Visiting with Friends in Western Pennsylvania

June 28 - 30, 2014 

We got up to another beautiful summer day in North Central Ohio.  We had planned to leave the campsite around 11 am but that didn’t happen.  The official check out time here at this county park is 4 pm and I think that affected us knowing that.  We didn’t pull out of our site until almost 1 pm and then we had to dump the tanks which takes us about 20 minutes. So we were not on the road until 1:20 pm.

Our trip today on Saturday the 28th is to Mercer PA about 180 miles away in Western Pennsylvania.  Mercer is just a few miles north of I 80 and about 10 miles across the PA state line.  We are now hooked on traveling the smaller roads so we continued on route 20 for another 100 miles to almost Cleveland where we finally got onto the Ohio Turnpike (I 80) for the last 80 miles or so.  

Crossing into PA on I 80.

It was a great day for traveling and was also very hot and humid so we just had to stop and get an ice cream cone along the way.  This is what it is all about for us.  Just a nice relaxing drive seeing the countryside and stopping or doing whatever we want.

We are in the middle of the trucks parked along the Ohio Turnpike.
We stopped here for Ice Cream!

We arrived at RV Village Resort Campground in Mercer PA about 5:15 pm.  This is one of our latest arrival days ever. Anyway, this is a huge campground with mostly seasonal campers in it.  We are only staying 2 days so we were directed to a large grassy field that had electric and water only which is fine with us.  

Our site in RV Villages in Mercer PA.

This field is badly sloped making it very difficult to level the RV.  We were about 20 degrees leaning to the driver’s side of the rig after we unhitched from the truck.  Also, it has rained a lot here so the ground is very soft.  We don’t carry any wood to level with as every other time in the past 2 years we have never had too much problem leveling with our 6 point hydraulic leveling system.  This time when we hit the auto level the pistons on the unleveled side of the rig kept pushing into the ground including the pads that are supposed to keep that from happening.  We put huge rocks into the holes and tried over and over with no luck keeping the piston from continuing to push the rocks into the ground.  
Finally I went up the office and got some free fire wood to use under the pistons.  This time it worked but now our left side wheels are about 3 inches off of the ground.  It is not recommended that we do this with the wheels off of the ground but it is done by a lot of people.  To really do this right I would need 4-5 inches of wood planks under the wheels before I level the rig.  I really do not want to carry that much wood for a once in every 2 year situation. However, we have decided to get more of the plastic blocks which will help with some lesser unleveled issues we have had in the past.  We also destroyed 2 of our current plastic blocks in the process of leveling this evening.

Tires are off the ground and we have firewood under the leveling pistons.

Just a random picture of someone's site in the RV Village that I took on my morning walk/jog.

Now it was almost 7 pm by the time we were leveled and set up and we were meeting our friends Pete and Beckey for dinner.  They came by to meet us just after we were set up and we decided to just go even though we were pretty sweaty after being outside moving rocks and wood for the past hour.

We met Pete and Beckey at Natures Resort in South Texas where we were all staying for the winter.  This was our first time to Natures but Pete and Beckey have been going for a few years now.  We became friends with many people at Natures and Pete and Beckey lived on our path to the Poconos for the 4th of July so we decided to stop and see them on our way. 

Pete and Beckey took us to a very cool restaurant called the Quaker Steak & Lube in Sharon.  It’s a huge place with 2 buildings and tonight an outside tent area.   The restaurant is a small chain that is in several states and this is our first visit to one.   The restaurants exterior is modeled after an old gas station and the interior has cars and motorcycles hanging from the ceiling.  We all had various flavored wings, mine being the Thai wings.  We both really liked the food and the atmosphere and would recommend the place to anyone.  

One of the buildings at the Steak and Lube.

This was sitting out front of the Steak and Lube.

Pete and Beckey.

The restaurant was having an outside music venue of some sort.  I think there were a couple of bands that were to play sequentially.  After our wing dinner we headed over to the tent to check out the band that was currently playing.  On the way over I thought it sounded like the old 70s, 80s band KISS.  Sure enough is was a KISS tribute band.  There were 2 reasons we knew it was tribute band, one, this is Sharon PA and the band is in a tent, and 2, the guys were way too young to be the original KISS.  They didn’t sing very well but they sure were loud which helped cover up the singing.  We had a beer and took some pictures and then called it a night.  It was great night due especially to the lively conversation we all had during dinner.  

Another bar outside the Steak and Lube.

Sunday the 29th Pete and Beckey picked us up again around noon to go to a place where they have a camper trailer secluded in the woods.  The property is part of a larger tract that their friends Beau and Linda bought, a 7 acre piece, about 12 years ago.  The property was all wooded and grown up with wild grass and weeds when they bought it.  They have really worked a lot of this and now it looks great.  

We were not there too long before Beau and Linda arrived. They gave us a nice tour of the property and explained how they transformed it to what it is now.  It wasn’t too long before we were all now friends sitting out and chatting about everything.  We even had a couple of passing rain showers to make it just a little more interesting.

Pete and Beckey's place in the woods for a retreat.

Around 5 pm we were all getting hungry so we headed off to a favorite place of theirs called the Kings Diner a couple of miles away.  The food was just OK but it didn’t matter as we were all just having a great time talking.

After dinner we headed back to the RV and said our goodbyes and “see you in 6 months”.

Thanks Pete and Beckey for being such great hosts for us while in your neck of the woods.

Monday the 30th we left the Mercer PA area and RV Village around noon and headed the 210 miles to Lewisburg PA. Most of this route is on I 80 which is one of my least favorite roads to travel on.  I 80 is heavily traveled by both cars and trucks and is hilly and curvy.  It is also always under construction in several areas due to the damage from the heavy truck travel coupled with severe winter conditions. 

The problem with traveling across PA is that there really isn’t any other good ways to do it except for I 80 in the North and the PA Turnpike in the south.

We arrived in Lewisburg PA around 4 pm at the Yogi Jellystone Campground.  Jellystone is a family place but convenient for us and with Passport America, cheap at $46 for 2 nights. We have nice full hookup pull through site with cable TV. 

Our site in Jellystone park in Lewisburg PA.

We are now just 95 miles from our destination in the Poconos, Sunny Rest Resort in Palmerton PA.  Our plan is to stock up here with food and drinks before heading out tomorrow for Sunny Rest.  Our NJ friends Cindy and Rob and us are in charge of dinner on the 4th.  We are going to have BBQ pork ribs, salt potatoes, and green beans.  The group of us from NJ camping here is around 20 people making the dinner not a small task, but it is fun!

Tomorrow we are going to a local grocery store and to Walmart for supplies.  Then on Wednesday we are planning to arrive at Sunny Rest by noon to 1 pm.  The only fly in that plan is that the reports are for thunderstorms on Wednesday the whole way and day!

Stay tuned!