Pittsburgh - Art Museums

Pittsburgh is a delightful surprise – nothing like the post-industrial worn-out, beat up city we expected. The downtown skyline is stunning, intermingling old (1700s +) and innovative contemporary architecture. It is a city of history and invention, of traditional museums and avant-garde art galleries, of green and steel, bridges and boats, rivers of water and concrete, cobblestone alternating with asphalt in the streets. Downtown Pittsburgh is inviting to walk around in but confusing to drive through, with one-way streets and multiple bridges taking you on unwanted detours and to unplanned destinations.
We spend Wednesday downtown, visiting the Mattress Factory, an installation art gallery in the North Shore section of Pittsburgh, and the Andy Warhol Museum. We drive through narrow alleys and through seedy neighborhoods and finally arrive at the Mattress Factory – which really is in an old Stearns and Foster factory. The old brick building is unprepossessing, and when we walk in to the “lobby” I can read the look on Steve’s face: “Let’s get out of here.” The first floor entry is furnished with what appears to be second- or third-hand used furniture; the “receptionist” sits at a desk (or maybe it’s a folding table) piled with papers. In one corner is a huge pile of discarded beige business telephones. I’m pretty certain it’s designed to be an art display; I’m pretty certain Steve thinks they haven’t gotten around to putting them in the trash bin.
The receptionist tells us there are 5 floors, 2 of which are closed currently, and describes the works and artists that are viewable. She says admission is half-price on Thursdays, not free as stated in one of the brochures we read. Steve mutters, “I’ll just stay here and read the newspaper; I don’t want to see this.” I persuade him to come with me, which he does reluctantly. We take the elevator to the third floor where there are three installations by James Turrell, an artist who works with light. The first requires walking into a pitch black room and up a ramp in total darkness. At the top of the ramp there’s a small platform. We stand in the dark, hearing, sensing and seeing what complete blackness, a total absence of light, is like. Steve is grumbling, “This is art? I don’t get it,” while I try to explain that this is not a traditional painting-on-the-wall gallery, it’s art you experience. I don’t think I do a very good job of convincing him.
We move on to Turrell’s other 2 works, which use light and color to play with the viewer’s expectations. The works on the other floors are provocative, insightful, bizarre, imaginative, and sometimes all of the above. When we’ve seen everything, we take the elevator down to the gift shop, where I want to get some postcards. We start a conversation with the two staff members there about the Turrell pieces. When one of them learns we haven’t seen some of the permanent exhibits because the floors are closed, he says, “I’ll take you up; you’ve got to see these works.”
What a pleasure the next hour is – we are given a personal guided tour by Jason, who is the director of external affairs for the Mattress Factory. He shows us the magical mirrored polka-dot and light room by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, and the enchanting room with undulating floor and multiple light visual works best seen while flat on one’s back on the floor. (Unfortunately, I can’t remember the artist’s name.) Jason takes us through the upper-level administrative offices to a terrace for a view of Pittsburgh, and to the “poetry house” a few doors away, telling us the story of the Chinese artist and poet, Huang Xiang (pronounced Wan-John) who lives in the house and painted poems in beautiful calligraphy on every wall of the home. Now a lecturer at the Mattress Factory, Huang Xiang fled China as a political refugee and lives in Pittsburgh through the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh.

Our visit to the Mattress Factory is unforgettable not only because of the artwork, but especially because of the personal touch we’ve experienced. Jason is a perfect representative for the gallery – charming, outgoing and eager to show us what makes the Mattress Factory exceptional. And to top it off, when we return to the gift shop – where I still want to get my postcards – he tells us to pick out t-shirts. “If you’ll wear them, they’re on us,” he says. Absolutely we’ll wear them –with pride. And we’ll spread the word about this unique gallery too.
From the Msttress Factory, we head to the Andy Warhol Museum. It’s seven floors of Warhol’s pop culture pieces – Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis, James Dean – every icon of 50s, 60s, and 70s culture was memorialized in his imitable fashion. We spend several hours touring the museum, learning that not only was he a celebrity worshiper, he was a compulsive organizer and collector of all sorts of things, compiling his memorabilia into dated files which he put into boxes he called “time capsules.” Warhol had hundreds of these time capsules which included letters, photos, sketches and other bits and pieces representing a period of months or years. Several of the time capsules are on display in the museum, providing a fascinating glimpse into his life, the era in which he lived, and what was important to him.

