Salt City VW Show & Camping at Camp Swampy

So, here I am in December (almost January) catching up with August, having (finally) located some pictures.

A combination of time off (Yay!) and unspeakable weather (Blecch!) have me inside, updating my blog.

Camp Swampy, I should explain, is the name we give to our country "estate", which includes a pond, a lot of swamp, some woods, a meadow, and assorted wildlife.

The plan for the show was to camp at Oneida Shores, like last year. but this year's show coincided with the Bassmaster's fishing tournament and they had all the sites, so we were happy to host this year's camping on the dry (er) section of our acreage.

We were happy to have some really nice folks from Utica camping with us: John & Diane in their California Vanagon, and Patrick, Heather, and baby Milo in their blue '71 camper.

A strange, bright red vessel was sighted on the pond, with Diane at the helm, I think.

Empire VW Campers Mark (of Tikibus fame) Phil of the Yellow Vangon came from Rochester to sample the delights of Camp Swampy.

Kevin & son Ethan also camped with us in their green '72 hightop.

I don't know what's in the cooler. Maybe one of Ethan's creatures.

Putt-Putt joined the campers, complete with our "Taj Mahal" side tent

Highlights of the evening campfire included some hippie dude trying to blow himself up with a propane torch "Anything'l burn if you feed it enough PROPANE!" and, later, same hippie dude toasting marshmallows in an INCREDIBLY scruffy jacket.

Hmmm... do we ALLOW that at VW gatherings?

Phil can be seen, playing the guitar, and Mark, of course, appearing as himself.
















Dan, VWCCNY Superhero and President for Life (You Can't Get Out Of It, Dan!) stopped by after working himself to a frazzle up at Oneida Shores.












An extremely wet field led Dan to re-frazzle himself Sunday morning building a Plank Road for Volkswagens, (eventually nixed by the ranger) so his super powers were put to the test cramming about 100 cars into the small gravel parking lot.








































All turned out OK though, with many awesome vehicles present, including Putt-Put, of course, hanging with the campers. Here are a nice Porsche, an awesome Ghia, a beautiful VW Super beetle Convertible, a vintage Corvair wagon, and some amazing split-window Busses,. (Pics by Joel here, by way of LIMBO) .














































































The lineup of Vanagon campers (Joel's shot, from the LIMBO website) is impressive.

Some really nice vehicles here, new-fangled though they are.

I here they use some mysterious thing called "coolant".....

Camping at Little Sand Point, Piseco Lake

In August, we camped at Little Sand Point, on the shore of Piseco Lake, in the southern Adirondacks.











We stopped at Hinckley resevoir on the way up to take some pictures; a perfect photo-op for our 'baby".
















































































This trip was our first with the Spacemaker tent from Bus Depot, which we've dubbed the Taj Mahal" because of it's size.





















It hooks up to the sliding door on the Bus, but we set it up free standing, because the site was steep & narrow. Nice site, though; a very "woodsy" feeling.







































Sherrie's new "toy", the Coleman propane stove.









Our site from a Sasquatch perspective.















Route 8 between Piseco and Wells was newly paved, with great scenery & hardly any traffic.



It's a well known fact that Busses doze in the garage & dream of roads like this.









































































The town of Wells has a public beach on Lake Algonquin, where we paused for more Bus photos.

































































































The flagman flashed us a peace sign as we drove by.



























Some new stickers.

You can never have too many stickers.
















































Sunset over Piseco Lake.































We finally had to pack up & head back to "reality" & our day jobs.

It took some effort to get this strange old hippie guy off our tent, so we could finish rolling it up.

You have to keep an eye on these people; they'll just flop down anywhere.