Located in the heart of the White Mountains, Twin Mountain KOA is a small but cozy campground. They have family-oriented evening activities (the kids went to an ice cream social our first night there), plus the typical recreational amenities – pool, park, gameroom, cable tv and a store.

The campground is about an hour away from North Conway, NH, the major vacation center in the region. And it’s about a half hour from Mt. Washington. Just about everything of interest is a bit of a drive from the campground, so it is best to have a car when you come here.

The WiFi is available, though not park-wide. This is fairly typical of the KOA parks we’ve been to in our travels. You need to be on sites 1 thru 5 or 11 thru 15 to get a decent signal (we were on site 13).

Overall, we’d recommend this park as a good stop-over on your way through New Hampshire.

Four out of five marshmallows.

Twin Mountain KOA
372 Rt. 115
Twin Mountain, NH 03595
P(800) 562-9117
Latitude: N 44 deg 18’16.992″
Longitude: W 71 deg 31’58.8″
http://www.twinmountainkoa.com/

The other day, Frank said a bad word (douche bag). After we quizzed him on the meaning of the word, and lectured him on saying words you don’t know the definition of, we made him look it up in the dictionary. Unfortunately, much to the amusement of the children, it took Richard and me about five minutes to figure out how to spell it. Frank could then only find the first part of the word in the dictionary (sigh). You can imagine the look on Frank’s face when he figured out what the word meant. Anyway, today, we caught Ali and Frank looking up bad words in the dictionary. At least they were USING the dictionary! Here they are, looking up a word. I won’t type the word here, but the definition, according to The American Heritage Dictionary Office Edition is: “Any of several hoofed, long-eared mammals resembling and closely related to the horse.”

Later this afternoon, despite the chilly, late-afternoon air, Frank and Ali took Max swimming. We haven’t ever been able to get him to let go of us in the pool. He just completed a month of private swimming lessons and he still would never let go of us, or his instructor. However, today, Ali and Frank convinced him to let go. Yes, he had a lifejacket on, and he loved the freedom of being able to paddle around all by himself! On the way back from the pool, Richard sat down at the campground’s group bonfire pit and sang Kum ba yah. Not really. I just made him pose there so I could write that.

Frank made me a tiny shadow box today using a kit he got at the gift shop here. Isn’t it cute? I love shadow boxes. And here’s a photo of Frank eating New Hampshire Maple Syrup right out of the bottle. Mmmm. A spoonful of the BEST sugar!

Tomorrow, we’re heading west, through a strong cold front that will make traveling a bit treacherous. The front produced two dozen tornadoes in Wisconsin yesterday. The children have always wanted to see a tornado in real life. Really! But, don’t worry. We’ll just be pretending to be storm chasers tomorrow. If we really do happen to see a tornado, we’ll definitely NOT start chasing it!

Weather- and time-permitting, we’ll be stopping by Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory tomorrow, too. Yea!!!

It used to really bother me when people had to wait for me on the road, especially on the highway when someone wants to go a lot faster than I’m going. But, having an RV has pretty much eliminated that stress from my mind. In the RV, we’re usually only going the speed limit and people that are on my butt, trying to make me go faster, can just wait. I don’t let people push me around on the road anymore. Besides, we’re bigger than they are!

Anyway, we weren’t 30 miles outside of Bangor when an unmarked police car raced past us on the freeway. (Contrary to normal vehicles, I always speed up and get out of the way for ones with flashing lights.) A couple of miles up the road, we saw the unmarked car pulled over and the officer was standing behind his car and pushing his toward the ground, telling all of us to slow down. Other cars were crossing the restricted median to get to our side of the freeway and attempting to merge. Once we got past a bank of trees, we saw why. Some other poor RVer had flipped his rig and it was lying on its side, blocking all lanes of traffic heading north on I-95. There for the grace of God go we! I said a silent prayer for that family…while Richard whipped out the camera to get a shot. You can see that photo here:

A few minutes later, our jack alarm went off. That was the second time it happened on the freeway and we had to find a place to pull off to turn the jacks on, push the “store” button, and then turn them off again. Problem was, the next exit was another 5 miles down the road. So, we had to listen to that incessant DING DING DING DING for 5 whole miles. I turned the radio up really loud but that didn’t help. I pulled off at the exit, quickly found a construction parking lot (easy off and on with no u-turns) and slowed down, but didn’t stop, to see if I could make the alarm turn off without stopping completely. I did and it worked so now we can fix the problem driving down the highway. No more miles and miles of DING DING DING DING!

Richard was working most of the drive but lost his connection on Route 2 around the Maine, New Hampshire border. Then, we could stare at the mountains and ooh and aah together. We even pulled over at one spot because it was so gorgeous!

It was chilly outside and the mountains in the distance at dusk were truly mesmerizing. Every once in awhile, we’d see a tree that is just starting to get its fall colors around the tips of its leaves. Fall has always been my favorite time of the year and I can’t wait until October, when we’ll be heading north through thousands of miles of fall foliage.

Frank and Ali get mortally embarrassed when I wave at other RVers. They insist nobody would wave if I didn’t wave first. Yesterday, I proved them wrong. I hesitated when passing other RVers and many of them waved at me anyway. So, I’m back to waving madly at our fellow campers. And, let me tell you, there are plenty of other women driving RVs, too! RVs aren’t just men’s toys anymore!

We arrived at our campground here on schedule. We’re staying at the Twin Mountain KOA for two nights. Ali, Frank and Max went to their ice cream social and had a great time. It’s nice and woodsy here. The quiet is only interrupted by the occasional truck on the nearby highway.

The park is nice. The kids just left to go to an ice cream social at the main building.

Had some trouble with the WiFi. My special antenna rig isn’t working. I think it might be the ethernet bridge – which, for the uninitiated, takes the WiFi signal and sends it to a wireless router we have in the RV. This not only amplifies a weak WiFi signal, but it also allows us to all share one connection.

Amplifying the signal is expecially important at KOA campgrounds. KOA uses Hotspotzz as their WiFi provider. Every Hotspotzz installation I’ve ever seen at a KOA uses just one antenna – mounted on top of the office. Such an arrangement means that you either need some sort of system to boost the receiption, or you need a site close to the office. Fortunately, we’re close to the office here.

The bridge that I think has gone bad is a year old, and the manufacturer has since discontinued that model. They have a newer, smaller one now that is $100 cheaper than what I paid. I’ll have to try and locate one at some point on the trip.

On the way out here we took Route 2, which is pretty much the road from Bangor to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. (It actually goes all the way to Burlington, VT.) Route 2 winds through lots of one-horse towns and forests.

I flipped on MacStumbler – software that looks for WiFi signals – and detected 59 access points. Most of them had no security turned on.

Once the children were appropriately waterlogged, we drove back to the RV (we’d taken the Suzuki to the pool because the place is HUGE) and found Richard watching TV. He’d completely given up on getting online because we had no connection whatsoever. Our biggest complaint was this statement in their brochure: “�Wireless Internet access is included in your site rate. While wireless Internet service is available throughout the park, we cannot guarantee that each and every site will have adequate signal strength at any given time.�

Richard drove around the campground and couldn’t find any signal at all except right near the office. So, it’s our opinion that this campground grossly misrepresents their wifi coverage. AND, you get charged for it anyway! I feel like we (and all their wifi-seeking guests) were duped so I’d like to give this place one marshmallow. But, the children had a great time here, swimming, kayaking, watching a guy swallow fire and swords, and more. If you don’t need wifi, this is a great place to visit. If you need wifi, don’t bother.

Three out of five marshmallows.

Danforth Bay Camping Resort
196 Shawtown Road
Freedom, NH 03836
P(603)539-2069
F(603)539.5681
http://www.danforthbay.com/