The Lil Grace Chapel for truckers 

Main Street, Milton, PA 

A rainy day in the Thousand Islands 

June 17
It’s raining. We planned to do a boat tour of 1000 Islands – recommended by everyone we talk to – but in this weather, all we’ll see is raindrops shrouding the distant islands. So we take a drive to Alexandria Bay, which we’ve also been advised is well worth seeing. Turns out it’s a typical tourist village on the water. . . .little shops, little restaurants, lots of sloganized T-shirts. Substitute “Alexandria Bay” or “1000 Islands” for Cape Cod, Bourbon Street, Key West or any other standard tourist town and you’ve got a T-shirt shop.
After driving around Alex Bay, we continue our drive north on the St. Lawrence Seaway Trail, following the shoreline of Lake Ontario much of the way. The scenery is green and pretty, but we’ve seen so much pretty scenery in the past 6 months the bar is high, and this scenic byway ranks average on the Scene-ometer. We keep driving, hoping the rain will stop, the clouds will part and the sun will shine on this sodden land – but no miracles today. The rain is persistent and the clouds are angry grey and dense. We turn around and come back to Alexandria Bay to walk around, umbrellas overhead. There’s a farmer’s market downtown, 5 or 6 determined vendors awaiting the weather miracle we’ve given up on.
One of the vendors is Runaway Bride Farm, selling produce, free-range eggs and cheese curds. The Runaway Bride (she tells me she was one once; I don’t pursue her story) has no eggs- raccoons got into her henhouse, she tells me, and killed 40 of her hens. “I didn’t know raccoons ate chickens!” I admit. They don’t she says; they kill for fun. In addition to wiping out half her stock, they crushed the eggs, and the remaining hens have been too traumatized the past 3 days to lay any eggs. But she does have early June peas – similar to snow peas, they don’t need to be shelled; they can be eaten pod and all. And she has garlic tips – the green shoots of the garlic bud, cut off to make the buds grow bigger, they can be sliced and eaten raw in salads or cooked like scallions. They have a mild garlic scent and taste. I buy a bag of early peas, plus garlic tips and fresh green onions.

One of the best things about our travels is the opportunity to discover and experiment with local foods, especially when we find them fresh direct from the grower. We’ve learned about, and enjoyed, an abundance of foods we didn’t know existed . . . fiddlehead ferns in Maine, available only for a few weeks in they spring, they are sautéed or steamed and taste similar to asparagus; beignets (of course!) in New Orleans, puffy dough hot from the deep fryer and thick with powdered sugar; garlic tips (we had them in our salad for dinner tonight); Whoopie Pies – huge chocolate cookies with a type of butter cream frosting, this is definitely an acquired taste (and not one I will ever acquire); real Philly cheese steak sandwiches in Pennsylvania; lobster rolls – lobster chunks mixed with mayo and served on a toasted hot dog roll; good Texas or southern barbeque (with the sauce served on the side, not atop the meat) . . . . I could go on, but I’m getting hungry!

June 19
We spend Father’s Day in McVeytown, PA, a small town near Huntingdon, where Steve’s Aunt Minna lives. We spent Saturday night at an RV park in Montoursville, a place off the highway – way off! because it was the only one we could find. We had planned just to park at the WalMart in Williamsport, since it’s too far to drive to McVeytown in one day and we just needed a place to “park the bus” for the night. But finding the WalMart was not easy; we drove around and around looking for it (we probably could have driven to McVeytown in the time we spent driving around). When we got to the Walmart, we decided the parking lot was not big enough for us to park in – thus the long drive to Montoursville

So here we are in the valley of south central Pennsylvania, surrounded by softly undulating nubbily green mountains, and not much else. Huntingdon is a tiny town with a couple of diners, a couple of grocery stores – it’s not even big enough to rate a WalMart. We spend the afternoon visiting with Steve’s aunt, then meet her and her son-in-law, Bill, the next day for lunch on our way out of town. We’re going to the Pittsburgh area – Steve’s flying out of Pittsburgh to Philly to visit his mother on Tuesday, returning Wednesday afternoon.

