Epic Adventure 2: The Sun Sets... (Part 6 of 6)

(This is a continuation of a series of posts on our second long distance trip, see the first post if you want to start at the beginning.)

Sunset. It happens every single day. Many days we don't even think about it. Some days we look forward to it; others we complain we need more time. Some sunsets are uneventful, some are memorable. On this trip, we saw many sunsets that were memorable in many different places. It's hard to say which was the best. All were embraced for the fleeting moments they existed.

As we packed up to leave Acadia, we felt that we were nearing the sunset of our great adventure. We had a few more days till it was over, but the long haul home would begin when we pulled out of that amazingly beautiful place. We packed up the camper and hooked up prepared to leave. The ranger came by and stopped to check me out while I was finishing up so I wouldn't have to go by the office on the way out. We met a nice lady with 3 huskies who was also packing up and had been camping across from us. After a brief chat, we hit the road and pulled out of the Schoodic Penninsula headed down US Rt 1. After winding down Rt. 1 for a while we stopped for lunch and gas. A great little seafood joint, Carrier's Mainely Lobster, served us our last batch of fried clams from the northeast. This little place had a wall with buoys memorializing local fishermen who had died. It was quite a beautiful display.

Further south we routed over to I95 to pick up some speed. We were targeting Rhode Island for the evening which was over 300 miles away with Boston traffic and plenty of road construction between us and there it was going to take a while. When we hit the bypass around Boston, I noticed the sign for the Minute Man National Park. While this had not been on the list of places to go, I could not pass up seeing where our nation was born. The bridges in Boston were all decorated with American flags from 4th of July just a couple days before. It was a beautiful sight. It was after the park visitor center had closed but I did get to the Minute Man Statue as the sun was setting.

We pressed on and found our second hotel stay in Rhode Island. Since Acadia didn't have a bath house, we were all in need of a good warm shower and more spacious quarters always are a treat after days in the camper. We crashed another Comfort Inn, this one had a nicer breakfast but the room smelled like a sweaty locker room. We also took the opportunity to use the coin laundry there to do a load to refresh our range of outfits.

The next day we made a brief stop at the Roger Williams National Memorial. This is a quick stop that educates you on Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. He's also considered the father of the separation of church and state movement.

We then visited a friend of my son's whose family was summering in Rhode Island. It was a rainy day but always fun for the kids to have playmates for a few hours. We went down to the beach and drove around looking at some of the New England countryside.

We pressed on south skirting around NYC area and taking the Tappan Zee bridge further inland. We routed on south and made Delaware late that night to stay with my wife's best friend. We had a great visit and stayed through lunch the next day. The further south we drove the warmer it was getting. Then it was off again to the south crossing the Bay Bridge and navigating around D.C. down through Virginia and back to my cousin's in North Carolina. It was great to stop back in with the whole family. My kids getting so see their cousins they had not seen in a few years. I watched the kids pair up based on personalities. We went for a walk around their lake that is at the back of their neighborhood around to a local park. It had a new obstacle (read American Ninja Warrior) course. My son is a big fan of these and it had just opened.

After lunch we again hit the road for the last leg home. Coming home is always bittersweet. There's the enjoyment of sleeping in your own bed and getting to spread out after days of living in a tiny camper. The fun of seeing friends and family and coworkers. The comfort of life returning to normal. There also is some sadness that the adventure has come to a close. Our 16 day, 4000-mile journey had involved 2 countries and brought us lots of memories along the way. So as the sun set that evening, we crawled into our beds ready to get back to the normal life, but vowing to take another great adventure. And we'll continue to make taking adventures a regular part of our life.

Epic Adventure 2: The Soloing Stride ... (Part 2 of 6)

(This is a continuation of a series of posts on our second long distance trip, see the first post if you want to start at the beginning.)

I titled this the Soloing Stride since I was going to spend the next several days with just Zelda (our dog) and I making our way north. I can typically drive longer and later when I'm by myself. I was going to be working during the days and driving a lot in late afternoon/evening.

I had planned to leave the DC campground late afternoon on Tuesday, so as to get an early start and use the evening to put some miles down. I was hoping that navigating traffic would get better as it got later until I could into some more rural areas. The plan was to head north around Baltimore and then head toward Harrisburg, PA inland. I was going to wind north on an inland route that would take me through a few states and end up in New Hampshire on Friday.

