Author: tincantravels

3rd – 10th October

The Smokey Mountains National Park and the nearby town of Pigeon Forge were plucked from the guide book to be the rendezvous spot for us to meet up with the Family Thelen for 4 days. Our friendship began when we met them in that bastion of social interaction, a large public laundrette in Upper Penisula Michigan last year. We spent a fun July 4th with them that week  in Copper Harbor and then spent a weekend camping on their driveway in their home town of Detroit in late August. We had made grand plans to meet up somewhere on our return this year and we actually pulled it off!  They heroically drove their large trailer, 2 kids (KJ 11 & Coen 12) and the cat (Kim, age unknown)  more than 500 miles to meet us at an RV resort in Pigeon Forge where we had booked neighbouring sites.

Pigeon Forge. We knew it was going to be touristy, but we had no idea the heights to which this touristy-ness would soar. It’s name suggests a cute little historic town that might have organically expanded to accommodate and amuse the folk coming to visit the Smokey Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in the country. No sign of this. The town is essentially a 3 mile strip of newly built hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, cowboy boot stores, dinner show venues, outlet villages, go-karting, mini golf and moonshine tasting rooms.  It is also home to Dollywood, a theme park done in a country style endorsed by, and named for, the area’s most famous daughter Ms Dolly Parton.  It is obvious that the reason this national park is so visited, is that the hoards now make the pilgrimage to the entertainment, shopping and eating mecca that is Pigeon Forge also pop into the park whilst they are here.

It is bonkers. Like a mini Vegas without the casinos. A temple of consumerism and hedonism serviced by the combustion engine. It was unseasonably hot and crazy busy. We were not going to be bored here.

Our camp site was tucked about half a mile behind the strip and was a peaceful retreat from the melée. We spent our first evening around the camp fire, catching up, eating barbecued chicken and planning our activities for the next few days.

Day 1: DOLLYWOOD!

Luckily Todd and Keta’s truck has 6 seats, so we all piled in and were in the park by 10.30am. Today was Thursday, so it made it a bit quieter. Based on the size of the car park, it must get unfeasibly busy on peak days.  The park has about 6 big rollercoasters and we had done 5 of them, without any significant waiting by 11.30. The park was beautifully decorated for ‘Fall’* with pumpkins and autumn leaf garlands everywhere.  After dark there are ‘pumpkin illuminations’, and lots of folk come specifically to see them. We walked, lunched, rode the steam train, did the rides (dry and wet), got hot, and generally had a lot of fun. There wasn’t really a huge influence of Dolly Parton here except the piped music around the park and her old tour bus is here and open to look inside. It cost $750,000 in 1994, did more than 600,000 miles and is decorated inside all in shades of rose pink with gold accents. It even has a teeny tiny bath so that she could have bubble baths. She upgraded to a new bus in 2010 for $2.4million and donated the old bus to the park. At 72 years young she is still touring and living on the road for 6 months each year.  The woman is a legend!  By mid afternoon energy levels were waning so we headed back to camp for a couple of hours and returned to the park at dusk to see the pumpkin decoration light displays. Very impressive. They used to use only real pumpkins, but found that they kept rotting before the end of the display (not so decorative…), so this year the park spent nearly $1.5 million on fake pumpkins. We managed to sneak in a couple more coaster rides and then headed home again, picking up some pizza and wings on the way.

