Day 4

For a crowded campground, packed mostly with RVs, it was surprisingly quiet last night. We thought Independence Day partying would have stretched into the late hours but it didn’t. Even the fireworks were done by 10-ish.

After breakfast this morning, we broke camp, packed up the car and got on the road to return to New Jersey. G3 has to be home for a final week of training before heading to Phoenix for the World Championship. En route we detoured to Salmon River Falls where we hiked down into the gorge. It was a short but steep hike. The falls were pretty, but we’ve seen so many that they’ve lost some of their appeal. We hung out in the shade of the gorge for a bit enjoying the scenery and quiet—we were the only ones there. Afterwards, I was up for more hiking but my family was not. Kati was overheating and G3 was eager to get back to The Shining. So I walked alone. I didn’t go far, maybe a mile in total, since we still have a long drive ahead of us. But a short walk was still better than no walk.

After that boring battlefield on Sunday, we wanted one more winery and so we stopped at Grace Tyler Winery. The grounds were beautiful, reminiscent of the wineries on Long Island. We sat outside with a view of the vineyard. Dad would have liked the ambience; I doubt he would have liked the wine. We didn’t. Kati said two of the ones we tasted smelled like an outhouse. Not a very favorable review. While I didn’t smell undertones of urine, neither the scent nor the taste of the wine appealed to me.

Originally, we planned to be home by six-ish, but our plans were thwarted when the car indicated that it needed more coolant or the car would overheat. Kati pulled over somewhere south of Scranton in Pennsylvania and a quick google search yielded an auto place for us to pop into. Before more coolant could be added, the car had to sit and cool off. While the car cooled, G3 and I walked a half mile to Dairy Queen to get some ice cream. It was so hot that the ice cream melted more quickly than we could eat it.

It is now 8 o’clock and we are home. Our mini-vacation is sadly over. And G3 has finished reading The Shining. He read the entire book—all 600 plus pages—in less than a week. He definitely reads faster than I do. Now he is begging me to take him to the bookstore tomorrow. He shares his grandfather’s aversion to library books. He doesn’t like the idea of reading books infested with other people’s germs. I, on the other hand, love library books because I don’t have to pay for them.