2016-20 from upstate New York back into Pennsylvania

2016-20

Monthly Expenses

July travel expenses

One last visit to Lilly Dale

Erie Pennsylvania
Sharpsville Pennsylvania

Presque Isle State Park

Campground:  Presque Isle Downs and Casino.  Free parking lot dry camping.  And of course I picked up one of their players cards which also gave me $20 of free money to play on the slot machines and a discount at their lunch buffet which I might add was quite good.

Campground:  Shenango Public Use area: Army Corps campground.  Half price senior rate, $12.00.  Electric only.  No water or sewer at the sites.  Half of the sites are dry camping many having nice water views.

1,2 and 3 are this weeks journey, the rest will be for next week

Before heading out from the Jamestown New York area I was taking a walk along the country road in front of the Top-A-Rise campground.  Where I met the owners of a cute little house on the corner.  The wife told me some of the history of the little brick house.  It was originally a school house and her grandmother and mother both attended school there.  Now she and her husband live in it during the summer and travel to Florida where they own a second home.  Mentioning one of the features of the brick house is that on the outside there are two inset brick faux windows.  On many of the bricks are the initials of the students who attended school there adding just a touch of the history of the place.

late 1800's school house, now a summer home

I stopped a last time in Lilly Dale and took my dear friend Ms Anne Gehman out to lunch.  Going to a favorite restaurant of hers called the White House in Fredonia.  A very classy restaurant.  We talked about how laughter and humor is so important in everyone’s lives.  She told how her teacher in mediumship, Wilber Hull had a great sense of humor and once told her, he was never satisfied with a reading unless he made the girls pee in their pants and the men to cry.  Needless to say we both got a chuckle of that visual.  Ann has been teaching her Spiritual, healing, meditation and mediumship classes for many years and she reminded me of one special meditation she occasionally does called the laughing medication.  I remember sitting in on a couple of them many years ago.  We would start out consciously forcing ourselves to laugh out loud.  Now don’t you know, you feel a bit funny and awkward doing that.  Then it becomes almost a mantra of laughter, before finally settling down and going into a quiet meditation.  Elevating the meditation to a higher state through laughter and into a place of  joy and peacefulness unlike anything one may have experienced previously.  That’s a brief description as I could go on for quite some time on this subject.

Lilly Dale New York

To give you an idea of a medium giving a reading, I’ll describe one I had that evening in Lilly Dale.

Monday Night Circle
With Margaret Ferris, Registered Medium

Sponsored by the Medium’s League and The Lilly Dale Assembly 

hours before setting up chairs in circles for
the evenings readings

A large gathering of people line up outside of the Assembly hall on a warm summer evening around 6pm.   Gradually winding their way around the side of the building leading up to the ticket window.  For $15 each person is assigned to a medium and sits in a circle with 4 or 5 other people for mini-readings that usually last 10+ minutes.  The Assembly hall has filled up with perhaps 40 mediums and a total of over 200 people sitting in small circles on the main floor of the hall receiving short readings.  The large shutter type windows are all open to the evening air.  It’s a large assembly hall.

After a group prayer and often an individual prayer for each reading, the medium in my case, Margaret Ferris asks who would like to go first.  After giving a reading to a lady on my left, I was the second person to receive a reading.  I won’t describe the readings of the other participants as they are considered personal and confidential and one shouldn’t share other folks readings unless given approval.

Margaret quickly brought in my Father and his Mother from the spirit world.  My dad said he was happy for me that I had retired with a good pension and was enjoying retirement so well.  That he had not had the opportunity to enjoy his retirement as well as I had been doing.  Margaret then went on to ask me if I wrote or was writing a journal.  I answered yes, thinking of my writing my travel blog, but I did not mention what type of writing I did.  She then went on to say again that I was enjoying my retirement very much and she saw travel, wheels and trains and asked if I had something to do with rv-ing.  Of course I confirmed that and she said that my Dad was happy for me and often traveled with me in spirit.  She went on to say I enjoyed telling a good story and that I got that from my fathers side of the family, and that information came through from his mother.  That my fathers side of the family loved to tell stories.  She also mentioned that I could make a little money with the telling of my stories if I wanted too and she saw a screen projecting pictures and my providing a travel log type presentation.

Margaret also mentioned the word gypsy and wanted to know why that word came up.  She knew it had to do with travel and I confirmed that I often refer to my travels as a gypsy or vagabond lifestyle and that I truly enjoyed it.  To the point that I’d used the term gypsy as recently as the last day or two.

She saw me traveling to Ireland and possibly to Scotland as she felt I had family connections in Scotland perhaps on my Mothers side of the family.  Traveling in Ireland, she saw me on the west coast of Ireland and she said my Dad said to kiss the Blarney stone, and I’d be alright.  Possibly within the next year. A note:  I have had very few readings in my life and this is the second time a medium suggested a trip to Ireland was in the offing.

