Maine to Pennsylvania and our First Match in Months

Ok, so I am waaaaaay behind on our travels. This last week I’ve pretty much been living in my oldest baby bother’s back pocket – spending as much time together as we can. I’ll save all the family fun for the next post and try to get caught up at least part of the way.

We left Schoodic Woods on Sunday, 9/27, and made it as far as Saco, Maine. We actually had access to the Eastern Rail to Trail pathway from our campground, but only managed to walk a few miles of it since it was just an overnight stop. Our second night was spent at Wells State Park in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. That was a lovely wooded park and we squeezed the short bus in among the trees – a few hairy moments when we got a little too close to those lovely trees for (my) comfort. Again, we got a little hiking in around the park but pulled out the next day and made it to Middletown, New York. We boondocked that night in the Gander Mountain store parking lot – quieter and more spacious than many campgrounds we’ve been in. Lol.  

Tucked in (tightly) among the trees at Wells State Park.

We arrived on the fourth day at our destination for the next three nights – the Allentown KOA in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania. We’re here to shoot the East Coast Regional ICORE match.  ICORE (International Confederation of Revolver Enthusiasts) is an organization of member clubs that host revolver competitions. Rog and I both have been members for many years, but don’t have a local ICORE club in Washington. We shoot steel and some other matches, but since we are headed to the “big” ICORE annual International Revolver Competition (IRC) in Florida we arranged our schedule to get in just a little trigger time on the road.

ICORE matches are great – lots of fun courses that use a combination of paper and steel targets. The East Coast Regional match did not disappoint with eight stages and about a 250 round count. There were around 50 participants in four squads. In our squad we had some local shooters, several Canadians, and a group of “Jersey Boys” that missed no opportunity to heap good-natured abuse on each other and tell stories that kept us in stitches half the day.

Rog and I both shoot .38 super caliber, 8 shot Smith & Wesson revolvers. Rog uses an optical dot sight so that puts him in Open class, I use the iron sights (so I have an excuse for missing so much) which puts me in Limited class. Since Rog and I haven’t done any shooting in well over two months, we were happy to get a chance to play. Actually, you could count the number of times we’ve shot in the last year on your fingers and have enough left over to make a fist. We thought retirement would mean plenty of time to get out to the range, but that obviously hasn’t happened. Lol. 

As for how we did…. Well for me, I keep the bar low – have fun, do not get disqualified and do not come in last. I managed all of those – so consider the day a success! While we both ended up a little further down in the standings than usual – Rog was 11 out of 19 in Open and I was 12 out of 16 in Limited – it was a great day at the range.

Rog shooting his Open class revolver.

One of our favorite stages. Starting seated, you turn over a disc to determine which color targets you shoot first.

Rog heads for the shooting box.

All the blue targets and THEN all the red. Penalties for anything shot out of order. 

My turn - which will it be....

... blue ones first!  Thinking and shooting - whose idea was that??!!

Managed to do it without screwing up. Yeah!

From here it’s a short hop to my hometown of Lewistown, PA. We’ll get there on Monday, 10/3. We don’t have a lot on the schedule, but I have years of sisterly abuse to catch up on so that’s my top priority. :)