Magnus Moves! Massachusetts and back, Day 17

Thursday, July 25

Bye, West Thompson Lake

Breakfast at Henry's Diner, a couple miles south of camp. We thought we only had a one-hour drive, so why not do breakfast?

 

Headed to Partridge Hollow (again). It was only supposed to be an hour drive, but I routed us up to the Interstate 90 and then over to SH 32 through Monson, which kept us on decent roads instead of the glorified cowpaths that Massachusetts takes for usable routes.  They aren't. Unless you're driving a horse and buggy.

The roundabout route plus the usual Motorhome overhead didn't get us there until sometime after noon.  Molly got her walk, cut a little short because I wanted to eat lunch, and then it started raining just as I wanted to give her a second walk. The rain moved through pretty quickly but my conscience had started hurting about this being our last day to visit with the grandchildren, so we soon packed up and left.

And didn't return for a long, long time. We finally pulled in at about 10:30, way past anybody's bedtime.  It wasn't the family's fault, though. I chose Texas Roadhouse for our final dinner, and the service was unbelievably slow. We had to wait for a table; then they called us to be seated and we had to wait while they cleaned the table; we sent back the waitress once (not bad); they forgot to bring our appetizer; ordering was slow, etc. They didn't bring the kid's and Edward's corn side dishes until almost the end of the meal.

But at least they kept the bread coming, and there were peanuts to eat.  Ethan and I played innumerable games of Tic-Tac-Toe.  He's getting the point of it quite nicely.

Earlier in the day we played with the kids for a while and ended up taking a bit of a walk up the hill. Elyanna is very taken by he grandfather, which is an amazingly welcome change from the last time we saw her. She even tolerates me!

Side note--one of the things I really like about Partridge Hollow is the birds. If you walk up the hill into the seasonal sites, looking for the bathroom which we never found, there are RVs where people have put out bird feeders.  The RVs are sideways to a big ridge with tall trees on it. (Plus more motorhomes up the hill; we didn't go to see them)

In the trees there were a pair of Cooper's Hawks, as identified by Merlin because I didn't see them.  I heard them pretty well, just didn't get the ID by myself. But while I was looking for the hawks, right there looking back at me sat a Scarlet Tanager!  So I finally have my new lifer that I wanted.

The trips is no longer a complete loss--I have a new BIRD!

And there's lots more walking a person can do, like go around the campground, go down into the back field where the ground hog and lots of rabbits live (and a yellowthroat), or walk down the road to the big marsh.  Lots of good bird country. I saw a male yellowthroat, too.

Note: we need to come back here to see the birds!  
Also note: that the first site on the right (next to the poo) in the "safari field" is excellent for starlink reception.