Copake, NY and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, July – August 2018

Once again, Keith and Rene, Ray and Terry, and Therese and I convoyed on the open road. Our destination this time was Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where we would meet up with some of our Massachusetts cousins from my mother’s side of the family. My mother, Arlene, was one of seven children, and she and three of her siblings raised large families as well. The Bentley clan consists of six “children” and all but my sister Cindy now live in Pennsylvania. The Leary clan was eight kids (parents, my mother’s sister, Peggy and Tom Leary) and were raised in Massachusetts, but many have moved out of state. The Stone clan (parents, my mother’s sister, Ellen and Ken Stone) was also eight kids and most have stayed in Massachusetts. The Stones gather regularly in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and this year Keith, Ray, and me (and our wives) crashed the party, along with my cousin Tim Leary, who was accompanied by his wife Mary Lynn, daughter Kelly and her two children. All seven surviving Stone “second generation” members were in attendance for at least part of the festivities.

The direct route from southeastern Pennsylvania to Cape Cod pretty much follows I-95 northeast through some of the most densely populated parts of the East coast, so we decided to take a route that first went north into the rural part of eastern New York, and then traversed the length of Massachusetts from west to east.

Therefore, our first stop was at the Copake RV Resort, in Copake, New York (don’t ask how to pronounce that, we never heard any of the locals say it, so we’re not sure either).

We left on Friday morning, at about 10:00, with 12,776 miles on the odometer. We met up with Keith and Ray at the end of Keith’s driveway, and headed up there via Route 23, Route 100, Interstate 78 to Interstate 87 and then via local roads to the campsite. We took a detour of about 15 miles after I missed a turn a few miles from the campsite, requiring us to take a big loop since the back roads didn’t present any obvious place to turn the rigs around and backtrack. We arrived about 4:30, with the odometer reading 13,041 (265 miles).

Copake RV Resort is in a very scenic part of New York, about 40 miles south of Albany, not far from the Massachusetts border. The park is pretty large (225 sites) and quite nice, and surprisingly uncrowded given that we were there on a Friday and Saturday night in late July. The sites were spacious and wooded, and lots of rain this summer had everything lush and green.

Rene and Keith hosted dinner (a delicious rice and shrimp dish) for everyone. Keith accidentally bought an oversized “Clam” (screened in tent-like shelter) large enough for the picnic table to fit inside, which came in very handy. The weather was good on Friday night, so we got a nice campfire going.

On Saturday, we decided to go to the Taconic State Park, which is right on the NY/Massachusetts border. We parked in New York, and then hiked to Massachusetts to the Bash Bish Falls, which have the highest vertical drop (about 60 feet) of any in Massachusetts. They were running pretty high due to all the rain of late. The name originates from Mohican folklore, involving a tragic story of an Indian maiden who jumped from the falls and was perhaps bashed and bished, followed eventually by a daughter and her husband who also jumped. Not exactly a cheerful story, but a scenic place. There were lots of people enjoying the scenery on the highly strenuous and lengthy (not) hike.

Dinner was hosted by Terry and Ray, and featured a variety of tasty dishes that all contained Zucchini as an ingredient, including lasagna and Zucchini chocolate cake. There was a country and western band, Thunder Ridge, at the campground, and they were pretty good. There were a bunch of seasonal campers who came and watched from their golf carts, which was a popular form of transportation. Unfortunately, rain prevented us from firing up a second campfire.

Sunday was sunny and pleasant, and we got rolling for Cape Cod at about 11:00. Our convoy’s destination was Peter’s Pond RV Resort in Sandwich Massachusetts. We took some back roads to get to Interstate 90 which becomes the Massachusetts Turnpike as you cross the state line. We followed that all the way across the state to Interstate 495, which goes to Route 6, which then gets you to Cape Cod. Massachusetts is one of the most densely populated states in the country, but you would never know it from the Mass Turnpike. Aside from the traffic, about all you see are woods and occasional farmland. It’s really quite scenic. They also have eliminated all the tollbooths – everything is electronic and no stopping or even slowing down is required.

We arrived at Peter’s Pond at about 4:00. I was in the lead, so I didn’t have any trouble getting through the gate. But as I was rolling by the gatehouse, the attendant noticed that Ray had decorated my towed vehicle with a prominent Philadelphia Eagle’s magnetic sticker (For those few of you who don’t remember, the Eagles beat the Boston Patriots in the Super Bowl in January, so we were deep in enemy territory.) Keith was right behind me, and the observant attendant noted that his last name was the same as mine, so he inspected Keith’s vehicles for Eagles paraphernalia. His toad also sported an Eagles sticker, so the attendant claimed that his reservation was lost and no way on earth was he going to get a refund. Of course Boston Patriot fans are not sore losers (although they do need more practice at it) so he was just kidding, and in we went.

