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We are now in Del Rio Texas

We are now in Del Rio Texas

New England #5 – New Hampshire

July 20 - 24, 2016: 

What do we know about New Hampshire, uh, nothing; it’s cold in the winter and we don’t know anybody from there. After our visit here we still don’t know much more.  The reality is that we are just not really staying long enough to get a real feel for the area.  We are getting a small taste of the state and we get to put a camping sticker on our country map.


Our USA State Map showing where we have camped.  This still has NH missing but not for long.


To cut some of the high cost of camping in the northeast we have been opting for 30 amp and no sewer.  It hasn’t been real hot so we have really only needed one AC unit which is mainly why we would need a 50 amp site.  As for sewer, since we are only staying 3-4 nights, the amount of waste is not enough to fill our tanks anyway.  The main benefit with having sewer on site is that it saves some time, about 30 minutes, when we leave.  If I have a sewer connection on the site I can dump the tanks while I am doing other stuff in preparation to leave.  The dump station is just added time. By not having 50 amp and no sewer connection we save usually about $10-15 a day.

Since we didn't have a sewer connection, before leaving our site in Brattleboro VT we had to go to the dump station before we hit the road.  After dumping we were on the road by just a little after noon.  Our trip from the KOA in Brattleboro VT to the Hidden Valley RV and Golf Resort in Derry New Hampshire was just an hour and a half at just 84 miles.  This was a very easy pull today and the weather was perfect too.  We basically just left Vermont going east in a straight line to Derry MH.  

We pulled up to the office at the Hidden Valley RV and Golf Resort around 2:30 in the afternoon.  We were a little late as we stopped and got some fresh sweet corn and blueberries at a roadside stand for dinner tonight.



Hidden Valley Golf and RV Resort Office.

The main reason we are staying at this campground is that we couldn’t get into any of the others around there as they were all booked up.  This has been a common problem as we travel in the northeast.  Hidden Valley was our last choice as it was way too expensive for us.  Our rate was $50 a night with no sewer and 30 amp electric service!  The site was a nice large level site with loads of trees for privacy though.  As the name says, there is a golf course on site that we still have to pay for.  We got a miserly 10% off making the cost making it $64 for the 2 of us with a cart.  We will say though that the course was pretty good.  So anyway we took what we could get and moved on.


Our site at Hidden Valley.

Our stay in New Hampshire wasn’t all that memorable except for one event.  I got a bug stuck in my ear!  Yup, a bug!

On our first full day in New Hampshire we decided we were going to play golf at the RV park course.  We teed off on the first hole and my ball went long but into the woods at the turn on the dogleg left hole.  There wasn’t much growth under the trees so my ball was easy to find.  I was going to punch the ball out low and back on the fairway when I was attached by a swarm of insects.  I was in my back swing when the attack occurred.  I dropped my club and started swatting the bugs away from my head.  As I was swatting I hit a bug knocking it into my left ear!  I could hear the damn thing running around in there!  I tried hitting my head on the other side with no luck.  Patty took a look and could see it but we just couldn’t get it out.

After trying to get the bug out on the course for about 15 minutes, we decided to quit playing and head back to the RV. Patty picked up our balls and we headed back to the RV to see if we could get the bug out with tweezers and better light. 

Nope, that didn’t work either.  The damn thing was driving me crazy!  It was moving around a lot and it felt like it was trying to burrow into my ear drum and then maybe get inside my head!  As a last resort I took a cotton ball and soaked it with rubbing alcohol and then dripped the alcohol into my ear. This really pissed off the bug as it was flailing around a lot now!  But after a few terrible minutes the bug stopped moving around, I think it died.  Sort of a WHEW!

So now I have, I hope, a dead bug in my ear that is not inside my head somewhere!  I tried to remove it with a Q-tip with no luck.  Now we head off to a local urgent care facility to get it removed.  I was so hoping that the bug was dead and not burrowed into my head or it was playing dead or both!  It took us about 20 minutes to get to the urgent care place and the bug still had not moved as far as I could tell.

By the time we got to an exam room the bug had been in my ear for about an hour and a half.  It seemed like 2 days by this time.  The doctor took a look inside my ear and didn't see anything! OH NO, it is inside my head!

The doctor said that it looked like I had a lot of wax in my ear and maybe the bug had burrowed into it, yuck!  I really not feeling any better about this at all!  The doctor had a nurse try to irrigate my ear with water and peroxide to flush the bug out.  After a few hard squirts out comes the bug.  It looks like it is a fairly big, to be in an ear, moth.  It was about 3/4 of an inch long and brown.  The doctor thinks that what she thought was ear wax was actually the moth.  OK then, I am relaxed now and just want to get the crap out of there!  Thank you very much ConvenientMD Urgent care in Derry NH!


There it is!  Still gives me the chills looking at it!

By this time it was early afternoon when we finished at the urgent care bug removal place so we searched out a place for lunch.  We found a nice Japanese place about 5 miles away.  We then had a great lunch and a few laughs about the bug.  The day turned out good but not at all like we had planned.  

Because we had sort of lost a day to the bug we decided to stay another day and start over.  The way we plan our trips we usually have latitude to spend extra time if we need it so we just decided to enjoy another nice warm weather day in this park.


We had some down time so we have been restoring our camp sign.  This is what it looked like before we started.  We got this sign our first year full timing at the Arizona State Fair.  That was 4 years ago.

This is the finished product.  It really came out great.  We think it is better than the original.  Patty redid the art work and I sanded.  We both took turns putting the 4 coats of poly on it.

The next day we resumed our golf at the course.  Actually we just started over as we hadn't even finished the first hole last time.  This time there wasn’t any bugs making life miserable!  We had a good day on the course taking us about 4 hours to finish.  It was just the way all golfers like it, no one behind pushing and no one ahead slowing us down.  We could just play golf!


Patty made it over the water!

We again tried to go to Boston to take a tour.  We were less than an hour away from downtown Boston so we thought that we could take the tour that we had tried a few days ago when we were in Massachusetts.  Well again we didn’t make it. Patty wasn’t feeling good so we just took a day off and just relaxed at home.  I guess we were just not supposed to take the tour this time around.  

That was pretty much it for New Hampshire and now we are off to #6 and the last of the New England states, Maine.

Stay tuned!

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