Parks and Paths: Lunch: courtesy of a Pennsylvania rest area

My brothers Mark and John, my Mom, and myself on an eastern camping trip in 1961. Once a whiner, always a whiner. My Mom said, "my feet hurt."

Memories, from both when I was young and with our own kids, were stopping on camping trips to eat our breakfast and/or lunch at a rest area. Everyone was tired of driving/sitting and happy to be out of the car.

My kids had it easy. Not every day, but some days we might pick up the campsite and start driving at 6:30 or 7 a.m., at the earliest. We would stop at a rest stop for cereal or donuts an hour or 2 later. OCCASIONALLY it might gain us an extra hour of quiet, if we were lucky enough to have one go back to sleep. It did enable us to reach our destination early in the afternoon so they could run and play. We also stopped at rest areas for our noon sandwiches. As well as saving the cost of 5 of us eating out, it allowed the boys to expend some energy.

When I was young we would sometimes start our mornings even earlier. I swear my Dad could hear the first drop of rain before it even hit the ground! We would get in gear, throw everything in the car, and start the day. My brothers can correct me if I'm wrong, but we might be on the road at 3 or 4 a.m.! The last thing my Dad wanted was to put a wet tent in the car. At that time we had an old style, heavy canvas, umbrella tent. The support was inside with a pole in the center. It wasn't very big. My Mom and Dad were on air mattresses on one side of the pole and my brothers on the other. Being little I fit on a half-size air mattress that fit below the pole.

My Dad setting up our umbrella tent.

One of the things that we like about our RV is that we are self-contained, including our food. We can eat when and where we want. It's cheaper, easier on the waistline, more convenient, and you can't beat the views.

Lunch at a beautiful Pennsylvania rest area with mountains in the background.

Today we left Woodland Campground, Woodland, PA just after 9 and we traveled to Shore Forest Campground, Hop Bottom, PA. We tend to lose track of days and holidays. When this happens we camp where we can. In this case, we waited almost too long to find a campground over Labor Day weekend. Holy cow, this was 5 miles or so of VERY rustic roads to get to what looked like a VERY hilly campground. If we had anything to shake loose I'm sure we did! We arrived around 2:00 and are here until Monday. It has a pool and lots of sites, most of which appear to be permanent. Best campground WiFi I think we've had. We will, and I hope others will also take note of their "social distancing" prop. Saturday we will visit Scranton to get food for Krikkit, meds for me, and some groceries.

Hop Bottom, a town with a population of around 300, about 40 minutes north of Scranton has an unusual name so I was curious (me and George). The town use to be called Foster. The current name comes from the Hop Bottom Creek. The Native Americans once lived here and the only clear meadows were near the "bottom" of the creek. The meadows were covered with "hop" vines.