Day 2: Pigeon Forge Excursion

Today we surrendered to the greater might of HOLIDAY FUN IN PIGEON FORGE. Late morning we caught the ‘Fun Time Trolley’ (a normal bus disguised as an old time tram with uncomfortable garden benches where the seats should be) from our camp to the strip. We started our day with a round of mini-golf. With 6 playing, this killed nearly 2 hours. It was baking hot, with minimal shade and some holes were more about surviving from heatstroke than holding par. Some enjoyed it more than others (Sorry KJ) and some were better than others (Another victory for Hampson over me). We then cooled down by sending the kids to get ice-cream whilst we did a moonshine tasting session, the lesser known cure for mild dehydration…Our host at the tasting room was comically bad. She was either having a bad day, or was having a good day in her poorly chosen profession of hospitality and customer service because neither was evident in her repertoire. When we asked for a glass of water, she harrumphed and gave us each a 20ml offering of tepid tap water in a plastic tasting thimble. Mmm. Refreshing. Hydrating. We smirked our way through our rapi-tasting of 7 or 8 shots of moonshine and by the end of it, much merrier for the duel effects of booze on an empty stomach and Miss Grumpybritches’ amusingly distracted  behaviour, followed it up with a mid-afternoon moonshine cocktail. Our next stop was our our 5 pm booking at a dinner show, Hatfield and McCoy’s Dinner Feud. We arrived at the requested time of 4.30pm (basically still mid-afternoon) and had to join the queue which cleverly was engineered to snake us through the gift shop. Then we had our group photo taken with hillbilly props before being seated at our table.  Here, we were served an all-you-can-eat-in ten minutes fried chicken dinner with all the trimmings served at-table prior to the hillbilly themed show. It was gloriously cheesy and very entertaining. There was music, dancing, slapstick comedy and crowd participation. All the things I normally avoid if I am looking to be entertained. One scene involved the stage floor disappearing into a 10m swimming pool and the cast doing various jumps and dives into the water. They even had 3 performing dogs doing the same. Quite impressive. The show was finished by 6.45pm and having easily resisted buying our group photo, the DVD or anything from the gift shop, we caught the trolley back to camp for another campfire and some beers.

Day 3: Smokey Mountains National Park

After the excesses of yesterday, today was our day to get into the national park and stretch our legs. We were on the road at 9am with a picnic packed and plans to escape the mayhem of Pigeon Forge. Our first stop was Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee. You can drive to within 0.5  mile of the summit, where there is a large car park, then ‘hike’ up the beautifully paved path to the summit and lookout. We arrived in time to secure about the last free space in the carpark and joined the crowds in the pilgrimage to the top. The famous Appalachian Trail, the 2200 mile/3500 km walking trail comes through this spot and there were a few very serious hiking looking people interspersed with us ‘strollers’. The leaves are just starting to change up here but the fantastic display of fall colour of the trees is still a few weeks away and unfortunately the summit was shrouded in cloud so the view from the very stylish spiral observation lookout was about zilch. As we drove down from the summit the queue of traffic waiting for a space to park was about 1 mile long. The perils of popular tourism. We then hunted for a trail to do that wasn’t too steep or too long or too busy. The options were limited, but we found one after a bit of a drive. We had our tailgate picnic and went for a ramble.  En route we introduced the Thelens to the art of panoramic selfies.

We took the long way home to avoid the traffic and  back-tracking, stocked up at the supermarket for dinner supplies, stopped at a souvenir shop with a live alligator display for KJ and headed home for another lovely evening of campfire, beer and talking rubbish.

Day 4: Goodbyes and then not much.

In the morning we sadly had to say goodbye to our companions who reloaded the family and trailer and embarked on their gruesome 11 hour drive to return to Detroit. We really appreciated the effort it took to get down here, and are glad to have spent some quality time with you all. You are also legends, my friends. You and Dolly Parton.

We had decided to stay another 2 nights here and spent the rest of the day in a state of ‘first gear’. We went nowhere.

Day 5: Gatlinburg, nearly.

There is a town about 7 miles from Pigeon Forge called Gatlinburg. It is equally touristy and busy, but smaller and with a different vibe. We decided to go there today. It was too hot and there was too much traffic to safely cycle so we decided to take the trolley again There is a trolley link between Pigeon Forge and the Gatlinburg Welcome Centre which connects with the Gatlinburg trolley bus into the town. Easy!

Easy? It took us 80 minutes and 2 trolleys to get from our camp to the Welcome Centre where there was a queue about 70 people long waiting to catch the trolley into Gatlinburg. Each trolley only takes 30 people and only arrives one per 30 mins. There was no way of walking. The maths was done. The will to live was lost. We called an Uber and went home.