We leave Huntingdon about 2 p.m., and telephone an RV park that’s close to the airport (30 minutes away) to find out if they have space; we get a voice mail and leave a message. We’re not anticipating any problems – the parks we’ve stayed at to date have had plenty of sites available.

But, we discover, summer vacation season is definitely here. When we’re just a few miles away from the park, we get a return phone call – they’re fully booked! Uh-oh. I start making calls – but it’s 6 p.m., and most RV parks quit answering their phone at 4:30 or 5 p.m. (What’s up with that? How hard can it be to transfer their calls to a cell phone or home phone, or leave a message saying, “We have space available, come on in,” or “Sorry, we’re booked.” Customer service hasn’t been discovered yet in these places, apparently.

We call 4 or 5 different places, leaving messages along the way, and finally find a KOA 40 miles from Pittsburgh Airport with space. It’s almost 8 p.m. when we pull in (thank heaven for daylight savings; there’s still plenty of daylight left, so hooking up is not problem), and when I come out of the office after registering, I see a line of RVs and trailers behind ours, all waiting to check in. Guess we’re not the only ones having trouble finding a place to call home tonight.

June 20
The last few days have been tiring and frustrating. Steve and I are talking about – and looking forward to – going home to Washington. We expect to get home by mid-August. We’re ready for a home without wheels, jobs, commitments. Driving around with our 38’ rig and tow vehicle looking for an RV park is exhausting. And when we calculated our budget before we started this trip, we didn’t think about toll roads, which in the East are common – and costly. We usually prefer to take back roads and scenic byways, but sometimes the turnpikes are unavoidable. Since they charge per axle, we’ve paid tolls as high as $30 in some places. Since we’re on a budget (we are, after all, unemployed! And we don’t want to spent all of our retirement income – we haven’t retired yet!) we try to economize when possible, by staying at Passport America parks – as members of PA, we get a 50% discount at these parks. The downside is they’re often in off-the-beaten track locations. – which means a long drive in the Jeep to get to area attractions, national parks, etc. But on the whole, the savings are worth it, and some of the nicest parks have been Passport. And getting to these places often means driving through small towns, which always seem to have a Main Street lined with stately oak, maple or sycamore trees, and wood frame, brick or stone homes alternating with the vet’s office, a Cut ‘n Curl beauty salon, and an automobile repair shop. The sweet nostalgia of these towns brings hope to the heart; at the same time, I see the deterioration and fatigue in the buildings. . . .

Storefront - Buffalo, NY

St. Paul's Episcopal church, Buffalo

Buffalo and 1000 Islands, NY

Princess has an appointment today at 3:15 p.m. for her weekly blood test. We decide to go to Buffalo, about 45 minutes away from where we’re staying. There are several art museums, Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural home, a transportation museum, city parks designed by Frederick Olmstead (who designed Central Park), and Buffalo is known for its architecture.
The route we take into downtown Buffalo offers an inauspicious first impression. We pass block after block of boarded-up stores and businesses colorfully embellished with spray paint graffiti, and enough For Rent/For Sale signs to open a commercial real estate office. Once a wealthy industrial city where manufacturing and steel plants thrived and unions called the shots, Buffalo shows little sign of the resurgence of growth and prosperity we’ve read about.

When we walk the downtown streets, we see more signs of life; nevertheless, this is not a vibrant, energetic city. Every third building is vacant; where there are tenants, they have apparently lost the will to care whether customers come or not. The windows are grimy, displays are lifeless and signage is peeling and faded. It is disheartening, because the architecture of downtown Buffalo – especially construction from the early 1900s - is outstanding, even uplifting at times. The architects – Louis Sullivan, Joseph Ellicott, E.B. Green, Richard Upjohn, and others, designed buildings that respect and pay homage to the city’s heart and history. My favorite is the Guaranty Building designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, and built in 1896 for $550,000. Sullivan was an early mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright, and this building has clean, functional lines despite an ornate but elegant vegetation motif covering the 13-story façade. It’s unfortunate that these beautiful churches, banks, hotels and government buildings must share street space with 60’s era steel and glass structures that have neither art nor soul.

