New York and Home

October 4, 2016 – Florida, NY

Arriving in New York to visit my sister Nona, her daughter Ayelet, and my mom, we stayed at an interesting little RV park in Florida, NY called Black Bear Campground.  The changing season was becoming apparent, making Tom nervous about getting home before winter.

Below is one of the vehicles driving through Black Bear – not your usual RV.

Below in Mom’s apartment are five generations.  From left to right, they are Leah-Ettel with baby Shoshana, Ayelet, Nona, and Mom.

At left is another picture of baby Shoshana, and at right is  Tom, sitting at one of Eddie’s reading tables – a shtender.   He pronounced it very comfortable – you can sit and read without strain.  No eye strain or neck strain even if reading for hours.

Mom took us out to her favorite restaurant – Mandarin Fusion Steakhouse, a kosher Chinese restaurant near Monsey. 

Left to right:  Tom, Shula (me), Nona, Mom, Eddie

Nona and Eddie came out to the Black Bear Campground to visit us in TYRTLE

During this trip, we met sister-in-law Tammy Serkin at a restaurant halfway between TYRTLE and her house.

On the way to New York, we had purchased a mezuza for TYRTLE from the Mezuza Store online, but had no idea  how to put it up since the coach doorway is not quite like a house door.  Eddie, our Hassidic brother-in-law, was able to advise us on the proper protocol, and it is now a permanent part of TYRTLE.

The Mezuza is made of stone from Jerusalem that was salvaged from the Temple Mount.  The history is that in 2003, the Waqf (Muslim religious authority) began construction on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, without regard for the archeological history of the spot, which has stones from the ruins of both the first and second Temples. They hauled the excavated material to a garbage dump in the Kidron Valley outside of Jeruselem.

When an Israeli artist heard about this, he went to the dump and collected as many of these holy stones as he could. From them he created Mezuzahs in order to salvage something of the original holiness that these stones had.

Although we were delayed a bit by a hurricane that made a mess of Highway 95, we finally were  on our way home.  By this time we were so tired of traveling that we nixed any thought of visiting New York City, Philadelphia, or anything else.  We just drove straight south.

On the way, we stopped at a Walmart (of course) in the Pennsylvania area where we noticed that the Walmart had a special parking area for the Amish carriages.  Dark inside, it was hard to get a good picture of the horse itself, and I didn’t want to get too close since he noticed me and I didn’t want to disturb him by getting any closer.

Finally, we were home after having driven 7,447 miles in 137 days.

We arrived home on October 20, 2016.  Over the next months had dinner with good friends … played with a new chess set called the Isle of Lewis – created in 1150 AD …

… got ready for the end-of-year holidays …

…. and even watched for a full eclipse of the moon in the wee  hours — of the wrong day.