As I wound north toward Baltimore, traffic wasn't too bad except when I got to some of the interstate transition points where things tend to go down to one lane. (I never understand why they take 3 interstate lanes and compress them to 1 to merge into another multi-lane interstate.) I took the I-95 North to the I-695 around Baltimore and then joined up with the I-83 headed towards Harrisburg, PA. As I crossed into Pennsylvania, I pulled off at a rest stop to stretch my legs and walk the dog. The rest stop had a nice wooded area that was quiet for walking the dog. My dog doesn't like a lot of commotion around her when she's doing her business. So places where you can walk back away from the cars are the best for her. She is definitely not one of those dogs that will use a tiny green grass island in a parking lot. Can you blamer her though? I like my privacy too. A little further north I pulled off for gas and dinner and stumbled on a little donut shop called Maple Donuts with 58 choices. It was a fun distraction from the driving. After loading up on food and fuel, I hit the road for Harrisburg.

I passed through Harrisburg on the interstate around sunset. It was a beautiful site of the downtown sitting there on the side of the Susquehanna River. I connected with I-81 and headed northeast into the night climbing through some hills and ending up in Wilkes-Barre for the evening at a quiet Walmart parking lot. Zelda and I bedded down for the first of 3 nights on the road.

The next morning I drove the short distance to Scranton, PA. Yes, you'll know it as the home of Dunder Mifflin from the tv show The Office. It's also home to another site that was on my list to see: Steamtown National Historic site. Steamtown is sort of like the adult version of Thomas the Train. It's a working locomotive museum based in a roundhouse with an actual working turntable. I spent several hours working and doing meetings in the parking lot but found a break after lunch to venture in and explore. I happened to walk in at the time they were about to start a volunteer led behind the scenes tour and joined the group. The volunteer was extremely knowledgeable and I learned a lot that I didn't know about the different types of trains and how they function "under the hood."  The behind the scenes tour takes you into the shop where they still have guys who work on the trains to keep them running and are renovating other trains. You get to see all the equipment they use which is really neat. I think kids would have a great time here walking around looking at the trains, but they'd need to be middle school or older to really get the behind the scenes tour. Younger kids are not probably going to be able to hang with listening to an old guy talk for an hour. And once you go into the shop, you're stuck because of safety issues they can't let you just leave without walking everyone out. There are a lot of real tools and sharp objects and heavy equipment in the shop too. So best to avoid with little ones. For the adults though, it's a real treat!

From there I headed to Albany, NY on a pretty uneventful path winding from I-84 to I-87 (the first toll road I had hit on my route).  North of Albany I planned to stay in Troy, but the Walmart had signs stating no overnight parking so I drove on another 30 mins on NY Rt. 7 to Bennington, VT where I spent the night in a grocery store parking lot with a few other RVs.

The next day I found a truck stop on the 2 lane highway with good cell signal in the mountains and worked and did conference calls for a few hours. I took a break and decided to check out the local area a bit.

On the NY side of the border near Bennington is a small town called Hoosick Falls, it has all the charm of small New England towns. And was decorated for the Fourth of July with American Flags like a lot of other small towns I had passed through. Hoosick Falls is also famous as the last place where Grandma Moses lived (and died). You can definitely see where some of her inspiration came from in and around the little town. (Drive down Main Street in Hoosick Falls.)

Northeast of Hoosick Falls as you wind toward the Vermont line again headed towards Bennington is the Bennington Battlefield State Historic Site. This provided a great opportunity for the history buff in me to check out a Revolutionary War battlefield. The battle, and park, happened just outside of Bennington in Walloomsac, NY. Part of the Saratoga campaign, the battle was a key component to the American's winning the battle of Saratoga. Around 2000 militia men under General John Stark routed the British force that was looking for supplies to bolster the army at Saratoga. Without those supplies, Burgoyne eventually suffered defeat. The great thing about battlefields is you get to mix some history with stretching your legs and walking your dog.

After a late lunch in Bennington, I drove out across the Green Mountain area of Vermont and wound my way into New Hampshire. As evening approached, I found a quiet truck stop on a 2 lane highway south of Concord, NH to spend the night. Tomorrow would be the big day for me to meet up with my family after a week on the road.

The story continues with Epic Adventure 2: Not where we're supposed to be (Part 3)

Epic Adventure 2: The Journey Begins... (Part 1 of 6)

Three years ago we took our camper out on what we called our first epic adventure. This time we were going farther and for longer. That previous ten day trip to South Dakota and back was the longest road trip we'd made since having kids. We had a blast and it proved to us that we could handle long road trips as a family with our little camper. As soon as we got home, we started discussing what other adventures we'd like to tackle. Life has been busy in the past few years. My wife has gone back to school and my job has changed and gotten busier. This summer we knew my wife had a break in her schedule and wasn't going to be taking classes. So we set it as the target for our next epic adventure with our family and little camper. Unlike my first epic adventure post, I'm going to split this one up in to multiple posts because an epic adventure deserves a bit more space. So sit back and I hope you enjoy the tale.