We decide to go to the Broadway Market, the oldest public market in the U.S. We walk into this enclosed marketplace and almost leave immediately – it’s clear that it’s hanging on by the grace of a lenient landlord. But we walk past the shuttered and empty booths and barely-there survivors – a bakery, a fake-oriental-rug seller, and as we walk past a produce counter, I spy baby new potatoes for 50 cents a pound. And tomatoes, shiny red and luscious. Beets. New York-grown apples. Corn on the cob. We buy several pounds of each. As we pay for our purchases, I notice homemade pickles in a jar on the counter, 3 for $1, and I say to Steve, “You like pickles, don’t you? Want to get one? Oh what the heck, let’s get three.” The proprietor, whose accent gives away his Eastern European heritage, says, “I have fresh homemade sauerkraut too, if you want.” We do want; we buy a pound for $1. Then I ask him where we can get good sausage to go with the sauerkraut, and he directs us to Luna’s, the butcher shop at the other end of the market. We decide we’ll come back for it when we’re ready to leave town, since we don’t have any way to refrigerate it.

We spend another hour or so driving around Buffalo, gawking at the vintage turn-of-the-century mansions (now mostly office buildings) on Delaware Avenue, admiring the well-kept Victorian and Arts-and-Crafts homes near Delaware Park, . We discover that one of the museums I want to see, specializing in African-American and Latin American art, is closed, its walls and windows bare. Another specializing in photography has just taken down its exhibit, so I’m out of luck there too. By this time, it’s too late to go to the Botanical Garden, the Pierce Arrow Transportation Museum, or the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Martin house, so we head back to Broadway Market where I buy 1.5 pounds of Polish sausage and 2 pounds of Italian sausage. For dinner, we have home made sauerkraut, pumpernickel bread, boiled baby new potatoes and the best Polish sausage we’ve ever eaten – so fresh, fat-free and meaty I could kick myself for not buying another 2 or 3 pounds. Fortunately, we’ve still got another ¾ pound of links to enjoy another night.

Tomorrow we will leave the Buffalo area. Right now we don’t know where we are headed for. We’ll decide in the morning or when we get on the road. We’re going westward, that much we know. I think.

Meanwhile, we call the vet and get Princess’ blood test results. Her white count has improved but it’s still low, so she must continue on the antibiotic. We’ll get the prescription filled at Wal-Mart tomorrow.
She has good days and bad days. Some days she looks like someone spiked her dogfood with 90 proof whiskey – she sways on her feet like a 2 a.m. drunk departing the bar after last call. When she sits, her back legs slide from beneath her; she finally has to give up and lay down, since that’s where she’ll end up anyway. When we take her for a walk, she’s panting and wheezing after 4 or 5 yards. But occasionally, she’s her old feisty self, wanting to play tug of war with her blanket, prancing (briefly) until she realizes she doesn’t have the stamina to continue.
I confess that we are spoiling her. She’s enormously thirsty all the time and constantly hungry – so much so that she even eats foods she formerly wouldn’t touch, like baby carrots (I dropped one on the floor tonight while making dinner and was amazed to see her scarf it up. I gave her 2 more and she crunched them ravenously),. We limit her dog food to one cup a day, and she still gets only 1 dog biscuit a day (her favorite – peanut butter or molasses flavor from Trader Joe’s). But we will slip her a bite or two from our plate at dinner, and tonight I let her lick the empty pint ice cream carton even though it was chocolate. I figure she’s not going to die from overweight, nor from eating a lick of chocolate or a bowl of vanilla.