Ray was about an hour behind us, as one of his tires developed a slow leak on the road between Copake and Cape Cod. In true “every man for himself” fashion, Keith and I simply continued onward and left him to fend for himself. Fortunately he had a pump with him and was able to inflate the tire a few times and that got him to the campground. He had an Eagles sticker on the front of his RV, so was also nearly denied admission as an obvious hooligan and troublemaker.

We found Peter’s Pond to be a very lively campground (the most lively we have ever been to). It’s large, I’d say about 300 sites. Almost all of them are rented out for the season (three of our cousins rent for the season there), and we heard that there are only 9 available transient sites. Fortunately we had reserved fairly early and were able to get three of those. There’s a huge pool with a slide, shuffleboard courts, basketball courts, horseshoe pits, a baseball field, and even a laser tag area. There were many kids riding bicycles and scooters, and lots of residents riding around in golf carts. They also have a bunch of vacation cottages for rent, which is where other members of the family stayed.

Within a few minutes of arriving, we encountered cousins and second cousins and spent the rest of the afternoon visiting with them. My Stone first cousins, while not quite as prolific as “generation one” have their share of offspring as well (somewhere between 18 and 20). Many of the “G2” cousins had come to one or two previous family reunions in Pennsylvania, but those were both 10+ years ago, so it was great to see them grown up. Most of them are now married and have children of their own.

It was Therese and my turn to host dinner Sunday night, which was a delicious chicken casserole. Keith didn’t like it, although it took him at least three helpings to determine that fact.

After dinner, we walked over to the campground’s common area, where a number of the Stone/Leary/Bentley campers had a campfire started. We stayed and talked until “quiet time” started at 10:00.

Monday was the big shuffleboard championship. Cousin Kevin (everyone’s favorite Brother, Cousin, Uncle, etc., just ask him) had laboriously herded the cats to form ten 4-person teams, and Nicholas Brazil had “volunteered” to set up the brackets for the tournament and keep the show on the road.

The more organized teams even had a team name and T-shirts (Shufflepufs, Easy Sliders, Philly Specials) but two out of three of those teams were long on style but short on substance and were eliminated early. There were two courts in continuous play from about 12:00 until 4:00 with a total of 19 or 20 matches. We started out with the first team to reach 55 points winning the match, but that rule was revised to award the win to the first team with 41 points after one of the first two matches took nearly an hour to finish. Lunch was an outstanding mix of sandwiches and salads catered by a local sandwich shop whose owner is a friend of cousin Steve.

No particular correlation was observed between athletic prowess and winning. There might in fact have been a more close correspondence between beer consumption and victory. When all the dust had settled, the surprising result was that the championship team consisted of Keith, Steve, Mary Lynn, and Cooper, after a hotly contested final match with the team of Jason, Kevin, Ray, and Jess. The ShufflePuffs (some called them Shuffle Toughs, with their bullying behavior and obnoxious victory dances), with Andria, Cindy, Myra, and Michelle came in third.

Here are some exciting action shots from the tournament:

After the tournament, all of the “generation three” kids in attendance were rounded up for a group photo.

On Tuesday, Rene, Terry, and Therese went on a whale-watching junket. Keith and Barry stayed home to “camp” and help Ray wait for the tire guy to arrive to fix the tire. The problem was readily diagnosed as a leak in the tire stem to the inner left rear dual, related to the combination of the valve stem and the tire pressure monitor, but inexplicably, the tire guy had neither the tool nor the parts to fix it correctly. A continual stream of cousins and second cousins walked by the campsite, though, so waiting around was actually quite pleasant.

A brief afternoon walk around the campground was followed by dinner at the Chart Room restaurant near North Falmouth. Since there are two Chart Room restaurants on Cape Cod, a 25 minute trip was transformed into a 50 minute trip while we sorted that out (fortunately Keith was the lead car in that fiasco, so I didn’t get the blame as I did for the previous “lost in space” adventure). Dinner was good (everyone had at least some traditional New England lobster). By the time we got back, it was too late to burn stuff, so we skipped the traditional campfire.

We were supposed to stay until Thursday morning, but a family health problem back home required us to leave a day early. We got rolling a little before 11:30 in the morning, and set out on a more direct route home. We attempted to avoid the worst of the traffic by heading a little bit west before turning south, taking the Tappan Zee Bridge, and then down Interstate 287 to Interstate 78. There was an accident at the 287/78 interchange that cost us about an hour, so we finally got home around 8:00, with 13,672 miles on the odometer (a total of 896 miles on this trip).

A great trip – it was really nice to see the cousins after so many years. Hopefully we can crash again next year. We’ll try to bring reinforcements.

And by now the Stone cousins will realize that how much they love those Philadelphia Eagles magnets that Ray strategically placed for them. He always knows how to make friends.