Motorhome Journey: August 2010

Ending our New England Trip

We’re ending our journey with a visit to our daughter and son-in-law in the Chapel Hill area.

We are keeping our rig at a great campground, Spring Hill RV, in Chapel Hill.

Our daughter has been dealing with our bills and mail and has done a great job making sure that we aren’t evicted, have water and electric etc, when we get home (they get funny when you don’t pay the bills)

8/31/2010

We’re now back home and our trip has lasted nearly 80 days.

One of our followers asked us to “post the stats” of our trip…some of you may find this of interest

Trip Stats

We stayed in 11 states

We drove through 13 states

We put 3193 miles on the coach

And 2848 miles on the “toad”

For a total of 6041 miles

We stayed in 18 campgrounds

We took 8544 pictures (yes we were snap happy..aren’t you glad we didn’t post them all)

The Trip

During the trip we were fortunate enough to have visited many friends and family and had a wonderful time.

We visited many places and have been asked what was our favorite….

We have not been able to come up with a single city or place…but here are some of our favorites:

Ride in a glider/sailplane…was the first time and a superb experience.

Ride in an open cockpit Bi-Plane; always wanted to do it, and finally had a chance

The “basin” a natural series of pools in crystal clear waters of Mt. Washington, NH

Luray Caverns; as beautiful as we remembered them from 40 years ago

Bar Harbor, Acadia “loop road”; every turn in the road produced a great vista

Blue Ridge Parkway;without question on of the most beautiful roads we’ve driven on….just spectacular.

Mt. Battie, near Camden, ME; a 360 degree view of the beautiful Maine coast

Delaware Valley Gap; Surprisingly beautiful area near some major urban areas in NY and NJ

Kennebunkport, the Porpoise Point, Ramp Bar; an unexpected stop at a bar and restaurant with a great view, great food and we met a fantastic couple

Ft. Ticonderoga, NY; a great fort, made even better by a surprise, hundreds of people reenactment

But most of all we enjoyed the people we met and the family and friends we got to spend time with .

Who would have believed that this couple from 1969 would be semi-responsible citizens, driving around in a bus….wait a minute in 1969 everyone wanted to be driving a VW bus painted with Psychedelic colors…we just have a bigger bus and more subdued colors.

Thanks to all of you who have followed our trip and for the kind comments you have made.

Next trip….out West……

Paul and Maryellen

New York and PA

We visited Mohonk house in upstate NY…what an amazing place that looks just like it must have looked at the turn of the century. The estate is massive and from the gate to the hotel is more than a mile.

We didn’t get a chance to hike, but we understand the hiking there is great.

We then went to Bucks County, PA to visit our friends Randy and Debbie. We parked the “beast” in their driveway and stayed in their newly remodeled guest room that was like a 5 star hotel….they are lucky that we didn’t stay longer.

They are terrific hosts and took us to a bar and restaurant that they knew we would love…and they were right. Next day they took us on a tour of the area which is rural and beautiful. We saw 7 covered bridges, lots of farm animals and pretty countryside. We also saw the amazing Mercer Museum and Moravian Tile works. This building is made up entirely of cement!

A great trip!
(More pix in the latest pictures area)

We're in Fancy Gap VA, on the Blue Ridge Parkway...but the weather is not cooperating...rain and fog. So we're heading to Chapel Hill, NC tomorrow to visit our daughter and son-in-law and then head home next week.

We've been gone approaching 3 months and Maryellen says she's out of underwear so we have to go home.

Paul and Maryellen

Taking the sloooow Trek back home

We've not posted in a while as we've been spending time with friends and family in the town where we grew up in Massachusetts.
It was great catching up and spending time with everyone.

We've started going south, and will stop along the way in PA to visit some friends, then a few more stops along the way, to the Raleigh area, then on home in a couple of weeks.

We have a new camera to replace the pocket sized one we had that was ruined when someone went swimming with it in his swimsuit pocket. The new camera has built in GPS, which captures where we are and links to Google earth. It also has a panorama feature that we are going to try out soon.

The first pictures I took were from a plane at 35000 feet flying over the West (I had a short trip to LA last week) The pictures are good, considering the distance and atmospheric distortion, but not fantastic. However, if you click on them, it will bring you to another page which shows a Google map of where it was taken....cool stuff.

More postings to follow...

Best
Paul and Maryellen

Ending our Maine Trip

We’ve been a little slack in our posting as we’ve had marginal internet and we’ve been busy sightseeing and going around from early to late.

In Camden we went to the top of Mount Battie, which has a 360 degree view of Camden, Camden Harbor and views all the way to Cadillac mountain in Bar Harbor, which is many miles away

On Sunday we found this neat little restaurant, right on the water with excellent food. We sat outside in some Adirondack chairs, right on the dock, and met a nice couple from Ipswich Mass. Spent the afternoon in the sun, sipping some adult beverages and then having seafood for dinner.
Today we spent time in Ogunquit walking along the "Marginal Way"....it's a 1.5 walk right along the water with cliffs and crashing waves.

We posted some additional pictures in the “Latest Pictures” album.

We're heading out tomorrow morning after a great trip to quite a few places in Maine. We have spent the last 4 days in the Kennebunkport/Ogunquit area and we had nearly perfect weather and saw even more beautiful Maine scenery. It is such a beautiful state.