Wednesday, June 15

We are NOT heading west; we are going back toward the Thousand Islands of New York. Other travelers tell us it’s a beautiful area, worth spending time in. So why not? The only scheduled appointment we have is August 3; my sister, Maggie, and her husband Michael are flying in to Kalispell, Montana to join us for 5 days at Glacier National Park. So we drive 200 miles to Henderson Harbor. The RV Park we’re staying at looks and sounds impressive in the description and the brochure – new park, lakefront sites, all sorts of amenities, wi-fi, blah blah blah. But like too many places we’ve stayed, this place overpromises and under-delivers. It IS a beautiful location – the tip of a land spit surrounded by Lake Ontario, but this place is not new, it’s 2 years old, and looks every bit of it. The wi-fi works only in the office, and there’s a steep hourly fee to use it.
Worst of all, we are being attacked by apparently vengeful gnats and mosquitos. They cover the motor home, swarm in and around the Jeep. We make the mistake of opening the door to go out, and now they are flying everywhere inside the RV – on the TV screen, on and around the lights . . . I start swatting right and left, killing bugs with no remorse. We turn the lights off to limit their dispersion. I spray myself with Off! since bugs seem to like my skin or my scent. After swatting every visible insect, I get a wet cloth and start cleaning up bug juice on walls, furniture and ceiling, then vaccuum the corpses from the floor. When morning comes, we pack up, leaving the park and its killer bugs behind.
We drive an hour to Wellesley Island, arriving in the early afternoon. We drive around on the small island, look for a grocery store to buy milk and eggs – there are none, only convenience stores. We go for a hike at the state park, and return around 6 p.m. The sky is overcast and has been spitting all afternoon – not a promising sign for tomorrow. Oh well.
I don’t feel like making dinner, and put it off till 8 p.m., then take boneless chicken breasts out of the freezer, defrost them and brown them in butter and olive oil along with sliced onions, then simmer the chicken for an hour in a sauce made with canned mushrooms, frozen artichoke hearts, white wine and chicken stock seasoned with tarragon, thyme, salt and pepper and brown mustard. Served with baby new potatoes and whole green beans, it’s a pretty tasty dish – and we have leftovers so I won’t have to cook some evening when I really don’t feel like it!

Upstate New York

We are staying in Waterloo, New York, in the Finger Lakes region, one of the state’s finest wine regions, according to what we’ve read. We’re eager to do some wine tasting. We set out Saturday morning under a humid, slightly overcast sky, planning to drive down the east side of Seneca Lake, hitting a few wineries along the way, then back up the west side in the afternoon. But the first winery we stop at is a disappointment; the wines are thin, lacking body or boldness and weak on the finish line. And this is supposed to be one of the area’s premier wineries. We continue driving, passing one winery after another, enjoying the scenery and what we can see of the lake on this hazy day.
When we reach the southern tip of the lake, we discover there’s a state park there – one that’s truly worth spending time in. Watkins Glen State Park as a deep gorge carved by water that started out as a creek. Over 10,000 years time, the creek sliced its way through layer upon layer of shale – formerly beach sand that was compressed into rock by glaciers. We walk the 3 mile round trip along the gorge, sweating in the humid air and sunlight and enjoying the cool drops of water that splash upward from the 13 waterfalls along the way. Wearing leather flip flop style sandals, I’m hardly attired for hiking, but who cares? The view is worth it.

After our hike, we drive along the western side of Seneca Lake. Our stops at 2 more wineries confirm what we discovered at the first – New York wine (with the exception of the Rieslings, which are fruity, dry and refreshing) is no match for California, Washington, Oregon, French, Australian or South American wine.

Monday, June 13
Niagara Falls is everything we’ve heard and read – a magnificent display of Nature’s energy, 43 million gallons per minute of water tumbling over a rocky shale and sandstone ledge. We take the Maid of the Mist boat tour to experience the falls “up close and personal.” They issue flimsy throwaway raincoats which I’m inclined to disdain, but I follow everyone else’s example and put mine on as we approach the falls. Good thing – even with the raincoats, we get wet, but we would be drenched without it. Water roars down from a height of 180 feet; its power heard, seen and felt. The mist from the spray is so fine and thick nothing can be seen beyond it. This is one time when the word “awesome” is neither hyperbole nor cliché. We climb to the top of the observation tower after our boat tour and get another view of the falls and the river, then walk up a pedestrian path to get an even closer view. Despite the turbulence of the river and the ferocity of the falls, the water is a milky translucent pale-bright green, the color of sea glass.

