Schodack Island State Park, Albany, NY & Final Thoughts

Schodack Island State Park, Albany, NY

Thursday, June 29th, we head off in the morning for our next stop. Weather is sunny and cool. We have a nice drive through rural parts of New York state with not a lot of traffic but a fair amount of construction. Although since there is so little traffic, the construction poses no backup. Traffic got a little heavy around the Albany area and Gary had to quickly jut over a lane to avoid inadvertently getting off an Exit Only lane, which wasn’t marked as such. Shame on them!

We arrive at Schodack Island State Park at about 2:30 in the afternoon. This is a newer State Park in NY. I’m very excited to realize that this one is a pull thru site. Yay!! And, the pull thru sites are huge and very spacious. Gary said it reminded him of the campgrounds in Georgia with tons of trees and greenery. Also, lots of bunnies. Kya hasn’t quite picked up on this yet.

We have a quiet rest of the day. It’s humid and very still and a tad buggy. We opt to stay in with the air-conditioning rather than walking around to check out the remainder of the campground. And, once again, no wifi and no television stations. We watched a James Bond movie. Gary’s in 7th heaven with these. I don’t mind them.

Friday, June 30th, our last day before arriving home. We don’t have any plans for today. We chose this campground because it was half-way to home so would make Saturday not too long of a travel day. Although since it’s also July 4th weekend… all bets will be off. We may have headed home today, rather than spending an extra night, but this campground has a 2-night minimum. Since it’s paid for, we may as well enjoy it.

Weather is humid today and still. Thunderstorms and rain are expected in the afternoon. We take a walk first thing in the morning down to the boat launch area and have a view of the Hudson River which is quite nice. We think about doing one of the hiking trails but they aren’t all that well maintained…. narrow, weedy, and grown over a bit. I look at it and think tick-city. Maybe not. There’s a nature preserve on the peninsula. We drive over to it but the path looks like a replica of the one in the campground… tick-city. Maybe not.

Next up… check our route out of here for tomorrow. I’ve gotten into a habit of checking our exit strategy for the following day. These campgrounds tend to be off the beaten path and invariably when we leave the campground the following day, we aren’t necessarily going back the way we came. Same is true for this one. We head off on the route that google maps has tracked for us and the onboard GPS of the truck. After driving it for a few miles, we realize this is not RV friendly. We come back to camp and decide on Plan B. We’ll do a little back tracking toward Albany tomorrow and get on 90 East that way. Better that than doing damage to the rig the day we’re driving home. Wouldn’t that suck.

The rest of the afternoon is reading, coloring for me, relaxing, walking Kya and in general chillin’.

FINAL THOUGHTS….

This truly has been a remarkably unique and rewarding experience… traveling thru 23 states and 9500 miles over 6 1/2 weeks. We look forward to many more adventures down the road! In the meantime, we’ll look forward to being home! We’ve never traveled this much by vehicle. I didn’t know how I would like an extended road trip… would it be too many hours in the car? Would it be boring? It definitely has NOT been boring. We felt truly privileged to travel across country and see landscapes that we’ve never experienced before… vast open vistas, acres of farmland, rolling hills that go on forever, mountains, freight trains that are a mere breadth from the highway, the list could go on and on. More than once I was brought to tears by the shear beauty.

Gary gets credit for doing all the planning…. yes, we had discussions about the general route we’d travel heading out west and then back east and roughly what we wanted to see along the way. But he did all the planning of where we were staying, how long at each place, what we could see while we were there. We knew at the outset that we couldn’t see everything there is to see in 6 1/2 weeks. I told Gary, “we’ll see snippets.” It’s a chance to touch down in all these wonderful places, see what we can and then move on… knowing, we can come back at some future time.

The surprises along the way were the people we met. It reinforces my belief that most people are good and kind on this earth… particularly travelers. They are friendly, helpful, and gregarious… the Chinese who were smitten with Kya, all the friendly and helpful campers, the lady I rescued from the bathroom stall and Sherri, the naval officer, who wanted me to personally thank Mom for her service because Mom paved the way for future generations.

I also realize that as fortunate as we’ve been to see all these amazing things, that there is SO MUCH more out there to see. The states we haven’t yet been too, the states we have been too but there is still more we want to see there, and all the places in Canada not yet visited. Or all the places internationally that we’d love to see. We’ve just touched the surface.

This type of trip did get me out of my comfort zone… leaving work for 8 weeks and arranging for all that, towing our house(!), and being on the move every few days. But, life should be about getting out of our comfort zone and growing every now and then. Otherwise, what’s the point….

P.S. We arrived home safe and sound at about 1:30 on Saturday, July 1, and managed to get the rig parked in our driveway. No small feat for us! We are currently enjoying a nice visit with Andy & Linda before they head back to TX later this week. And, we look forward to spending the 4th with them and Mom and Ellen & Wayne. To the rest of our amazing family and friends, we wish you a safe and happy 4th! Thank you so much for sharing in our travels. We appreciate all of you more than you know!! xoxo