25th Sept – 2nd Oct: Days 170 – 177
It was sad to think that this was our final week living on the road and that we were approaching the end of this epic and amazing road trip. After our fun weekend with Greg and Gigi we had 7 days before Big Dave and Tin Can were due to be tucked up into a storage unit in Merrimack, New Hampshire.
By the time we got up on Monday morning Greg and Sam had already left the house and half an hour later Gigi had hustled the younger two and herself out of the door too. We had a couple of hours to ourselves to tidy up, do some laundry, search online for somewhere to stay that night, pack up the rig, put the dog away and go. It was still unseasonably hot.
Nick was really keen to see if he could visit his old school, Wilbraham and Monson Academy in Mid-Massachusetts, so we found a camp within striking distance of that. This was in the village of Wales and had a swimming pool but not much else going on. In this heat we didn’t need much else. We arrived to a beautiful wooded camp which had lots of long term RVs in situ, a bazillion squirrels but almost a complete absence of human beings. Tragically, despite the 90 deg F temp the pool had been shut down for the winter. No, no, no! The heat was sapping and we ground to a halt for two days. We couldn’t even be bothered to cycle the one and a half miles to the pub for dinner. Yup. That hot. Complete idleness is a skill that requires plenty of practice. It has taken me a while to come even close to my husband’s level of expertise but I think I can sit still for several hours at a time now.
Nick called his old school and arranged a meeting with the ‘Director of Alumni Relations’ for late morning on the day of leaving the Woods of Idleness. It is some indicator of how highly American institutions, such as expensive private schools, value their past students that they have a person whose entire job it is to liase with, meet, greet, and schmooze its alumni. Good for us. I have heard so many of Nick’s anecdotes from this place that it was great to finally see it in the bricks and mortar. The school completely dominates the small Massachsetts village of Wilbraham and is beautiful. Red brick and white weatherboard buildings, perfectly mown lawns and trees just starting to turn to their fall colours. We met the Alumni director, the Headmaster and had an hour’s guided tour from 2 students. Nick was in sensory and emotional overload. Interestingly he remembered his clandestine smoking spots but not the library; was hazy about the classroom areas but had good memories of the canteen and the swimming pool. His eyes didn’t go misty until we went up to the dorm area and he found his old room. That area was completely unchanged. The current incumbent was in residence and we said a brief hello. After our tour we had lunch in the canteen with the alumni director and a couple of other staff, surrounded by the melee of the students. The food selection was a bit more diverse than in our past school days. No ‘slop’ for the modern private school kid. Our visit was more than 2 hours and we had been made to feel so welcome. We said our goodbyes with promises to return again next year, although that probably was just the nostalgia talking.
We headed north from here and had 3 nights at a park just outside a village called Bernardston, still in Massachusetts. The heat continued. One day we off-loaded and took Big Dave for an oil change and then took the opportunity to visit some of the lovely picture-book New England towns in the area. Bernardston had a couple of eateries which were close enough to cycle to for dinner. It may be hard to believe but it was not until now that I ate my first pizza of the trip.
It was excellent but so big that we didn’t finish it all and had to get a carry-out box (aka doggy bag) for the left overs. Cycling in the dark whilst carrying a pizza box was a skill that I didn’t realise that I had.
That evening the Indian summer left us and a cold snap arrived. With rain. It went from 92F (33C) to 49F (8C) within a few days. We packed up in the cold and wet and set off. Our last 2 nights two nights in Tin Can were about 60 miles away in a small campsite in Brookline, New Hampshire. It was chosen purely for being within coo-ee of the storage facility. The weather was so miserable that we opted to stop off at a movie theatre (to see Kingsman) en route hoping that the rain would ease off later in the day. It did, and happily the next 2 days were dry, mild and sunny. Perfect for ‘the big sort out’.
The 46 hours we had here were a bit of a blur. We cleaned out the lockers, cleaned the bikes, cleaned the bathroom, kitchen, living room and bedroom (aka ‘inside’), did multiple loads of laundry, ate up some food, threw out the rest. I cleaned the roof, Nick cleaned out the truck.
We liberated our travel bags and tackled the packing conundrum. What to take? What to leave? How to fit 3 bags worth of stuff that we brought with us into 2 bags to go home? For the last tasks we drained and flushed the holding tanks and drained the plumbing, bought bikes came inside to be stored on the beds and I mopped us out. We finally left the campsite an hour later than check-out time with apologies to the management, our packed bags on the back seat and having had our last night’s sleep in the Tin Can. Washing the outside of TC and BD was the last thing we needed to do before we went to the storage place the next morning so we set off to find a large bay self service carwash…
After several disappointing hours of driving around visiting a myriad of car washing facilities and multiple kerbside google searches it became apparent that this part of New Hampshire has no large bay carwashes.
A phone call to the storage facility revealed that they do have a hot water pressure washer. Excellent, we could do it there. Now we could head to our next port of call, a room in a local Holiday Inn. We checked in and the rest of the day involved some well earned loafing, a bath and a meal in the pub down the road before a good night’s sleep.