We had failed at tourism today and we were much happier for it. We spent the afternoon doing a bit of a sorting out of TC in preparation for getting back on the road tomorrow and then had another dunk in the pool. Having met our new neighbours, Stom and Katherine from North Carolina, they joined us for a few drinks that evening around our campfire.

We left the mayhem of Pigeon Forge the next day, headed for a ‘halfway to Nashville’ single night stop in Crossville. En route we stopped at the town of Oak Ridge to visit the newly opened American Museum of Science and Energy. Oak Ridge was a town entirely manufactured from scratch during WW2 as one of the three sites of the Manhattan Project for the development and manufacture of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan. It is still a very important site worldwide for nuclear energy research and as a safety and storage facility for nuclear material from decommissioned warheads. The small museum was a bit technical and dry, but interesting nonetheless. Our night in Crossville was unremarkable except for it being alcohol-free with a vegetarian dinner. Remarkable!

*Fall: I think this needs a whole seperate post!

 

 

28th Sept – 3rd Oct

We left the hills of Western Pennsylvania and the interstate highway took us through a bit of (reasonably hilly) Maryland into West Virginia, the Mountain State. The whole of the state is situated in the Appalachian region and poor Big Dave continued to earn his keep by either hauling up hill, or doing controlled hurtling down hill.

This whole area is beautiful. Forested hills as far as the eyes can see with very few urban areas and the highway just keeps going and going through it all.  The autumn colours (or ‘fall colors’ for my American friends) are only just starting. The warm wet summer means that it has been a great growing season, the trees are not stressed at all and the colours will be late this year. I think I will miss the full display again.

Our next stop was in a odd campsite tucked in a hollow behind, and part of, a Days Inn, one of those amorphous roadside behemoth hotels with a conference centre. It was actually quite lovely, quiet and peaceful. By mid afternoon when we arrived it was hot and sunny so we could open all the vents and windows and dry everything out. Bliss.

In the evening we walked up to the hotel for a drink in the bar and to have dinner.  The bar was a very small civilised carpeted nook incongruously called Mad Annie’s. Named for a 19th C crazy highway woman called Annie who had immigrated from Liverpool and terrorised the local area, it was majorly less spit-and-sawdust than the name suggested. The clientele was a mixed bunch: two business travellers who were both ‘fuller bodied’ drinking multiple shot glasses of apple liqueur and lemonade and couldn’t finish a medium sized pizza between them, a chap that looked like a lumberjack (by virtue of his size, clothing and facial hair) and was drinking rum and ginger, a chatty blind chap and us. (We were probably the most out of place if truth be told).  It transpired that there was a group of blind people using the conference facilities of the hotel and the blind chap was a breakaway from the herd.  One of his compatriots came to (unsuccessfully) round him up as he was making quite a good job of eating a huge basket of messy chicken wings by touch alone. Respect.

Our next three nights were in a town called Fayetteville, voted coolest small town in America by someone at sometime. This area is dominated by the New River Gorge, an old river in a deep gorge.  Its past mining industry has been replaced by whitewater businesses and the area is littered with rafting companies, outdoor shops, outfitters, basic campsites and people driving around in Subaru Outbacks festooned with kayaks and lifejackets. The gorge has a rather magnificent single arch span bridge which opened in 1977. It is apparently the longest/largest bridge of this kind in the western hemisphere. Every year in October the fairly major road over the bridge is closed to traffic for a bridge birthday party weekend. About 800 base jumpers hurl themselves off and lots of folks flock to the area.

Here we offloaded TC in our nice wooded campsite and spent a few days exploring the area by truck, foot and bike. We drove over the bridge, drove under the bridge, hiked to bridge look-outs and sat under it having a picnic. It is safe to say that short of jumping off it, we ‘did the bridge’. We had hoped to do some white water rafting whilst we were here, but no-one was doing trips. At this time of year the river is usually at its best for rafting at about 3-8 ft deep. The commercial rafting companies don’t take out clients if the river is deeper than 14ft. Due to the wet summer the river is currently 17ft. Whilst watching the raging torrent of brown water go by as we picnicked, we were happy to be staying on dry land.

