Author: bjregan

Hello again to our storage container and goodbye (for now) to the faithful bicycle that carried me for so many miles this summer in Iowa.

One of the tasks we accomplished in our 5-day day stopover in Virginia was to gain access to our storage container so that we could offload one of 3 bicycles we have been carrying on the back of the car ever since we left Iowa.  It was a strange feeling to look inside the container and see the household goods we had put there way back in December.  One file cabinet drawer had come loose, but, other than that, everything was just as we had left it.  And when we resettle somewhere and call for the container to be delivered I expect that we will find everything just as we left it.  Closing the door and saying goodbye to “stuff” is not a big deal.

It was much more difficult to say hello and goodbye to the many friends that we reconnected with this week.  When you are wandering around the country it’s easy to get distracted and not pay as much attention as you should to keeping in touch with friends.  With a limited number of days here we didn’t see everyone, but we were blessed tremendously by each and every one of the friends we did see.

We are especially grateful to Brian and Darlene for having us over for a cookout, to Greg and Wayne for keeping our mail for us, to Eva for letting us crash at her place and to Matt and Veronica for putting us up at their beautiful country home in Culpeper.  And then our friends at church and Liz and Alex and the group at their home were so welcoming and made us feel that we hadn’t left here at all.

But now there are other places yet to visit and it’s time to say goodbye once again to Virginia.  Tomorrow’s travels will take us to West Virginia where we will see our 2 grandsons and check out the family’s new digs in Marlinton.

We enjoyed our weekend with the Regans at the cabin they rent every summer on New York’s Great Sacandaga Lake. The cabin is one of 12 located on the north shore of the lake at a family-owned property, Kathan Kamps. The Kathan family owned farmland that was flooded in 1930 when Sacandaga Lake came into being at the completion of the Conklingville Dam. Dr. Dudley Kathan moved the farmhouse and several buildings to higher ground and those buildings became the start of Kathan Kamps.

The Regan family history has deep roots at Kathan Kamps. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, all have great memories of fun times at the gatherings here over the years. Time passes and children grow up and buildings age and in 2012 we no longer saw games being played or children digging in the sand at the lake shore. But it is a beautiful, peaceful location and we appreciated the hospitality of our host and hostess.

When we left New York yesterday our plan was to camp last night at a state park in Pennsylvania.  The weather, however, had other plans.  We encountered some very heavy rains driving from Binghamton to Scranton.  By the time we got to Scranton the worst of the rainstorm was over, but it was in the 60’s and gray and drizzly.  We opted for a motel stay and spent a comfortable night.  Today we make the drive to Virginia where we will spend several days at our old home territory visiting friends and taking care of a few items of business.