Blessed by Alpacas

September 30, 2023 – Day 2

We covered last night’s truck stop report in the previous entry. That’s because Paul was typing while Susan did the first shift driving.

Driving was super easy. The flat NY state yielded to the gentle hills of PA and then into the oddity that is Ohio. The highways here are perfect, the coach very few creaks or crashes as we glided nearly silent down the smooth asphalt highway. But…the highways. Parts of it are some of the worst we’ve seen. It was as if Ohio saw a frost heave sign and said, “Here. Hold my beer.” We both counted and we have all our teeth. Yes it was that bone jarring at times.

We did get to drive under a train.

This is only interesting because yesterday we drove over a train. Susan was driving and I said “Hey, we’re driving over a train.” When you have thousands of miles of ahead of you the little things keep you amused. Somehow.

Hey Joan, did you know Pete has a side gig?

We told you we spend a lot of time trying to keep ourselves amused.

Oh, the screen. Man, it messes with the view. Advantage to the Subaru/trailer combo. Clifford wins every other category. Three times over.

Today was another 3 state day. Yesterday we had NH, VT and NY. Today we had NY, PA and OH. The states are going to get bigger now so we’ll be lucky to do 2 in a day.

We pulled into Holdfast Farm in Medway, OH. After we settled in we fed the alpacas. They came running when they saw we had bags of food. They’re quite tame, friendly and gently take food from your hand. Interesting tidbit here is that even if they don’t want food they’ll keep their head over your hand to keep it away from the others. It’s called “guarding their food.” So rotating a short time to each seemed fair. Once they figured out that we were onto their game of “keep away” they ate a bit more often. They’re lots more friendly than the alpacas we saw in SC. Oh, we got sneezed on. Several times. It was amusing and disgusting but we loved every second of it. Again we get to check off a bucket list item we didn’t know we had. That’s where the title of this entry came from. We have feed left over so we’ll try for some photos tomorrow morning.

(Paul here: Susan got the first scratch on the coach. Whoo hoo! I was worried it would be me. Susan claims I had the first scratch since the screen room I setup blew into the side but I’m blaming the weather for that.)

Oh, it is hot here. It was 81 degrees at 6pm. We have the AC on. We had the wood stove on a week or so ago back home.

Morning update. We wanted to get up a bit earlier this morning, 7:15AM. It was still dark here at 7:15. Sunrise here is at 7:32, back in Keene it is 6:46. We are just that much further west from home. I’m pretty sure we cross a time zone today. Check-in at the campground is 3PM and we’re not sure which time zone the GPS is giving us. LOL.

Daily: 398

Total: 767

Miles/Day: 385

Look at that last number, averaging 385 a day. Sure, we’re fresh but we could never do that towing. Each day we spend in this coach the more we know it was the right decision.