Nick a bit too circumspect to get any closer to the edge.

After Fayetteville our journey took us through a corner of Virginia to Tennessee, where we had another single night stay in a campsite near a town called Bristol. Although Nashville claims to be the home of country music, allegedly Bristol was its birthplace. Bristol is officially two cities, one in TN and one in VA, where the city line and thus the state line runs down the middle of one of its downtown streets. How complicated.

In the past week Trump had given one of his fan-club rally speeches near here. 97,000 people attended. The campsite had been chock-full of faithful supporters. Happily, not so much on our night here.  There was a games room and a half decent pool table so Nick did his customary trick of beating me fair and square by about 5 balls.  My defence is that I spent my university years actually attending lots of lectures and working hard. Nick played a lot of pool.

Next stop is Pigeon Forge in the Smokey Mountains to meet up with our friends from Detroit, the Family Thelen.

 

27th – 28th Sept

Our extended stay in Gettysburg meant that we had needed to cancel our plans to visit Fallingwater.  This is the weekend home designed by the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright built teetering atop a waterfall in the wilds of rural Pennsylvanian hills in the mid-1930s for the wealthy Edgar J Kaufmann. Wealthy because he owned the large and successful eponymously named ‘Kaufmann’ department store in Pittsburg. In the wilds of Pennsylvania because he happened to own 1700 of hilly wooded acres a mere 43 miles from Pittsburg. Teetering atop a waterfall because the Kaufmanns requested the home to be built near the waterfall so that they could see it from the house and Wright decided that he could do better than that.

As could be expected the project went mostly the way Wright wanted it and cost five times the amount of the Kaufmann’s money than he had originally quoted. Luckily Kaufmann was in a position to keep writing the cheques and what resulted was a sublime piece of architecture and design that has oft been cited as one of Wright’s greatest works.

The Kaufmanns both died in the mid 1950s and their only child, Edgar Kaufman Jnr, who had no children of his own,  gifted the home and most of the land to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in the early 1960s. The house is maintained almost exactly as it was when it was built and has now hosted more than 5 million visitors for tours.

Visiting Fallingwater was something Nick has wanted to do since ages ago, so we booked our tickets (again) online, (Re)booked a nearby campsite and headed west from Gettysburg.  It was raining. Quite a lot. And hilly. So very hilly. Poor Big Dave schlepped up hill and down dale for several hours to get us to the little corner of nowhere where the house is situated.

It was definitely worth the trip.  Despite the rain (which actually enhanced the waterfall and the gave the house cool, moody ambiance) and the slightly laissez-faire attitude of our guide (who I suspect would rather have been somewhere else even though she told us that she ‘loved coming to work’ and that we had been ‘such a fun group’ – both blatant untruths), the house was amazing. Lots of cantilevered terraces that seemingly defied gravity, quirky design features like steps from inside the living room down to the pool at the top of the waterfall and lots of beautiful joinery and custom Wright-designed furniture.

It was actually quite modest in size considering the huge importance that it holds in the world of architecture. It is fantastic that it has been preserved so intact but it made me a little sad that it has now been a museum piece for nearly 55 years, a good 30 years longer than it belonged to the Kaufmans. Wright’s design of the house has almost completely drowned out the stories of the three people who called it home.

After our tour we headed off to our roost for the night, a Core of Engineers campsite on the outflow river of a dam and small hydro-electric plant. It was still raining. I wasn’t sure if this place was more likely or less likely to flood than your run-of-the-mill riverside spot. In the interests of actually getting some sleep that night, I went with less…

Striking camp in the wet was a trifle miserable but soon done. We shut the door, changed into dry clothes and had comfort food for dinner: Pan-fried scrapple *, beans and mash. With a fried egg.

The incessant rain stopped at about 3am, the campsite didn’t flood and we woke to sunshine and a power cut.

