Hurricane!

Nicole became a hurricane before it made landfall just north of us in Vero Beach early Thursday morning. Some of our neighbors said that the eye went right over our heads in the Jensen Beach/Port St. Lucie area. I can't attest to that because we slept through it, thanks to Barb and Barry, where we spent the day and night in their wonderfully quiet and secure concrete block house. We had a great time binge watching new episodes of Seal Team, between eating 😉 and updates on the weather channel (so much beach erosion, especially in places north, like Daytona where some buildings were falling into the water and others condemned). We never lost power, which was good too. In the morning the sun came out and we helped take down their storm shutters and pick up some of the tree branches that fell down. Then it was back to our place to take down our shutters and there were only a few small branches to deal with. As we drove into the park, amazingly everything looked like there had been no storm at all! Here we are all tied down and shuttered up, including the doors:

The wind had been howling from the northeast for days before the storm arrived and with the full moon, there were king high tides flooding roadways along with gigantic waves from the storm. This is a snapshot of the entrance to the House of Refuge beach on Hutchinson Island. That is such a narrow piece of land that the ocean flooded right to the Indian River.

After we bid good luck to our mobile home and headed to Barb and Barry's house on Wednesday, we stopped to see how high the water was along the western shore of the Indian River in Riverside Park. This is definitely not a normal occurrence and eventually the sidewalk broke up with the pounding waves.

The water was already up to the building at the US Sailing Center as members scrambled to move and secure boats and dinghies to higher ground in the parking lot.

Everywhere, the winds were pushing the tides even higher causing stationary docks to be underwater. As the conditions deteriorated even more, someone posted these photos on Facebook of the waves breaking under the Jensen Beach Causeway. The north side boat launch ramp docks were destroyed, and someone abandoned a derelict power boat on the seawall, which broke apart (not to mention that a lot of the paved parking lot is filled with piles of gravel and rocks that washed in. 

There is lots of clean up to be done around the county, but the workers are already on it. We definitely lucked out this time with this unusual late season hurricane. Now things are getting back to normal, and we are anxious to get our kayaks out on the water and over to Peck Lake, with its ocean beach, to see what kind of treasures have washed ashore. Who knows, we could find something really rare from an historical shipwreck that Nicole may have uncovered. This is the Treasure Coast after all. You know that if we do, you will see it here on the blog!

Waiting For Nicole

While we take a break from putting our hurricane shutters back on due a possible direct hit from Tropical Storm or Hurricane Nicole, I thought I would give a quick update. We THOUGHT we were all settled in from our arrival, although we haven't been out in the kayaks yet. Dave even flew back north last week to drive Mustang Sally back down here. While he was there, he noticed that most of our leaves were finally down and he power blew the entire property, making our return in the spring even easier. He winterized the house and had an uneventful trip back down to Florida. We have taken one trip with the top down and now we will secure it under our tied down carport. 

Hopefully, once the storm has passed and we hopefully have no damage, we will be able to get back into the swing of things and get back out onto the water, along with some road trips. Now it is time to bring in the porch furniture and everything we had put outside only about 10 days ago. I will post when I can, as long as we still have power. No one here seems to be concerned about the storm, but we make up for it with paranoia, since it is a single wide trailer after all. Stay tuned!

Florida Time!

We have arrived in Florida after a month of chores and leaf peeping in the northeast. The colors were spectacular this year and we got to see quite a few on our way south also. We towed our Bauer 12 sailing dinghy 'Ruby' behind the van, down to Daytona. Since we haven't been using it for a couple of years, we sold it to a man in Texas, and his shipper is picking it up for the rest of the trip to Dallas at my brother's house (thanks Rick!). It was a long slow trip south with lots of traffic back-ups, and we had to go slow due to the small tires on the trailer. Everything made it just fine and after a family dinner, we continued on to Jensen Beach, arriving at about 11:30 PM last night. We are organizing and cleaning, and so far everything is up and running. Dave even took a break, while I unpacked, and took the Silverwing for a test drive to the beach and House of Refuge. It's great to be back and the weather is gorgeous! 

Once we are rested and Dave returns home to pick up the Mustang and drive it down here next week, we will really be set for lots of recreation!

😎

Fall Festival

Despite Saturday's windy 50 degree day, we ventured up to Maple Ski Ridge's Fall Festival, which featured a car and tractor show along with craft vendors. You could also ride up the chairlift, but it was just too cold for us people with thin southern blood. 

This 1959 Morris Minor was owner built and driven. It had a small block Chevy engine and a beautifully fabricated frame and running gear. Plus it was tubbed! Note the great license plate. There was attention to detail and quality workmanship. It was our favorite of the show.

A chilly ride!

Dave couldn't figure out what all the hydraulics and pump were for:

A 1968 blown Camaro in a gorgeous 21st century blue:

This unusual 1958 Edsel Pacer was pristine and our second choice for best vehicle of the day. It was quite spectacular.

This 1930 Model A Sedan with wire wheels was ready for Halloween.