My wife grew up like a lot of young girls in 80s as a big fan of Anne of Green Gables. This love of the book and the movies, would make it her heart's desire to see the land of Anne some day: Prince Edward Island. This became a life long dream of hers that would hopefully come to fruition this summer if I could make it happen. I spent the spring planning routes and details for the trip and prepping the camper and our tow vehicle for it's longest voyage yet. This journey was going to be close to 4000 miles.

We had wanted to get the camper painted since we got her but had never made it a priority. I decided in May to get her painted and cleaned up before the trip. I also did some other maintenance jobs on the camper like new tires/wheels and adding a second spare tire. I also spent some time really focusing on how I would pack for this trip. As we learned with our first long haul, when you have to use your camper to sleep in along the way to the destination, you can't store everything in it unless you want to shuffle stuff between the car and camper all the time. Some maintenance and modifications were done to our Kia Sorento (tow vehicle) also in preparation.

We had talked about this trip for many years and had roughed out ideas of how to make it happen. Since I work remote, I could work some of the trip but I didn't want to be buried in my work the entire time. So a plan developed in which I would solo with our dog and work/camp up toward Maine. My wife and the kids would fly up and meet me later. Flights to Manchester, New Hampshire were cheaper than Maine so we booked and planned for me to pick them up there. Then we would head off for Prince Edward Island and work our way home through Acadia and some New England states trying to visit some friends and family along the way.

On June 24th, I left out of our Georgia home and said good bye to the wife and kids. Zelda (our dog) and I were packed and ready to begin. I drove the first day to Apex, NC, where a cousin of mine had moved to and got to spend the night with their family. It been a few years since I'd seen them so was great to catch up. I arrived just in time for a gully washer that revealed a leak with the new window I had installed. So there was something else to fix when I had time.

On Sunday, I left Apex and headed for Washington, D.C. My corporate home office is located there and I thought I'd stop in for a couple days and check on the rest of my team at work. The driving was good, the weather was nice that day. I took the I295 bypass north around Richmond as it was supposed to be faster but I had to slow down due to the road being rough and causing a lot of trailer bounce. I hate the bounce of concrete roads; much prefer the smoothness of asphalt. It seemed like every bridge transition had a major dip which would cause a lot of bounce. So I'm not sure that I really saved much time due to having to drive slower.

Basically the site was all gravel under nice shady trees.

In DC, one of the closest campgrounds is the Cherry Hill Park. Technically, it's in College Park, MD. but it's near the I495 perimeter and I95 on the north side of DC. It's not far from the Greenbelt metro station so you can ride the metro into the city (which I always do when I fly in for work). Cherry Hill Park has a lot of amenities. They have a camp store, cafe, 2 pools, splash pad, hot tub, fishing pond, laundry rooms, movie theater and an exercise room. There are also several playgrounds for the little ones. All the sites are full hookup except for the tent only sites and Wifi and cable are included. Of course you are paying a premium for location and all these features. With my GoodSam discount it came to $63/night for a small shady back-in site. However, that's a lot cheaper than a hotel in DC I can tell you. It's less than half of what my hotel cost per night for my previous trip in March up there. The staff was very friendly. I had asked about late checkout option and they told me I could check out at 6pm for a half-day fee when I had originally booked my site. I called the office while I was there just to verify that they were still ok with me staying late. The lady told me yes. She then called me back a few minutes later because she forgot to mention the cost and wanted to make sure I was ok with that (which of course I was since they'd told me that originally).

Zelda got to ride in the kids seat for the
first week while it was just the 2 of us.
Enjoying her setup with the kids book box,
Doubles as water cup holder and dog food mat 

I ended up in site 1512. I had asked for a shady site and this site fit the bill. It was also extra wide compared to most of the other sites. Across from me were some tent only sites. I walked around the campground and it's huge. I can only guess they probably have over 100 sites. Some of the sites are definitely close together almost like a parking lot but they do have grass and a fair number of trees around the campground. There are 3 bath houses and the one that was closest to me was still a bit of a hike to get to. One nice touch is that they have street lanterns on the end of each row with a sidewalk path. So I didn't even feel like I needed to use my headlamp at night walking to the bathroom.

The weather was refreshing in D.C. The first night it got down to around 60F and a bit cooler the second night. Highs were low 80sF the first day and high 70sF the second. There was also a good breeze most of the time which made it feel amazing. The week before they'd been in the 90sF so I was happy the weather had shifted cooler for a bit. Having camped in Georgia in 90sF with no AC, I can tell you it's not fun.

Tuesday late afternoon after a full day of work and meetings, it was time to head on and put some miles between me and DC. I was adjusting my schedule to work in the mornings and drive in the late afternoon/evenings. I had till 4pm on Friday to make it to Manchester with no real solid plans in between other than some conference calls and meetings I was going to need to pull over and deal with along the way.

The adventure continues with Epic Adventure 2: The Soloing Stride (Part 2).