Breakfast and packing-up were accompanied by the dulcet tones of our LPG generator and by 10.30 am we set off on our hilly way to our next state, West Virginia via Maryland.

 

*In case you were wondering:

Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name Pannhaas or “pan rabbit”,^[1][2] is traditionally a mush of porkscraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then pan-fried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is best known as an American food of the Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia). Scrapple and panhaas are commonly considered an ethnic food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Mennonitesand Amish.

(Thanks Wikipedia)

 

 

21st – 27th Sept

For the non-Americans, and the non-civil war enthusiasts in the rest of the world, Gettysburg was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. Fought over 3 days from 1st – 3rd July 1863 this was a pivotal meeting of the Unionists and Confederates and the preserved historical detail of the battlefields and military manoeuvres over those days is impeccable.  The whole area is dotted with countless military memorials.

This small farming town accidentally became the meeting place for the two armies and was unfortunate to have some perfect topography for a battle of infantry, calvary and canons. (In my mind, infantry vs canons are a bad military combination from an infantry point of view.)

Here is my Gettysburg summary:

Tens of thousands of soldiers from North and South died. Thousands of horses who couldn’t care less about neo-natal American politics died. One unlucky civilian in the town was hit by a stray bullet that entered her bedroom and died. The Unionists won. The town spent weeks dealing with rotting corpses and months tending to wrecked humans. The town and battlefields were very quickly designated a site of historical importance and a war memorial, thus preserving it amazingly. President Lincoln came and did his famous ‘Gettysburg Address’ (-worth looking up). Now busloads and busloads of people come to visit and buy tat. And here we are too. We had planned just one night here. Just long enough to do a guided bus tour and have a mooch around.

And so to the ‘Low’.

As we arrived into Gettysburg early on a Friday afternoon Big Dave started to make some very worrying screeching noises. As we pulled up to the bus tour car park we noted he was losing some oily fluid from the engine bay. This wasn’t good. We cancelled our tour, limped the three miles to our camp and after half an hour of  anxious phone calls miraculously found a garage that could fit us in on a Friday afternoon to have a look. We quickly off-loaded Tin Can and screeched our way to the garage and waited. 90 mins later later we had news. Remember that nice new steering gearbox that we had replaced on Big Dave 10 days ago? It had failed and was leaking. Now we had air in the power steering pump (hence the noise) which would likely need replacing too.  It could all be fixed but not until Wednesday. Oh, and it was all going to be quite expensive. Those were the lows.

The highs:

1.  It could all be fixed!

2. If we had to kill 5 days somewhere, we were in a relatively interesting place and we had a nice campsite.

3. We weren’t to be wheel-less. Our new best friend, Denise from MikesKars, gave us a courtesy car to use: an elderly Volvo 850 saloon in an indeterminate colour that we named Mike.

Mike on Tour

We left the garage having also arranged to have the 2 new tires and realignment done whilst we were at it. In for a penny, in for several thousand dollars. That’s what I say.

We drove back to the campsite with lighter hearts and beer. The next few days saw many strange looks from passers by who looked at the camper down on its legs, looked at Mike, the Volvo, back to the camper, wondering how…. The powers of Swedish engineering we told them.

It is safe to say that we did Gettysburg. We rebooked our bus tour. We visited the visitor centre. We watched the film. We viewed the Cyclorama. (This is very impressive and enormous 360 degree oil painting mounted on the inside of a large circular cupola above the visitor centre). We toured the museum in the visitor centre. We drove part of the self guided AutoTour around the battlefield sites, revisiting and stopping at some of the sites we passed on the bus tour. We visited another museum which had functioned as a field hospital during and after the battle. (The sawing off of legs and arms seemed to be high on the job-list of the civil war army surgeon.) It was quite the educational experience. I think I could be a useful member of a ‘Civil War Re-enactment Troupe’ now.

