Cooperstown, NY

We left Hershey on Friday and headed north about 250-miles to Cooperstown, NY where we planned to stay over the weekend. We crossed the state-line into New York and stopped for lunch at the rest area and visitor’s center. As we were sitting in our motorhome, eating our lunch, Chubby Checker’s tour bus drove by in front of us. Wow, he’s still touring at age 77!

After lunch, we walked over to the visitor’s center and it was very nice, the best we have seen anywhere. Inside, they had a large area where various salad dressings, marinades, jams, and other locally produced items were for sale.

We stayed at the Cooperstown Family Campground, about 7 miles outside of town. It was a nice and quiet country setting. We met our neighbors next door in their motorhome from Castle Rock, Colorado.

Saturday, we drove into Cooperstown and were surprised at how pretty the town was with its many restaurants, gift shops, and baseball-related stores. It truly is the mecca for baseball fans.

We enjoyed lunch at a local café and then walked a block up Main Street to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The price was right too…free admission for active-duty and retired military personnel. We spent about two-hours looking through three floors of baseball exhibits. It was well worth a stop!

We left the Cooperstown area this morning and drove about 90-miles east to Albany, NY to overnight at the Cummins repair shop. They are going to fix our 10KW diesel generator for us. I think the 12-volt fuel pump has gone out. We’ll know tomorrow when they take a look at it for us.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Hershey, Pennsylvania

We followed Mike and Marcia in their motorhome up Interstate-81 on Monday on our short drive through four states to Hershey, PA.  It was funny to learn later that we all broke out singing “Country Roads” as we crossed into West Virginia.


We arrived about 1:30PM and got checked into the Hersheypark Camping Resort. We bought our Hershey Park tickets at the gift shop. We hopped the shuttle bus after dinner and headed over to Hershey Park. Our first stop was the new Hershey Chocolatetown at the entrance to the theme park. They had a ride that took your through the history and process of how they make chocolate, with sample Hershey bars when you got off the ride.   

Milton S. Hershey founded Hershey Chocolate Company in 1903 and and a town around it for his workers. He founded Hersheypark in 1907, as a “picnic and pleasure ground” for his workers. Over the years it has grown into the big theme park of today.

We spent all day Tuesday at the theme park. There are 14 coasters, but we chose to take some less stressful rides such as the steam railroad, a Ferris wheel, bumper cars (called the Fender Bender and sponsored by Geico Insurance). We also rode the monorail which went out of the park to downtown Hershey by the company headquarters. Notice the Hershey Kisses street lights in the photos. 

One new attraction that we did was the Reese’s Cupfusion, an interactive gaming ride. We were agents protecting the Reese’s Cup factory to ensure the world is never deprived of Reese’s Cups! On the ride, we used hand-held laser guns to protect the factory.

On Wednesday we spent the day inside the theme park at the Boardwalk water park area. We rented a Cabana for the day and it was right next to the lazy river ride. We went down to the lazy river, but the water felt cold. We decided to have lunch first. Later the water seemed cool but bearable.

Later in the afternoon, Julie, Marcia and I decided to ride the water coaster called Breakers Edge. We waited in the line for about 20-minutes but it was well worth the wait. It was a lot of fun. Okay, so we finished our time at the park riding one of their 14 coasters.      

Today, we went over to Lancaster County to see the Amish settlements. The Pennsylvania Amish of Lancaster County are America's oldest Amish settlement, where thousands still live a centuries-old "Plain" lifestyle and the horse and buggy remains their primary means of transportation.


It was very interesting and we enjoyed seeing the various Amish crafts after having an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch family-style lunch.

We head to Cooperstown, NY tomorrow for a weekend stay. 


Steve & Julie Cornelius

Four States Today

We spent the past five days in Winchester, Virginia visiting with my sister Marcia, brother-in-law Mike and niece Stephanie. Winchester is a nice size town of over 30,000 in northern Virginia.

We enjoyed dinner one evening with Mike and Marcia’s close friends, Larry and Nancy, at Oak Stone Pizza. The hand-tossed, wood-fired pizza was really good.

We left Winchester this morning and traveled 120-miles up I-81, through four states, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and part of Pennsylvania, on our way to Hershey.


Steve & Julie Cornelius

Lake Greenwood,SC

Last Friday we left Myrtle Beach and headed to a small RV resort in the Upcountry area of South Carolina. We spent the entire Memorial Day weekend just hanging out. It was very hot, in the upper-90s, all weekend. Our campsite had a great view of Lake Greenwood and the boaters on the lake.

We left Lake Greenwood this morning, heading north towards Winchester, VA to spend the next few days visiting my sister Marcia, brother-in-law Mike and niece Stephanie.  

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Myrtle Beach, SC

We left Hilton Head Island last Friday and spent the weekend at the Joint Base Charleston family campground. We last stayed there five years go and it was as nice as we’d remembered. Our campsite was huge with a double-wide concrete pad and patio. We just hung out and I had time to fix a few small things on the motorhome. 

We left Charleston on Tuesday and headed up the road to Myrtle Beach. Neither one of us had ever been to Myrtle Beach before. We had reservations at Ocean Lakes Family Campground. We didn’t know what we were in for before we arrived. The RV park is what we would describe as a “mega” campground with 859 campsites and 2,567 annual lease sites on 310 oceanfront acres. It has nearly a mile of beachfront on the Atlantic Ocean. We rented a golf cart to get around.

The annual lease sites were a mix of a few RV trailers or 5^th-wheels, small beach cottages, and large beach homes. They were all very interesting to see, including one that had an outside bar. We also saw several beach cottages that were built around old travel trailers. The campground has 25,000 to 35,000 guests on any given day during the summer season.  

Last night we visited the Myrtle Beach boardwalk and promenade. It was an interesting area with all the souvenir gift shops, game arcades, tee shirt shops, seafood restaurants, cafes, and many pancake houses. Myrtle Beach sits in the center of a large and continuous 60-mile stretch of beach known as the “Grand Strand”. It is a huge family vacation spot, attracting an estimated 14-million visitors a year.

We knew that this Memorial Day weekend would be crazy busy anywhere along the Eastern seaboard, so tomorrow, Friday, we’re literally headed for the hills and a small RV resort in north western South Carolina.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Our 6th Anniversary of Full-time RVing

We sold and closed on our house in Colorado Springs on May 20, 2013 and began our journey as full-time RVers. We spent about six months before selling the house getting rid of our stuff and down-sizing from the 2,500 square foot house to less than 400 square feet of living space in our 2008 Itasca Meridian 37-foot motorhome.

We’ve met many full-time RVers who head south for the winter, then travel back north in the spring to spend the summer. They pretty much do the same every year.

However, we’ve taken a different approach and enjoy traveling all over the country. We don’t have a particular place we go every winter or every summer. We’ve enjoyed several winters in Florida and a couple in Southern California, trying to stay south of Interstate Highway 10 during the winter months. We’ve spent summers in the Northeast and Northwest, including a RV trip to Alaska in 2015. We’ve traveled and camped in all but three states now: Vermont, Rhode Island and Delaware.

We’re currently headed north along the Eastern seaboard to visit those three states we haven’t been to yet. We’ve traveled over 94,500 miles the past six years crisscrossing the country, from Key West to Seattle and Bar Harbor to San Diego. There are still places we want to visit and things we want to see, so we plan to continue our full-time RV journey for several more years. 

  

Steve & Julie Cornelius (and Shasta)