Events of Wednesday, September 29, 2010

          The term “Rest Day” is rather vague. The obvious meaning is a day of sleeping, reading, and laziness. Our day of rest, luckily, was a bit better than that. Happily camped deep in the woods of the nearly empty Brookwood RV Resort in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, we were able to get a long, dark, quiet night of sleep. We woke up late, had a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, and then set to work fixing our shower. It was slowly leaking on to the floor, which created an unbearable smell coming from damp shower mats. Lindsey enjoyed herself cleaning the bathroom as Caitlin perfected the floor of the RV, sweeping it and vacuuming it several times over. Since I (Ben) would rather be out in the dirt of our lovely rustic campsite than inside in the clean RV, I decided to adjust the sewer hose. For those who aren’t RV experts, when we use any faucet (sink, shower, toilet, etc.), the waste gets collected in sewage tanks. We typically have to empty these out every other day or so. Since our campsite included a sewer hook-up, we could keep our drains leading straight to the sewer. However, our campsite had one problem. When we tried to hook up the hose, it was going down and then up a small incline. For those of you physics majors who know how gravity works, the waste cannot go up a hill. I found some scrap lumber and set to work making a downhill slope from the RV to the pipe. After a little bit of trial and error, I found a way to make a continual ramp.

          Once this work was done, we read, played games, caught up on writing our blogs and editing our pictures, and wasted time until lunch. Since today was one of the rare times that we were actually hooked up at lunchtime, we decided to have a hot lunch of ravioli, rice, and applesauce. Yes, that is an interesting combination – but it is what we had on hand to heat up. To burn off all our extra calories and energy, we decided to take a walk after lunch around the campground and to the playground. Unfortunately, this playground was not designed for three rambunctious teens (and one rambunctious pre-teen) in both variety of activities and appropriate height of playground equipment. If we fit on the swings, we would have a mere six to nine inches between the swing and the gravel. Disappointed with the playground, we split up. Caitlin and Abby headed off to explore the area by a tree house, Dad and Lindsey went for a walk along the creek, and I went back to the RV to work on my summer work. We all came back and continued our chill day with more reading, summer work, rest and relaxation. We did our manuscript study of Mark, finished planning our visits to Vermont and New Hampshire, and then prepared dinner. Mom and Dad went out to Eddy’s Cafe while we kids enjoyed soup back in the RV. With no more rest needed, we headed to bed, excited about all the fall foliage and adventures that await us tomorrow in Vermont.