Very small section of Cyclorama

We also found a brew pub and even found a swimming pool to do some lengths, so it was not all work, work, work. The weather during our time in Gettysburg could be described at best as ‘damp’. Our camp was another riverside gem, but on our second to last day the river rose quite worryingly. We seemingly had no quick getaway options if it flooded. Luckily the owner of the campsite was the only person we have met in the entire 7 months of USA travel in Tin Can who has an equivalent sized camper, and more importantly, a truck like Big Dave. He was on stand-by, but happily was not needed.

Wednesday came. Big Dave was fixed and had his new tyres. (Of course he did need a new power steering pump.) We paid our bill, donated flowers and donuts to the MikesKars team, went back to camp, loaded Tin Can back up, drove 10 km to a truck tyre service centre to get the wheel alignment, got back to camp, got sorted and on Thursday morning we were finally on our way.

Hasta La Vista Gettysburg.

 

Side note:

I just remembered the other ‘low and high’, that at the time were overshadowed by the whole “Big-Dave-is-stuffed-and-now-is-fixed’ debacle.

Remember Teeny Dave?

Low: On the day of the screeching he was unfortunately subject of an incident involving a moving part of Tin Can that luckily only irreparably redesigned him, not the important moving part. He also was stuffed.

But whadoyaknow???? The camp site shop sold replacements. High, high high!!

Behold Itsy Bitsy Dave.

 

 

 

19th -21st Sept

Go on. Have a snigger and get it out of your system. It IS a funny name, but honestly isn’t the reason that we used this as our base to visit Amish country…yeah, right.

It seems an odd name for a place that is home to a devoutly religious community. It is was originally called Cross Keys, and renamed in 1814. There are 3 main theories why:

1. There was originally a race course at one end of the town, the entrance of which was referred to as ‘enter course’. This might have gradually changed to Intercourse
2. The town is at an intersection, or ‘intercourse’ of several important roads.
3. The term ‘intercourse’ was historically used to describe ‘fellowship’ and ‘social interaction and support’.

Whatever the reason, it’s still amusing.

The deeply religious Amish, and Mennonite, communities that live in this area are fascinating, bizarre and confusing to the modern eye.  Many of them live such simple basic lives, devoid of technology and combustion engines, instantly recognisable by their clothing and headwear. Traditional gender roles are played: a hard physical day’s work in the fields is normal for the men and the women become wives, raise (lots of) children and keep the home. We didn’t see any overweight Amish. The close-knit communities sell foodstuffs like preserves, jams, cheeses and sauces, and homeware like quilts and good quality simple furniture. Light horses pull buggies around the streets (Black for the Mennonites, grey for the Amish) and mules and heavier horses pull carts, ploughs and slashers around the fields. And all this plays out surrounded by bus loads and bus loads of tourists who come to places like Intercourse to gawk at these people quietly going about there lives, minding their own business and to shop at dedicated emporiums of foodstuffs, homewares and tonnes and tonnes of tat. It seems it’s just not a day out without consuming a mega soda, a triple scoop ice-cream cone, a giant pretzel and buying a commemorative T-shirt with the logo “I ‘heart‘ INTERCOURSE”

Coming to a place like this as a tourist leaves me conflicted. I know that in many respects we are the same as the hoards that pour off the coaches, but I  comforted by the fact that we are definitely better dressed and we haven’t lost the use of our legs as a transport option.

The best part of our visit here was breaking out the bikes and spending a day cruising through the back roads between the small towns and villages. Away from the main roads this is a beautiful place to cycle. There are so few cars and trucks, and the ones that are around are very used to giving wide berth to non motorised traffic. It’s just part of life here.  The land is divided into one-family farms each with a large farmhouse, barn and grain silo. The men were cutting corn, dressed in shirt, slacks and their characteristic broad brimmed straw hats. (Seemingly skin cancer in the communities is very low due to this garb.) Women and children were travelling to and from school and chores on large wheeled push scooters. Girls dressed like their mothers in plain long dresses and bonnets and the boys little clones of the men.

