Category Archives: camping

Allegany State Park, camera, camping, Dash Cam

Another Allegany trip (Quaker Area)

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Some of our friends traditionally spend the long weekend of Columbus Day in cabins on the Quaker side of the Allegany State Park, near  Salamanca, NY.  While we weren’t looking to rent a cabin when we have the bus, we did want to go and spend time for them.  Unfortunately, RVs aren’t allowed in the cabin areas, so, we spent the weekend in the Cain Hollow campground.

Compared to the Red House Campground I described from when we spent the week there, the Cain Hollow campground was steeper, and the bathroom facilities were a bit more sparse – though both males and females had a utility sink! But the sites had more trees and bushes (and streams) between them, so they were more secluded than the Red House sites.

Our trip was slowed by an accident (and people not understanding how to efficiently merge), West Valley Fire Department’s “Fill The Boot” roadbock, and Ellicotville’s Fall Festival being set-up. After that, though, the travel was pretty standard, though once we got off of I-86/NY 17 onto NY 280, there was some very nice scenery where the road followed along the banks of the Allegheny River/Kinzua Reservoir on the way to the Quaker Area entrance to the Park.  Once we were in the park, which you enter by the edge of Quaker Lake, giving a spectacular view along it’s length, we drove past the campsite area to the Rental Office, only to find that we could have checked in at the entrance to the campgrounds, as it was a Friday evening.

Once there, I watched for signage to get to our site, as it was obvious from our time at the Red House campsite that the signage essentially directed traffic in particular directions to produce one-way travel through the loops.  There, it was obvious when someone went the ‘wrong’ way, and often startled pedestrians, and I didn’t want to be that person.  Unfortunately, as I was informed later by the camp Captain, the sign that would have nicely directed us efficiently up the hill was missing, so we took a scenic tour of the campground to get to our site. (All this is in the dashcam video.)

The only bad thing that I could find to complain about was the light pollution.  Perhaps some of this is due to our site being directly across from a bathroom whose light flooded our site (well, at least where the bus was parked) all night, but one clear evening when I wanted to see the stars, I had to walk all the way out of the campsite and around to Quaker Lake in order to get anything like a clear view of the sky in any of the open places.  The area of the grassy field near the entrance to the campground seemed like it would be promising, but the garbage dumping area had a 30′ pole with a big sodium arc light atop it, so the area was flooded with light.

We also found that the Quaker Area is much more spread out than the Red House Area.  Even with Red House Lake being in the middle of things, we could bike around to every place we wanted to go, quickly and easily.  Quaker was not like this, as to get from the campground to the cabin where our friends were was about 5 miles, and while we brought our bikes, they never really made it out of the bus.

Us at Thunder Rocks!
Us at Thunder Rocks!

We did cooking both on the stove and on the fire, and as the October nights were getting colder & darker earlier, the seven of us ate in the bus in a slightly unplanned way.  We went hiking around Science Lake, and climbed Thunder Rocks.  These are great, huge hunks of rock and some are easy to climb unaided, others nearly impossible, and they litter the top of the mountain  along through the woods.

Overall, we had a great time!

 

 

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)

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(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, Review

Review: Glamping with MaryJane

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So, my wife got a copy of “Glamping with MaryJane” out of the library, because we had heard that Glamping (Glamour Camping) was a term that was applied to people who went above and beyond when it came to camping, as opposed to minimalists. In going with our (kind of) Steampunk/Erie Canalboat sort of Victorian theme, we thought it would fit with us, as I’m happy to have fancy lamps, a set of silver plate for meals, and lots of elaborate items and woodwork. I read through it, and thought a review here would be appropriate.

First, let me say that the book is pretty. There are really lovely pictures of things, from campers to food. But there’s not as much substance as I would have expected from a book this size.

We do get a background on MaryJane Butters, and her ‘her-story’ with camping parents, living rough while working for the Forest Service, and how she’s set up her own wall-tent B&B.

But what I would want out of the book is the practical information on how-to. She devotes four pages to a photo spread of tearing down her vintage camper, and showing the damage that she encountered (the scheduled re-build didn’t get done before the manuscript deadline, but working on my own project I know how easily that happens,) which is the same amount of pages that she devotes to Insurance (what kinds there are and whether you need any), though that section also has a full-page image with a single paragraph of text, and another with no text instead of information (and neither are pictures that conjure up ‘insurance’ to me).

She does have some neat plans for folding chairs & cots, and for building a massive wall tent structure (including concrete pillars), and some recipes that you can make while Glamping (though her ‘Budget Mix’ is just her own brand of biscuit mix). She also has some decorating and theme ‘flavoring’ ideas, such draping old necklaces over your lamp to make it more elegant, or using a particular theme (such as Old West/Cowgirl, or Rosie the Riviter) as a unifying motif.

The thing that got me, though, was that Glamping, is (in MaryJane’s concept) apparently only a thing women can do. This is evident in little indications throughout the text (with the differences between how men and women change the oil in their cars – his involves much beer and much mess, hers involves a mechanic, a cup of coffee, and a nail file), but becomes blatant when she calls glamping ‘girl camping’ and repeatedly that men ‘don’t get it.’

But, if you want to try your hand at ‘Glamping’, want a pretty book to look though, or want some Glamping recipies or rustic plans, then check it out.