She also saw me in Hawaii and I confirmed that I’d been there many years ago.  She mentioned a volcano which I hiked to the top of with a friend on Oahu.  She said my Dad was with me in spirit at the time.  I believe she saw me traveling to Hawaii again.

Before she left me she said to watch out for a back tire on the camper, as it might have gotten out of alignment going over a bump and to check something with the muffler or some other item of the truck as their might need to have a minor repair coming up.

In a reading like this the medium usually asks at the end of the session if a person has one question and they will try to answer it.  I had none and was more than pleased with the reading.

It was a very positive, upbeat and happy reading and of course it brought me joy as well as to the medium giving the reading.  Often times a medium will pick up on the many problems people come with.  Hoping a spiritual center like this will give them answers and solutions.  So for a medium to receive so much happy bountiful messages from the other side for a person is very uplifting not only to the person receiving the message but is also uplifting to the medium.

Distance Traveled:  56 miles
Erie Pennsylvania

Erie Pennsylvania is yet another destination I have not been to in the past.  Even though it may seem like I’ve been all over the country, there are always a new places to explore.  It’s a nice size town on the shores of Lake Erie with Canada only 25 miles across the lake.  Many of the homes are of the salt box variety and as such are quite small.  Most are in their original configuration with very few having additions added to them.  That may be, because the lots are also quite small.  All appear to be very well kept.  One of the main attractions in Erie is Presque Isle.  Which is French and means “almost an Island”.  Though throughout the years it has been a true island 3 or 4 times, when the spit of land connecting it to the mainland was washed away during violent lake storms.

Presque Isle wraps around like an elongated arm and have numerous sandy beaches and an awesome walking and biking path the entire length of the island. It also creates a deep harbor for the town of Erie and is often used by boats as a safe haven in a storm.  I stopped at a couple of the beaches and sure wish I had my swim trunks with me as I would have jumped in the water for a swim.  Instead, I continued around the island until I reached the lighthouse.  Not a super spectacular lighthouse, but nice to look at and take a few photo shots and walk down to the beach area.   The island along with the beaches and paved paths is also covered with a wonderful canopy of trees providing a nice shady atmosphere while driving around the island on a hot sunny day.  What a great resource for those fortunate enough to live in this area.

Of course I’m staying for free at a casino/race track parking lot for free for a couple of days and got a bit concerned when I noticed my batteries were draining at about 11 amps continuously with nothing on.  It wasn’t till the next day that I noticed when I disconnected the truck from the camper I had tripped the safety release mechanism which locks the electric brakes.  They had been on for a full day, draining the batteries.  Everything is back to normal and the solar panels are charging the batteries properly and I can use the inverter to power the tv, microwave, and coffee pot as needed.

what a stunning farm

This area is noted for having a number of covered bridges and lots of farms and barns which are always fun to take pictures of.  So even though the day started out very overcast and cloudy, I drove out to see some of those covered bridges.  Had no idea I would be driving into parts of Ohio, but should have realized that since this part of Pennsylvania is just a narrow spit of land connecting the state to Lake Erie.  If you haven’t tried using Google maps for GPS directions it can do some really fun stuff.  I looked up “covered bridges” and it found a dozen or more within a 50 mile radius.  I didn’t go to all of them but it sure was great to just select each one and get directions right to the covered bridges.  Of course I kept wanting to pull over to take pictures of all the neat barns as well and did stop to take a few shots along the way.  What a fun way to explore the country side.

of course there were many more
covered bridges than I had the time to explore

An Amish father and son heading up the hill
after going across the covered bridge shown above

Back at the casino today, they are getting ready for a motor cycle run.  Hundreds of bikes have arrived in the parking lot next to where I’m set up for the evening.  A live band has set up and is performing.  They will head out at 6pm this evening for a bike run into the town of Erie.  It’s also a fun raiser as well.  There were so many motorcycles it took over 30 minutes for all of them to exit the parking lot and head into town.

Distance Traveled:  70 miles

Heading south back into Pennsylvania my plan is to stay at a couple of Army Corp campgrounds.  The first one is called Shenango Public Use area.  Usually they are great campgrounds, unfortunately, because I made reservations online and no photos were available of the campsites, I’m sure you can guess what kind of site I got.  Actually, it’s not too bad, lots of grass and a nice shade tree near the picnic table.  It was just a bit of challenge backing into the site, which was down an incline slope and the one way street it was on didn’t provide much maneuverability as I attempted backing into the site.  After a half a dozen tries, I said to myself, good enough.  It’ll do until I move to the next campsite.  My back door neighbors just sat there watching as I attempted my “moves”.

Well I guess that’s more than enough for this weeks edition of my rambling report, so I’ll save the Big News for next week.

Pictures:  Presque Isle State Park and Covered Bridges and barns