Chris, Steve and Sarah

Christie and me

Hampton Beach, New Hampshire

After we dock the RV at a park in Salisbury, Mass., I suggest to Steve that we go to Hampton Beach and walk around. We drive the 4 miles and pull into the beach parking lot. There are parking meters, but Steve says, “They won’t charge for parking now; it’s after 5 o’clock.” “Parking metered 8 a.m. to midnight 7 days a week,” I read aloud on the parking meter. Steve’s all for adding to our collection of parking tickets by ignoring the meter, but I don’t want another parking ticket – we’ve already gotten them in California and Colorado (and ignored both). I dig in my purse, find a quarter and drop it in the meter. It gives us a whopping 10 minutes. “F**k it,” I say. I don’t have any more change, and I’m annoyed at having to feed these very expensive meters. We walk on, and I discover a vacant meter with 46 minutes left on it, then a few yards further, another meter with an hour and 16 minutes. “Quick, go get the car and move it here,” I tell Steve, while I lean against the meter shielding it from view by any other cars. After he parks thye Jeep, Steve tells me, “You know, when we’re retired, we won’t have any trouble finding the deals and getting bargains – you’ve already got plenty of practice. He’s probably referring to the deal I found today at L.L. Bean’s factory store. Steve needed a heavier winter jacket but wasn’t willing to spend even the reduced price of $59 (marked down from $109) for the one he wanted. When I found the same jacket in a size Small, sale priced at $39, I took the Medium and the Small jackets to the checkout counter, pointed out they were the same style, just different sizes, and could we have the medium at the sale price? No problem, the checkout clerk said, there’s no rhyme or reason to our pricing system anyway. Steve admitted to the clerk he never would have asked or tried to bargain a better price, but was glad that I did. “Why not?” she said. “If you ask, the worst that can happen is we’ll say no.”

*****
Walking on the beach in New Hampshire, looking for rocks and sea glass. No glass, but I find several interesting rocks, fingering them, studying them, then making the ultimate decision – keep or toss it back into the sea? After I fill my purse with about a dozen smallish rocks, I start looking for heart-shaped rocks, which I also collect. Can’t find any. There are thousands of rocks on the beach, but none meets my requirements. Finally I tell Steve, who is following me patiently, “Heart-shaped rocks are like gas stations. If you’re looking for one, you’ll never find one. So I’m not looking for anymore.” I take a few steps after this pronouncement and there in the sand is a perfect heart-shaped rock. What’d I tell you?? And in the next 10 yards of surf and sand I find three more! I’m happy.
Hampton Beach on a Thursday evening is in pre-summer. . . the air is cool, the ocean is cold, but there are plenty of adolescents and teens on the beach, hanging out at the pizza joints and in the parking lot, showing off their tattoos and piercings in tanks tops, bare bellies and shorts. Me, I’m wearing a denim jacket and khakis and I’m still chilly.

June 8
We’ve been in Abington, Mass. since Friday, June 3, at my sister, Christie’s and visiting with our son, Christopher and his fiancée, Sarah. Getting here was an incredibly exasperating experience. We drove from Salisbury, MA north of Boston, and relied on our GPS to get us to Abington, which is southwest of Boston. Unfortunately, the GPS didn’t know (nor did we) that our 38 foot diesel RV, carrying propane tanks and with Jeep in tow, is not permitted in the Sumner Tunnel, to which the GPS directed us in the heart of Boston. We reached the toll booth at the entrance to the tunnel and were frantically waved away by the toll booth operator, who came out of her booth to tell us sternly, “You can’t come in here!” She tells us to take Route 1 and gives us directions in her Boston accent. Then, because we need to turn around in a one-way lane, she calls the Mass. State Police. The trooper arrives as we finish unhooking the Jeep from the tow bar and directs traffic away as Steve backs up the motorhome. I head down the narrow Boston streets with Steve following. Bad news – the first left turn takes us to a detour and immediately we’re in trouble. I pull over as soon as I find a place where Steve can pull the RV out of traffic and tell him I have no idea what to do now. So he takes over in the lead, and for the next 2 hours we lumber through the narrow streets of Boston – many of them one-way – trying to find a route that will take us south without requiring travel through a tunnel (which we are restricted from because of our propane tanks, which are hazardous cargo and banned from the tunnels). Wrong turns that lead us north out of town don’t help. Finally, with the help of multiple phone calls to my sister Christie and our son, Chris, we find our way to 95 South, which will take us across the Tobin Bridge and on our way out of downtown.

