Category Archives: Uncategorized

Allegany State Park, Bus Driver, camping, driving, horns, safety, School Bus, school bus RV, Skoolie, trip, Uncategorized

A Week in the Bus (Allegany State Park trip – Part III)

Leave a comment

(Continued from Part II)

The Red House area of the Allegany State Park is really nicely suited to biking. All the camping and major cabin areas seem to be connected with paved trails, and all the roads within the tent/RV area were paved, with the sites having gravel parking area and some grassy area as well. Our site was actually very close to level, but many of the other sites were not, and I helped one of our neighbors with the ‘lego block’ style levelers, which worked for him nicely.

Staying for the whole week was great, and we only saw one other rainy day than the night of our arrival. However, we didn’t take advantage of any of the hiking trails, though we did bike the ‘on road’ biking trails and canoe on Red House Lake. This was due to my wife having a project that she needed to finish (and with the back of the bus pointed south, she got great natural light from all the windows), and our son spending most of the days at the Dresser-Rand Challenger Science Camp that one of our other homeschooling moms heroically set up and co-ordinated for other homeschoolers. A bunch of the homeschooling families were also staying in the Red House area (several right in our loop!), and so the kids were able to work at camp, then come back and play, grabbing their bikes (and often the wrong shoes) to go exploring the local playground in the camp area, or the park toward the lake, or the treed area between some campsites, or the creek that ran alongside the campgrounds down to the lake. As a result, we didn’t see our son much that week.

But having all three of our bikes meant finding a place to store them securely. I have a long Kryptonite lock and cable, and it worked out that I could lock all three bikes to the bus by fitting the lock around the bottom edge of the safety cage of the fuel tank.

Our site Captain was from Bradford, PA, and lives right by a rail line, and noticed the Super Tyfon right away. After chatting with him a bit, I promised him that I’d sound the horns when we left, as I was concerned about disturbing other campers. Upon leaving, when I sounded the horn, I got a thumbs-up from the Captain, and a not-surprising number of looks from others nearby. I got a report from one of our friends who left after we did that lots of people in the campsite cheered and called for the horn to sound again, but unfortunately, I was already off on the road by then.

Our trip home was via the Quaker area, as we were due to meet friends there in October. This meant going over one mountain/ridge, and then back along the same route, and then out of the park over the mountain with the ski area and fire tower. This was probably the longest, steepest climb I’ve taken the bus on, and I ended up in third gear, doing about 25 mph and watching the coolant temperature climb. I gave the bus some time to cool at the top, then took it down the other side of the mountain (seeing some neat views from the overlook), really getting comfortable with letting the bus engine retard the speed, and using (gentle) stab braking.

(In case you don’t know what stab braking is, it’s when you push down hard on the brakes to dramatically lower your speed, then let off again, letting the engine and transmission slow you down, until you get over a speed where they lose efficiency, then you ‘stab’ the brakes again.  It keeps the brakes from overheating, and your vehicle well under your control.)

camping, Destination, driving, school bus RV, Skoolie, trip, Uncategorized

Bonus Destination: The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (Rolled by One Man)

Leave a comment

Yet another of the destinations we want the bus to take us to is Darwin, Minnesota.  ‘But why?’ you might ask, never having heard of this significant location.  The answer, my friends, is that Darwin is the home of the Biggest Ball of Twine (Rolled by One Man).  Other places may vie for the ‘Biggest Ball’ title, but so far, Darwin’s holds the moral high ground by making it a single individual’s work (read more on the others here).

The enclosure that houses the ball.

The ball is 12 feet in diameter and weighs 17,400 pounds.  It took  Francis A. Johnson 29 years to complete, and he was apparently a stickler for turning the ball so that the windings would keep it circular (though it is reportedly sagging a bit since becoming a permanent exhibit).  The production of the ball was also apparently responsible for his death from accumulated twine dust.

Francis A. Johnson and his Twine Ball
Francis A. Johnson and his Twine Ball

And the Twine Ball Museum is open during the Twine Ball Day celebration, and by appointment (it also houses some baseball memorabilia).  That’s right, on the 2nd Saturday in August there’s a festival around the celebrated ball, which includes a Twine-K runn and the Minnesota Minn-e-Rods tractor pull, which takes place on Main Street where competitors find out who has the strongest lawn tractor (and you can check out their Facebook page – it doesn’t seem to get much traffic) .

