Back to NJ and then to the Poconos

June 28 - July 09 Tuesday, 2013  

Friday June 28 we pulled the relatively short distance of 193 miles to our friends’ Debbie and Ian’s house in Franklinville, NJ.  During the trip, we started to smell battery acid inside the truck cab.  After we arrived at Debbie and Ian's we found out that our truck batteries were just not going to make it.  The driver side battery (truck has 2 batteries) was boiling with steam coming out.  I replaced the liquid with distilled water and hoped for the best.  

The next morning the batteries were completely dead. Ian and Rob both connected their trucks batteries to mine and finally we got enough power to start our truck.  I drove the truck to do some errands for about an hour.  After getting back I turned off the truck and it restarted without a problem. 

However, the next morning the batteries were completely dead again.  With the symptoms of boiling and batteries being drained that quickly, it's probably shorted cells in the battery(s). After having the batteries get very low back in Indiana, we were going to try to get to NJ to have Patty's son replace them.  We were still 2 weeks from having that done, but we needed to replace them now.  I called our emergency roadside service from Coach-Net and they sent someone to jump start me.  I then went to Pep Boys for replacements.

We were at Debbie and Ian's to help celebrate Debbie’s son Erik’s Graduation from college.   We moochdocked in their driveway for 3 nights.  This was our first time back in NJ with friends since December.  The next few weeks we will be catching up with friends and family from NJ and this was our first stop.

Our rig in Debbie and Ian's yard.

 

The radio station WMMR from Philadelphia came to hand out give aways at the party

Monday July 01, we pulled again a short distance of 112 miles from Franklinville, NJ to the Sunny Rest Resort in Palmerton, PA.  We made reservations here last year when we were here with friends before we had our RV.  This is a big RV and hotel resort sitting on 190 acres.  It is also relatively expensive for a long term stay at $79 a night (we will be here for 12 days).  This stay is mainly about getting together with friends so it really doesn't matter about the cost. 

Pool area at Sunny Rest

Our site at Sunny Rest

 

View from the campground of the Poconos

We are here with, at last count, 31 friends including us.  It was a great time!!  Debbie and Ian do the scheduling of meals and also host the “base camp” for the meals.  Each couple is responsible for a meal over the holiday weekend. It’s just a lot of fun.  This is our second year doing this and we have found that the working together for these meals really makes the friendship stronger.  It also makes for many, many, memories.  Thanks Deb and Ian for continuing to do this even though we know it can be trying at times.

This bear met us every day at the top of the trail from the pool

The irish pub in Jim Thorpe we had a dinner in with friends on Tuesday July 2

Another restaurant we had dinner with 11 of us on Wednesday night July 3rd.

Water falls with lots of fog that was just across the street from the Riverwalck Restaurant

Sunday and Monday July 07 and 08, we said goodbye to everybody as they were going back to work.  Now it is just us here at the resort.  Monday, after everyone left we just relaxed on our own.  For dinner we finally got to eat the fresh Jersey Tomatoes we bought just after we arrived in NJ last week.  We used the tomatoes to make BLOT sandwiches; the O is for onion by the way. Just love BLOTs!  We ended the day with a mile walk and then Patty sang a song at Karaoke at the resort bar Streakers.

Tuesday the 9th I played a good 1.5 hours of water volleyball in the morning.  That was a pretty good workout.  I love playing water volleyball and now that the resort is much less crowded it’s much more fun.  Patty went to the town of Jim Thorpe to an urgent care place to have a rash on her arm looked at.  It was determined that she had contact dermatitis. We are thinking it may have come from the very crowded swimming pool here at the resort over the weekend.  The pool was very warm and had, I’m guessing, 200 people in it at any given time.  We ended the day with T-bones on the grille and then a visit to the hot tub.

Tomorrow it supposed to rain most of the day so we will most likely just chill out in the RV with a movie, book, and a nap.  

Life is good!
Stay tuned!