Tin Can Travels

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!

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

19th – 21st Sept: Days 164 – 166

In the end hurricane José was not as bad as all that, and our premature departure from Newport was, in retrospect, not really necessary. But you know what they say: better a storm in a teacup than trying to make tea as the side of your RV is ripped off by 100 mile an hour winds. We located our next home, a small RV park on a river in Portland, Connecticut which was part of a sizeable marina. The facilities were questionable but the sites were nice, flat concrete pads and it was quiet and wooded. It was the time of year when people start pulling their boats out of the water for winter using a huge motorised cradle.  It gets so cold here that anything left in the water gets crushed by the ice. Even the floating docks get pulled out.

On the surface this might seem like a random place to stop. But, oh no. Nothing random about our visit to this town.  One of our favourite TV shows is a car show called ‘Chasing Classic Cars’ and it is hosted by an affable chap with an excellent moustache called Wayne Carini.  He locates, buys, restores and sells classic cars for himself, but also acts as a broker for very wealthy clients, going to top end auctions and doing valuations for estates etc. Great show. His base for his business and for the TV show is a shop and yard called F40 Motorsport in, you guessed it, Portland CT. It is on the main road into town only about half a mile from our camp.

We had a foray on the bikes across the river to the neighbouring town of Middletown where we found a great authentic diner for lunch and then took ourselves up to F40 Motorsports, chasing Wayne Carini.

The TV show is exported to 30 different countries so I imagine that fans and car nuts from all over the world do exactly the same as we were doing: just call in to see if they can look around the showroom and perhaps bump into the man himself.  However, I can be fairly confident that almost none of them do it by bicycle.

We arrived and wandered into the small showroom which was manned by a chap called Mike. He was politely welcoming, encouraged us to look around and commiserated with us that we had JUST missed the boss who had gone for the day. As we signed the visitors book he dutifully gave us an A4 flyer with a promotional photo of Wayne.

There was a small but perfectly formed display of mint condition cars in the showroom including a 1934 Bentley, a Ferrari California, a Dino, two classic Porsches and a very sexy Mercedes 300SL Gullwing. It was cool to be there, but we were a teeny bit disappointed to have missed the man himself.

Our disappointment was soon to be a distant emotion though. A combination of us being marvellously interesting and beautiful people and having arrived by bicycle meant we got chatting in a bit more depth to Mike.  I imagine that he must have been having a quiet afternoon as he uttered the words ‘I don’t usually do this for visitors, but do you want a look at the cars in the sheds and workshop?’ Yes please. Yes. And he let me sit in the Mercedes in the showroom.

$1.6 million of me looking very cool.  An hour later we emerged from the backroom tour thinking that that had been a very worthy consolation for not meeting Wayne Carini himself.  The highlight was seeing a very rare Ferrari Daytona Spyder that had featured prominently on one of the show’s episodes. So, we were happy campers. Quite literally.

Otherwise our 2 day stay here was very lazy. It was warm and disgustingly humid so we sat in watching TV. The only channel we could get was the ‘Dick Wolf’ channel, so we watched back to back Law and Order and Criminal Intent for HOURS!