All that said, Darwin (located about 60 miles almost due west of Minneapolis) isn’t too close to any of our other current destinations, though it could be a nice stop on our way out to the Badlands area and the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Luckily, there are a few places that look like viable overnight spots for the bus, like the Lakedale Campground, about five miles away, the Lake Ripley Campground about 10 miles away (though it’s a first-come place – they don’t take reservations), or the Cokato Lake RV Resort, about fourteen miles away.

And yes, the inspiration for this travel destination was Weird Al Yankovic’s 1989 song “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota,” which if you haven’t seen it, is here for your listening enjoyment:

camping, Destination, driving, school bus RV, Skoolie, trip, Uncategorized

Destination: The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Halifax, Nova Scotia

Leave a comment

Another of the locations that we want to take the bus to is in New Brunswick, namely, the Bay of Fundy (around Irving Nature Park, near St. John).  And if we’re going that far, Halifax, Nova Scotia isn’t far away.

The Bay of Fundy has some of the greatest tidal change in the world!
The Bay of Fundy has some of the greatest tidal change in the world!

The Bay of Fundy is a cool place for people who can appreciate geology.  One of the awesome things about it is that it has some of the greatest tidal range in the world, spanning about 56 feet of change between high and low tides, which happen twice each every day.   (Which hit a difference of 71 feet in 1869 in a perfect storm of a tropical cyclone, low barometric pressure, and a spring tide.)  In addition to this, the bay area is also seated in a rift valley where most of Nova Scotia could have peeled away from North America if that pesky mid-Atlantic Ridge hadn’t meddled in the tectonic action.

Just like in school. I'm talking about the Cobequid-Chedabucto fault at the top of the illustration (from http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/basinevolution.html)
Just like in school. I’m talking about the Cobequid-Chedabucto fault at the top of the illustration (from http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/basinevolution.html)

If you’re not big into geology, what you could take away from this is that a bunch of the rock layers in this area are igneous (volcanic), so they’re different from other areas of nearby Canada.  These rocks (and their differential rates of erosion) are one of the things that create the ‘flower pot’ rock formations people are walking and kayaking around in my first picture of the post.

Some of the cliffs around the Bay of Fundy.
Some of the cliffs around the Bay of Fundy.

It also created some really cool cliffs in the area.  The formation of the Bay and it’s high tides also creates ‘bores’ in some of the rivers that can actually reverse the direction of their flows as the tide comes in.  These ‘bores’ are places where a wave front makes it’s way up the river against the flow as the tide comes in.

The area just seems to beg for a canoe and some strong paddling arms.

But beyond (farther east) is Halifax, Nova Scotia.  It’s not quite as far east as we could reasonably take the bus on the continent (out near Sydney would be about it, unless we wanted to take the ferry out to Newfoundland and drive about there!).   But Halifax has some neat stuff, like the Alexander Keith’s brewery, which is one of the oldest breweries in Canada,

Citidel Hill (Fort George) in Halifax
Citidel Hill (Fort George) in Halifax

the Halifax Citadel (Fort George), a seven-pointed earthworked fort atop the hill that overlooks Halifax, and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which seems to have a wealth of  information on Halifax and Nova Scotia’s nautical contributions and history and is also the oldest and largest Maritime Museum in Canada.

There’s a nice-looking campsite about 20 km away, the Woodhaven RV Park.  It looks to be about a 90 minute bike ride to the southern area of Halifax, but the Citadel has parking for buses and RVs, so it might be a reasonable thing to just park the bus there and sight-see.

Part of the other fun of this trip is the driving! The trip to St. John should take us about 13 hours (847 mi) at Google speeds, and probably about 14.25 or so bus speeds – if we go via the Thruway and other highways.  According to Google, if we skirted just south of the Adirondacks through Ticonderoga, NY and up to Burlington, VT and through Lancaster, NH and Augusta and Bangor, ME, it would only take us 15 hours (827 mi), and probably 16-17 hours at bus speed.

From St. John to Halifax is only about 4.5 hours, though it seems a circuitous and scenic route as it curves around the Bay of Fundy, the Minas Bay, and Cobequid Bay.  And just off the path, of course, is Prince Edward Island for just that many more tempting sights.

As you can see, this trip could turn into something long, and would need some careful planning for overnights of travel, parking, and fuel stops.  But this gives some nice bones to flesh out!