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| Looking for summer |
Well, it's that time of year when I get rather tired of winter and when reservations open up to book campgrounds. I hope to do more agility trials with Liam this summer, so I looked at all the posted trial dates and decided which ones I would likely enter him in, that showed me what date windows we would have for camping.
Then my sisters and I found some campsites in New York state parks. I've always wanted to go to Watkins Glen but since dogs aren't allowed on the Gorge trail, I'd never gone. Hopefully, since I'll be with other people, we can take turns doing the trail or perhaps the dogs can stay with someone back at the campsite. Like many provincial parks here in Ontario, the New York state parks fill up fast, by the time we booked at Watkins Glen there were only four electric sites left. My youngest sister and I took the two sites that were side by side with my other sister booked the site just down the road. For me, this will be quite a long drive and you never know what kind of delay there will be crossing the border, so my youngest sister and I will stop at Westcott Beach on the way down and Selkirk Shores on the way back. We're already looking at wineries and breweries that we can go to when we're at Watkins Glen as the Finger Lakes region of New York is famous for that.
I have been to Letchworth State park in New York where the dogs were allowed on the gorge trail. Letchworth is called the Grand Canyon of the east.
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| Beckett at Letchworth |
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| Keltic at Letchworth |
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| Letchworth canyon trail |
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| Letchworth Falls |
So, it will be a trip to New York in June. This morning, we got up early to try and book at Bon Echo Provincial Park for Jul; we didn't get the sites we wanted but did get two sites in the park. It's crazy that it's so hard to get camp sites, Ontario has even reduced the number of days you can book from 23 down to 7 days, but I'm not sure what measures they have to ensure you just don't do back-to-back bookings. We stopped at Bon Echo on our way back last year but couldn't even get two nights in a row, so it was just a one-night stop. Bon Echo has a nice little dog beach, so I hope this year to really be able to take the dogs swimming there.
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| Mazinaw Rock |
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| Bridge over to the dog beach |
In Aug, I have dates where I can get some more camping in, but we'll have to wait for booking windows to open up for those dates. Who knows maybe Vermont, although, their state parks now charge $2 per dog per night. What's up with that? I don't mind pet fees but per dog per night; like really what extra service is provided for that fee, free poop bags? The Lake George or Lake Champlain regions of New York could be another option.
But the big travel plans are in Sep when we've booked a Danube cruise starting with a land portion in Bucharest and Brasov, Romania and ending with a land portion in Vienna, Austria. Vienna has always been on my bucket list. The trip is of the lower Danube so apparently while there's a lot of history, we won't see fairytale villages. We'll be sailing again with Amawaterways. We did a Rhine River cruise with them in 2016 and just loved it.
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| Amacerto on the Rhine River |
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| Riquewihr, France |
Afterwards we're planning to take the train from Vienna to Prague where we'll stay five nights. This part of the trip will be on our own. Our flights have been booked and a hotel in Prague is already reserved.
So, you can see why I'm eager to see the end of winter. It can't come soon enough but I know we probably have another month or so to go.