Seeing people stubbornly carving out their existences free from modernity seems both bonkers and entirely sensible at the same time. I understand the low tech wholesome living, but struggle with the woman’s status and role in the society. Also, those dresses and bonnets are a bit too’handmaid’ for my liking.

Our bicycle journey had a destination 10 km away from camp: Lost World Mini Golf. A classic of the genre with pirate ships, waterfalls and caves. This was our second match of the trip. I omitted to write about my victory over Hampson in Nashua, NH. A victory with dignity and good sportsmanship. This day saw Hampson score two holes-in-one (Impressive), and beat me fair and square. He was insufferable. The scores are now levelled.

The 10km cycle home gave us time to reflect on the significant period of time that had elapsed since our regular bike riding of last year. This was manifest in sore ‘seat bones’. Very sore.

We don’t have any photos of any Amish people. It’s rude to take them. You can find some on-line if you are interested.

I did take a photo of this hot air balloon that passed by the campsite. It seemed to be slowly falling from the sky. I assume less trust was being put in the science of hot air being lighter than cold air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14th – 18th Sept

Just before midday on the 14th we rocked up at the mechanics shop to collect BD and TC. All was finished and fixed and they looked raring to go.  Big D had had a full service and the unplanned new steering gearbox. He needs 2 new front tires too, but we need to get that done at a truck tyre place. The full rig is 7 tonnes and too big to fit onto a normal car hoist and re-alignment facility. It can wait. TC had all his seams checked, the generator serviced and one of his slightly wonky legs straightened. We paid the bill and we were off. First stop: Manchester Airport, about 10 km away, to drop off the hire car. After that, we were really off.

Our first stop was a camp in Brattleboro, VT. A short 60 mile hop with a stop on the way for food, beer and a few bits and pieces. There always seems to be ‘bits and pieces’ to buy. There won’t be room for us inside the camper one day. We arrived mid afternoon and like a well oiled machine, we ‘Set Up’. It was scorchio hot. Despite the sweatiness, it was great to get back into the camper, unpack and get settled in again. It definitely felt like coming home.  We spent a very pleasant evening sitting out, cooking pork on the campfire and drinking the aforementioned beer. Bliss.

Our next stop was for 2 nights at a riverside park in Bainbridge, NY.  It was still very hot, but nice to have some water to gaze at. Florence is now tracking north and will be with us in 2 days There is no avoiding her. Luckily she is no longer windy, just very wet. It was hard to imagine that the weather was going to turn to custard as we baked in the 30+ degree heat and sunshine. Our next camp will be chosen to as to be within coo-ee of civilisation and on higher ground away from rivers and creeks. We enjoyed our last full day of nice weather by pottering about and getting a bit more sorted.  Rather preposterously given the heat we unpacked our winter and ski gear parcel that we had sent from ourselves in NZ to Greg and Gigi’s. We will need this later on in this trip. Behold the power of vacuum packing!

The camp had rental canoes and kayaks and we broke our ‘3rd rule of a happy marriage’ and in the afternoon took a 2-man Canadian canoe out for a hour. This comprised of a 45 min slog up river, including a five minute period through some deceptive mini-rapids where we definitely remembered why rule 3 exists, followed by a very pleasant 15 minute whizz home.

2 more evenings, 2 more campfires. Life is good.

Note:

The Hampson’s 3 rules for a happy marriage:

1. Do your own ironing. (Rule 1 is null and void when one party is working full time and the other is not) 
2. Shut the door for number twos. (No exceptions) 
3. Where possible, never share a double kayak or canoe. 

This seems to be working for us currently.

Our next 2 nights were in Whitehaven, PA.  A nowheresville selected as a good spot to sit-out the rain that was a’coming. We had plenty of food, beer, DVDs, and the site was close to the office and bathroom/laundry block. We arrived in the light rain, and were sorted just before the deluge started.  We shut the door and hunkered down. In the end it was all-over-rover in 12 hours. Noisy with the rain on the roof, but happily undramatic. The next day and second night were dry and we headed off on the 18th to our first real destination stop: Amish country.

