A Hail Storm.... in MAY!

Yes! We drove through the town of Kent, across Camp Flats Road through a rain storm (George Washington passed along this tiny road back in the good old days). As we climbed the hill, we saw long trails of white stuff along the road. I thought these were the downed blossoms of cottonwood trees. We pulled over and Jo opened the door. Hailstones. Millions of them the size of corn kernels. Welcome to Connecticut in late May. Summer is a month away.

We came north two weeks ago, stopping off outside Baltimore for a remarkable wool festival. I have never seen so many sheep breeds... all the way from Karachol (from the Mideast and Africa) to St. Kilda miniature sheep from a tiny island 'way west of Scotland's Outer Hebrides. There were Scottish black-face sheep who sported pretty impressive curling horns. And there were angora sheep that gave up their priceless fleece to the shearing every six months.

As we headed north from Baltimore, we calculated the best and cheapest places to stop to fill the gas tank. We stopped in New Jersey - always a cheaper place than New York or Connecticut. But we damaged the extending step at our side door when it jammed up against the curb at the filling island. We tied it up with a shock cord and then sailed across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. Now that was a tactical error. Sunday afternoons, you might think, traffic would be slow. Not so when we deal with Manhattan. We were trapped in stop-and-go traffic for two hours.

Our emergency brake red light began to warn me - again - that it was losing fluid - a fearsome warning in this no-lay-by highway through New York City. We made it out of the city and when I parked and squirmed under the rig, the fluid reservoir was empty. I topped it off again, cursing this awful piece of engineering.

We ordered replacement parts for the step and for the actuator on the emergency brake and I have managed to get the steps working again. Now, we await the rebuilding of the actuator to see if we can put this menace of a brake system to rest again. Then our plan is to drive north to Vermont to visit with our daughter, Stephanie, before she heads off to join her husband in Italy where he has taken a new job.