Over to the tractor department, this new PistenBully 400 was very impressive and must make short work of grooming the ski trails. There is an ice pulverizer on the back. It looked like it was on snow already! 😉

Dave says that if we need to stay north for the winter at any point, he is going to buy one of these. It must be fun to snow blow in that glass enclosed cab with heat and tunes (as fun as snow can be, anyway 😉)

Here are two 4-wheel drive, high floatation tractors for loamy fields: 

This one had the widest profile tires we have ever seen.

This was an unusual Canadian made Cockshutt Model 40 tractor, which looked to be mostly original.

A David Bradley tricycle tractor, which was sold by Sears-Roebuck, is in the foreground. Dave is looking at a 1964 Fox-Trac snow mobile, powered by a rear engine Kohler engine.

It is time to bundle up again for today's car show in Ballston Spa, which will be our last show of our northern season. With ice in the birdbath this morning, it is time to think about heading south!

The photo above was taken in the headlights of the Edsel. The mirrored covers are period accessories called Eye-Eeze.

10/10 Footnote: The Way We Were Car Show in Ballston Spa was great, but the cars (and people) were so packed in that I couldn't take any photos. 

Paddling Putnam Pond

The doors really shut on summer after Labor Day, with quite chilly temperatures. We haven't been to Ticonderoga much, but we did have a two day opportunity to enjoy the fall colors of the Adirondacks. It was still a chilly 60 degree morning when we kayaked Putnam Pond, but it was gorgeous and the leaves were at peak color. 

As we drove back home through the mountains, I felt like we were in a painting. I didn't take any photos though, because they wouldn't show the vibrant colors through the windshield. Soon all the leaves will be falling and we will be ready to head south. Time certainly does fly by! 

Classic Boats and Outboards

One of our favorite events of the season is the Schroon Lake Wet Meet. It is hosted by the Mohawk Hudson Chapter of the Antique Outboard Motor Club and this year's was fantastic! We arrived at 9:30 AM, with our freshly waxed Wagemaker Wolverine in tow, and the launch ramp parking lot was full! Luckily we found one small spot to pull into and had Flash Back on display. 

Boats of all sorts were on display, including our friend Clark's Cadillac, which is a sister to Flash.

Clark also had his wooden boat, that he won in a recent raffle, there for all to see. He is amazing with his restorations, but this boat he wants to keep original because it still floats and gets lots of attention.

A few of the other vintage boats and motors that we saw:

This is a Jet Drive outboard motor, that we were told could also be used as a fire hose when attached to the water jet.

Several of the hydroplanes were launched and had a few fly-bys and races, although some had issues running (notice the exhaust 'stacks' on the first boat).

Unfortunately the weather was quite chilly with some raindrops thrown in, so we didn't launch Flash. However, it attracted the attention of the publisher of the Lake George Mirror newspaper, and he wanted to write an article on Flash, so he interviewed Dave. This is exciting and I will post a link if and when it does get posted. This is the last of our events for a few weeks, so now it is time to think ahead towards heading south in about a month, especially with all this cold weather getting into our bones. 😉

Keep On Truckin'

This past weekend was the 32nd Annual Truck Show hosted by the Hudson Mohawk Chapter of the American Truck Historical Society, held each year at the Saratoga County Fairgrounds in Ballston Spa. This also always includes a car corral, tractors, and engines, and lots and lots of vendors. Although there weren't quite as many small engines, there was still row after row of trucks, making this a great event.

Dave brought up his 1956 Panzer tractor and pulled one of our wagons around the grounds on Saturday. 

The Divco milk truck was also on display for the second year and was a huge hit, especially when Dave would start it by hand cranking it. 

Here are several of the displays we saw. Hopefully they aren't repeat photos from previous years.

This Brockway carried Christmas trees to the nation's capitol. 

How low can you go?

The cab on this truck had to be manually raised with the bar crank that is sticking out of the side.

The rotator crane was gigantic on this tow truck that could handle just about anything... 

Older sleeper cab on this 1950 White...

It may say Mini Mack, but it was a pretty big monster truck.

This fleet of Mack trucks was gorgeous!

A perfect 1949 Ford delivery truck that makes quite the impression...

This highly polished unusual dump truck carries tiny glass beads for Corning and also does double duty transporting road salt. The dump body doesn't just lift up, the whole trailer lifts up. The entire rig is 65 ft. long going down the road and can weigh up to 107,000 lbs. loaded.

This Rat Road was called the 'Last Resort Fire Department.'

Dave's grandfather and father's septic and well tile business started with a truck just like this 1935 International. In fact, we have an engine cover panel just like this that is left over from when they scrapped the rest of the truck.

What a wild Seagrave fire engine!

This Dodge D 37 Power Wagon forestry truck was pristine.

More trucks being featured under cover...

Those are brand new tractors on this patriotic tractor trailer.

This Rat Rod truck looked to have a Halloween theme going on with an animated skeleton coyote in the back. 

Our shows are winding down for the season now, although there are still a few more on the calendar. We hope the weather holds up for next weekend's wet meet at Schroon Lake, where we are anxious to show off 'Flash'!