 

What we have been up to. 

Hello again everyone. Nice to see you.

We are back in the USA for Tin Can Travels No. 2, and raring to go.

It has been 11 months since we packed up Big Dave and Tin Can into Vault Storage, Merrimack and headed back to NZ via the UK and Hong Kong.  We arrived back into NZ and reclaimed our beautiful home from the cleanest tenant in the world. (You know who you are 🙂

It was great to catch up with  our friends. I did some work but not enough to break out into a sweat and I entered a marathon which forced me to get off my behind and do some training. The biggest happening of the summer, however, was that we sold our house.

We hadn’t planned to do this, but one thing led to another and after a whole 2 days on the market it sold fully furnished. Now we were voluntarily homeless. The generosity of friends kept a roof over our heads and we sold/donated/chucked about 2/3 of our possessions. Mid-life crisis? Maybe.

This is our storage unit containing our worldly possessions. (Minus car and boat)

I ran the Rotorua marathon in 5 hours and 13 minutes.

Our vague itinerary for our second USA trip had us arriving back in Boston in September to head to the deep south via the west side of the Appalachian mountains, then across the Southern states to the Southwest parks.  We didn’t want to do this trip in summer and tornado/hurricane season.  France was calling us back, and the thought of skipping another NZ winter was very attractive. We booked an apartment in Sète, a fishing port on the Med, and spent a very hot summer living a simple life of eating, drinking, walking, sitting, watching and french lessons. It was blissful. The last 2 weeks of August we met up with our UK families in a big holiday home near Bergerac and had a noisy fortnight of eating, drinking and fun. 24 of us at full occupancy. Madness! We had 2 nights in Paris after our goodbyes then flew to Boston.

Close by, in a storage facility, sits a camper called Tin Can, sat atop a truck called Big Dave. Our home.

 

3rd – 5th Oct: Days 178 – 180

It was a surreal morning that began with the short 3 mile drive from the Holiday Inn to Vault Storage which was to be Big Dave and the Tin Can’s bedroom for the best part of the next year.  Storage options in this part of the world are limited, and the winters are very harsh so we had bitten the bullet and decided to book a (moderately expensive) space in this very good quality storage facility which is heated and provides trickle charging.  After doing the paperwork, paying for the whole year up front, giving them a quick jet wash and disconnecting the camper battery we backed into the far corner of one of the enormous sheds, put the legs down, grabbed our bags and walked away.  Definitely a bit sad.

The shed is currently almost empty but over the next few weeks it will fill up with ‘summer cars’, boats and RVs and we will be completely boxed in.

Next challenge. How to get into Boston, about 60 miles away?  With the miracle of modern technology, a few taps on the phone summoned a very nice Uber driver called Rick who turned up 4 minutes later and took us to Boston in one hour for $75. Well that was easy.  We had 2 nights booked at a small waterfront hotel at the end of a wharf, right in the heart of the city It was close to the action, away from the hustle, had great views and enormous rooms. The bathroom was bigger than TC’s living space.

We had a lovely couple of days mooching around town. Boston has a 2.5 mile walking route called the Freedom Trail which takes in a lot of the historic sites associated with the American Revolution. We did this in two halves on the 2 days, not moving very fast obviously.  The first evening we had a tapas style dinner sat up at the bar of a very cool place in the centre of town and the second evening we had a posh Italian meal in the buzzing ‘Little Italy’ district which was a hop and a skip from our hotel.

The sun shone the whole time we were in Boston and I think that we saw it at its finest. It is a great little city and was a great spot to end our trip.  It was with slightly heavy hearts that we did our final pack up and headed to the airport.  The small consolation was that we had perhaps our greatest ever journey to a city airport. The hotel had its own dock and we were collected directly from it by water taxi and taken the 10 minutes across the river to Logan Airport.  So civilised.

The process of leaving the country was without drama and we headed to the UK to spend a month with our families before returning to NZ.

For the few of you that are regular followers of these warblings I will do one final post over the next week or so keep an eye out!