Steep Hills, Good Mac & Cheese & Beer
March 16, 2024 – Day 1
Keene NH to Cairo NY – Old Factory Brewery
We had originally planned on leaving on Sunday the 17th and making a long days drive to Lums Pond State Park Campground in Bear, DE. We found out we could possibly have an RV tech look at our battery bay, prepping for the upcoming battery upgrade, so we found a Harvest Host in Cairo NY. We could stop by the RV shop on Saturday morning and then make a short drive to just south of Albany.
The RV tech didn’t work Saturdays but we liked the idea of leaving on Saturday anyhow, so we just stuck to the plan. We had completely emptied the RV for the winter and so we spent the previous week loading it all back in. We left the last minute stuff like food, toiletries and clothing for the last day and man, that took way longer than expected. We had hoped to leave by 2pm but didn’t get out the door until 3:30.
Still, that wasn’t horrible, we expected to hit the Brewery before dark, and that’s always a goal.
Paul and his friend Glenn had just rotated the tires on the Jeep so that meant the lug nuts’ torque needed to be checked. We found this cool old truck in the parking lot that we pulled into to check Paul’s nuts which, according to Wikipedia, are a fruit consisting of a hard or tough nutshell protecting a kernel which is usually edible. (paul here, I’ll, uhh, approve that.)
Then up into the hills of southern VT. This is a road that had terrified us when we were starting out trailering, but now, frankly, we’re used to it and actually prefer it to taking 91 down to Springfield MA and then the Mass Pike out to Albany. The scenery is far more beautiful through VT, but we don’t get to see the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield.
The little town of Wilmington, VT is prone to flooding . We always find it interesting to see the flood level marker, especially the marker from storm in our lifetime! It was in 2011 when Hurricane Sandy devastated Vermont.
We saw a herd of about 30 deer along the I-87 in NY, but aside from that, we had an uneventful trip to Cairo and pulled into the Old Factory Brewery’s parking lot, on a Saturday night of St. Patrick’s Day weekend! We were lucky to find a place to park our 50-55 feet of motorhome. We were 4″ low in the rear, which is a problem since you never want to raise the rear tires off the ground with the levelers. You don’t want to do this with the fronts either, but it is doubly true with the rears since the rear tires have the parking brakes!
We had the Buffalo Mac and Cheese and the Pulled Pork Mac and Cheese, along with a stout and an IPA. Paul wanted to try a taste the cherry IPA, which surprised him, since he normally dislikes adulterated stouts. On the first sip he wasn’t sure he loved it or hated it. Sadly, the keg was empty and the bartender just comped him about a 1/3 of a pint instead of a taste, we say sadly because Paul eventually decided he really liked it. He ordered the boring, normal, stout for the meal.
You’d think that being at a Harvest Host that is a Brew Pub on St. Patrick’s Day would be noisy. It wasn’t! About 9:30 pm everyone was pretty much gone. Cairo, NY is a pretty sleepy town, especially for a town without pyramids.
We were able to put the passenger-side slides out. We didn’t do the driver’s side since that was the travel lane. We didn’t want to get clipped by any cars entering or leaving the parking lot. It wasn’t our usual spaciousness but we had plenty of room to move around.
Daily: 138
Miles/Day: 138
mpg: ? Haven’t filled up yet…