Dale & Patti Schumacher's Travel Log: Renewing Old Friendships

Busy days; this retirement. Catching up on the Blog after a few days of Living the Dream.

Monday - October 19, 2015: Up and at 'em; off to meet our friends Ken & Ellen Boger. We first met in the Spring of 1981. Dominique signed up to play softball and Dale agreed to coach her team. Heckle Furniture was the team sponsor. Ken & Ellen's oldest daughter, Gretchen, had signed up too. Neither Dominique nor Gretchen were the youngest players on the team; but, they were the smallest. Wee ones they were, at age 7-8. Ken offered to help out. We had a good year, Dale's last as a coach. And, we became family friends. We'd get together to play Mah Jong; even though Dale had trouble with the tile colors, because of his color blindness. One evening, the Boger's youngest daughter, Kirsten, was in the room when Dale asked for help with the color of a tile. Her response (age 5), "What's the matter, don't you know your colors yet?" After 24 years, or so, Dale still laughs out loud about that. From the mouths of babes.

On our way to the Boger cabin, we diverted to the Pocono Raceway for a quick look and picture. Have heard a lot about it; didn't really know where it was - Long Pond PA.

It was great seeing Ken & Ellen again after so many years. After a lot of conversation, we decided to drive to Jim Thorpe PA for lunch. We had a great lunch and enjoyed the quaint village of Jim Thorpe. You may recall that Jim Thorpe was a much celebrated Native American Olympian. You can Google his name (and the town's name) for the details. It is an interesting story to learn why the town changed its name, in recognition of his accomplishments.

Next visit with the Bogers need not take 28 years.

Tuesday - October 20, 2015: Domestic Day - laundry and supply replenishment. After we got the chores done, we thought is was time for another movie - Bridge of Spies. When we returned to the RV, it was dark. There was a car stopped near our site. A little out of the ordinary, but RV parks are friendly places and we've had a number of people ask about our small, Class A RV. The Class A has some advantages, but most are very large. As we got out of the van with groceries in hand, a man and woman approached as if they knew us. It was dark, we were not sure. It turned out to be Dylan and Maya's other grandparents, Barbara and Adam Szmyglewski. They live about one hour, thirty minutes away, in New Jersey. What a surprise. We talked and showed them our RV. Then we agreed to come to their house on Wednesday for dinner. They headed back home and we got the groceries put away.

Wednesday - October 21, 2015: We talked about seeing Bushkill Falls on the way to Bernardsville NJ. We concluded that we'd seen enough water falls for the time being and headed east. Barbara and Adam live in a secluded area of New Jersey. We've been quite surprised at how sparsely populated some areas of highly populated states are. We've found seclusion in every state we've traveled to. Nice! We had a great authentic Polish dinner, prepared by Barbara. Excellent! After an evening of enjoying the New Jersey countryside and getting better acquainted with members of the extended family, we headed back to Stroudsburg PA, ready for Travel Day, Thursday.

Thursday - October 22, 2015: When we planned our trip, we were going to spend some time near Harrisburg PA, visiting Patti's cousin Joanne and husband Steve. We planned to see Gettysburg PA and Lancaster PA (Amish Territory). Turns out they are in Florida while we're here. So, we had a change of plans. We decided to visit Patti's favorite vacation destination when she grew up near Philadelphia PA - Atlantic City NJ. She still has relatives in the area. So, we decided to visit Gettysburg and Lancaster in conjunction with our stay in the DC area. And, headed to Galloway New Jersey. Our RV Park borders the Atlantic City Airport. Interesting.

167 miles today.