But we discover as we near the bridge that evil awaits on the other side of the bridge – the Big Dig - another tunnel to which we’re not allowed entrance. We call the State Highway Patrol and after being transferred four times, they confirm that yes, there’s a tunnel, and no, we can’t go in. The trooper gives us directions which, of course, don’t make any sense and lead us back to the entrance of the banned Big Dig. Frustrated, Steve pounds the steering wheel and is ready to exit 95. “Fuck it, let’s go through the tunnel. We’re never going to get out of downtown otherwise,” I say. So we do, and we emerge safely at the other end, heading for the Boston suburbs!

We don’t do much sightseeing while in the Boston area, spending most of our time at Christie’s house visiting with her and her 3 kids or with Christopher and Sarah. We drive to Chatham on the Cape one day and walk around in town then drive down to the beautiful Chatham beach with its white sand and crystal clear water strewn with stones polished smooth by wind, water, weather and time. I could spend hours here collecting rocks on the beach and in the water – but we don’t have hours; we promised to stop by Christie’s brother-in-laws for a graduation party for their son.

Tuesday morning, Steve spends an hour on the phone trying to find a dealer in the area where we can get 2 replacement tires for the RV. Both are worn; one has to be replaced immediately – it has a deep gash in the outer wall. That happened when Steve turned into the driveway and bumped the tire against the high curb. We also need to get an oil change for the RV. It sounds simple. It’s not – most of the RV service centers tells him they don’t do oil changes. (What’s up with that??) . After about 15 phone calls, Steve finds a shop in New Hampshire, 70 miles due northwest, that has the Michelin tires we need. From there, we’ll drive to Bellingham, Mass., about 10 miles south of Abington – but 70 miles from the tire place – to get the oil changed on Thursday. We’re backtracking, but it’s the only route and schedule that makes sense – and keeps us out of downtown Boston and its cappelini streets.

We leave Abington on Wednesday. It’s 69 miles to the tire dealer in New Hampshire, but the drive takes us almost 3 hours. I follow Steve in the Jeep, to keep an eye on the bad tire and report any problems to Steve so he can pull over before it blows out. Fortunately, we get there safely and the tire change is quick so we’re on the road again in 90 minutes But the oil change is another story – it’s an all-day job, so we have drop off the RV at this grungy place in the middle of a residential neighborhood and take off to explore Bellingham and environs. Turns out there’s not much to explore; in 30 minutes we’ve seen everything. We drive around for awhile, killing time; we take the Jeep to a tire dealer and get the tires rotated, we find a state park on the map and decide to drive to the park, which we hope will have trees and shade – it’s a hot day, our Jeep has no AC, and we’re worried about Princess, who’s in the back seat looking wilted. After driving for an hour we find the park, and discover why no one we asked knew anything about it, including where it was. The park has a canal that’s covered in scum and filled with leaves and probably a breeding ground for mosquitos and a who knows what kind of diseases. And there aren’t many trees – or anything else to make the park appealing, for that matter. After walking around for 10 minutes or so – giving Princess a chance to pee and stretch her ailing legs – we get back in the Jeep and head back to town.

On the way, we pass a soft serve ice cream stand, and I tell Steve, “Let’s stop and get some.” I order a cone and a small dish of vanilla for Princess. The teenage girl behind the counter, on hearing the dish is for our dog, tells us there’s a Doggy Sundae, made with dog biscuits. She’s eager for us to order it; “I love making them!” she tells us. But Princess is picky about the dog biscuits she’ll eat, so we tell her Sorry, just make it plain. But then I see Chili Cheese Dog on the menu, and for some reason – even though I haven’t eaten a hot dog in 15 years – it looks good, and I order one. But when I take a bite, I realize why I don’t eat hot dogs anymore. I toss the hot dog in the trash and eat the chili and cheese on a bun – it’s good. And Princess laps up every bit of her biscuit-less ice cream and would eat more if she could.

Finally, at 3 p.m. we return to J&P’s Truck Service. Our motorhome is sitting in the parking lot, ready for us. RV oil changes, like RV tires, are not cheap – the oil change (with a few other minor services Steve has requested) is $350; the 2 tires were more than $600.