, tell us that we would get a ticket if we remained on the parkway. We decided to heed her advice and looked at the maps to find a backroad route. The weather cleared, and the rest of the drive was awesome. We worked our way cross country, following secondary roads through little towns all the way. This is our preferred mode of travel, and as we already had our site reserved, we took our time and explored.

Pulled in around 4:30. Small campground, and where we are in pretty much an open field with some trees and a ring road. Not ideal, but pleasant enough. Got set up and chilled. We have been lucky the past two nights with having level sites, so we have been leaving the Santa Fe hitched up. Pretty convenient considering it is just an overnighter.

This little dent caught my eye. This was caused last night when I was jockeying the Alto into that spot at Moreau Lake. I knew I had it pretty tightly jack knifed, but did not realized at the time that the corner of the bike rack have produced this little dimple. The paint is not broken, so I think I will just leave it alone.

Walked around the campsite after dinner, seems to be a long lake, but not very wide. Nice enough campground overall.

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