Camping in the Adirondacks

Made it back from a 10 day trip camping in the Adirondacks. Similar to last years trip we traveled about 1000 miles and camped in 3 different locations. This year we stayed in a driveway in Tully NY, at Rollin's Pond near the town of Tupper Lake, and at Eighth Lake between the towns of Old Forge and Blue Mountain Lake. It was a pretty wet week as most of the summer has been for all of New York state. Downpours just about every night and at least some rain on most days. Despite the rain we managed to paddle at some of our favorite spots and new to us in the Saint Regis River and a portion of Lower Saint Regis Lake. At the top of the lake is Paul Smiths, now a college but in the late 1800's it was one of the Adirondacks great paddling destinations. You could really feel the history as we paddled up to a dock at Paul Smiths. We saw three other vintage trailers on the trip, a Shasta similar ours that was coming the other way just east of Watertown, and we saw two silverside Scotty's near Eighth Lake. Our Shasta has been working really well, we had one issue with a turn signal and brake light not working but it turned out to be in the wiring of the car not the camper. We found that the icebox needed a new block or two of ice every 2 to 3 days. There's no room for more insulation, so sometime I'm going to see if I can add a layer of insulation to the inside of the door and look into a tighter door gasket.

Campering?

Been doing a lot of "Campering" the last couple of weeks. Campering is my wife's new term for time spent doing something related to the Shasta but not actually camping. So the changes are less dramatic this year than last but here's some of what we've been up to. The icebox is completely refinished, re-insulated, and installed, it looks awesome but the real test is does it stay cold. Refinished the interior wood panel on the main door, the bottom 10" or so was the only part that was water damaged badly so I cut that out and pieced in an aluminum kick plate-like detail. Added a shelf in the tall closet so that we can get individual clothes bins out without taking all four out in order to get to the one on the bottom. Replaced the mirror with a new piece of glass, the old one was fogged beyond being nice and vintage-like. Added an easily removable rail to the upper bunk, one of the kids actually rolled off and fell to the floor in the middle of the night giving us quite the scare on the last trip. Polished and installed the outside grab handle by the door, it's badly pitted but will do. Greased the wheel bearings. And finally, I somehow managed to break the catch that holds the screen door closed tonight. (I need to figure out how to fix this in the next 14 hours or so.)

Heading to the Adirondacks for a week of actual camping tomorrow!