Tin Can Travels

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!

17th – 19th Sept: Days 162-164

Rhode Island was a short trip to the west of Cape Cod and we arrived at our campsite, about 2 miles from the swanky coastal town of Newport, at lunchtime on Sunday. It was the last afternoon of the Newport Boat Show weekend so we parked up, had a quick sandwich, leapt on the bikes and headed for the waterfront.

The next 3 hours was a delightful theatrical production of pretending we were in the market for a 38ft motor yacht. So many shiny beautiful toys. So much speaking of half truths. So many business cards collected to be thrown away at a later date.  Entirely worth the $20 entry fee. We mentally spent about $500K over and over again which was a very pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon. There were some utterly bonkers boats there.  For example: the 53′ centre console sport fishing boat with four 627hp 6.2L V8 engines, each worth $100,000 fitted. Those folks obviously need to get fishing fast and very fancy.

The next day we cycled along Bellevue Avenue, the road along which the fabulously wealthy industrialists of the late 19thC, like Cornelius Vanderbilt, built their summer ‘cottages’. (Paff. Ostentatious mansions). Several are now museums and you can pay to go and marvel at the complete and overwhelming excess of the ‘Gilded Age’.

Loads of the houses on the street are still privately owned, demonstrating that there is still a lot of money in this neck of the woods. Also on Bellevue Avenue was a small private car museum called Audrain with a few choice specimens. Cool to see a Bugatti Veron in the flesh, but the star of the show was this quite gorgeous Ferrari Europa. A cool 6 million bucks worth.

Back in town, most of the boat show vessels had been taken away and the harbour looked pretty empty and forlorn. We did find his little collection of ships berthed at a private apartment complex. Probably not used much as they were all blocking each other in.

We managed to fritter away enough time to get to an acceptable drink o’clock and found an open air waterfront bar for a G&T and a natter with a young Texan couple. They were in town as they had tickets to take some pieces to The Antiques Roadshow USA the next day, which was a trifle obscure. We got a few top-tips for our visit to Texas next year and then set off to find a restaurant for dinner. After a few false starts we ended up at a BBQ joint and indulged some delicious ribs and various other very tasty parts of previous animals. No chance of a conversion to vegetarianism in the Hampson household, I am afraid. We cruised home in the dark, thanking Newport for their nice wide cycle lanes.

We were meant to be here 3 nights, but Hurricane José was forecast to be coming this way, and coastal Rhode Island potentially could get quite a pummelling with high winds. We hemmed and hawed, but decided to play it safe and headed off a day early to our next stop in Conneticut.  A lost night’s accommodation seemed a small price to pay for peace of mind.  The rain had started by the time it came to pack up. We got wet, changed in the car and headed off.

 

11th – 17th Sept: Days 156 – 162

To get to our next destination, Cape Cod, we had to navigate our way south to the other side of Boston. This was a bit of a white knuckle experience as we were relying on Google maps and that lady in the phone has NO idea of the most sensible route. Only the shortest or fastest. Anyway. The road surfaces were awful, the lanes were narrow, it was busy and we ended up going pretty much through the centre of Boston at high speed surrounded by crazy city drivers. There were some tense words spoken. Hunger didn’t help. I blame the lady in the phone.

So. Cape Cod. Heard of it but never quite sure where, or what, it was.

I now know that it is an easterly jutting peninsula off the lower coast of Massachusetts with an upturned hook at its eastern end and a knob pointing south on its lower westerly aspect. The islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are off the southern coast. It seems to me that it is quite likely a normal place for 9 months of the year, with an influx of summery holiday money madness for 3 months. Our roost for the next 6 nights was to be the interestingly named Sippewisset Campground, just outside the town of Falmouth. This is about halfway down that southwesterly knob. The campground was right on the most perfect of cycle trails. 11 miles of straight, flat, smooth black-topped rail trail. This led up to a great beach, 2.5 miles one way and down to Falmouth and Woods Hole, 2.5 and 5.5 miles respectively, the other way. We stocked up on provisions before we arrived and installed ourselves at our sweet little elevated site in the woods. An afternoon of not much rolled seamlessly into a nice evening around the campfire.  That night the downside of camping under a large oak tree in autumn became noisily apparent at regular heart stopping intervals. Acorns+gravity=disturbed sleep.

Over the course of our 5 full days here we cycled about 55 miles up and down the cycle path.

Day 1: We went to Falmouth, booked haircuts, walked around in the heat, looked at some nice homes, went down to the marina, saw racks and racks of boats out on dry stacks, had a coffee, went to the library and printed out our remote voting papers for the NZ general election, came home, packed our towels and togs and cycled up to the beach. It was small but perfectly formed sheltered beach. We caught some rays, read our books, Nick had his first Atlantic swim, and a few hours later we came home for a campfire dinner.

Day 2: Cycled down to Woods Hole, home of the Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institute. It has been a lifelong ambition of Nick’s to visit this place after he read about it in a National Geographic magazine when he was a kid. There was a small aquarium, a museum and an exhibition centre for the tourists, but I am sure the actual institute is where all the impressive stuff happens. We were a bit underwhelmed but it was still a lovely place and we had a good day. Woods Hole is where the ferry for Martha’s Vineyard departs from, so we bought some tickets for the next day before heading back to Falmouth where we stopped in for an early dinner.

Day 3: Back on the bikes, we whizzed back down to Woods Hole to catch the 9.30 ferry to Martha’s. We opted not to take the bikes over as it is actually quite a big place, with an excellent and cheap network of bus routes around the island. We left Woods Hole in the fog but 45 minutes later we disembarked in the sunshine at the town of Oak Bluffs.  Here there is a collection of ‘gingerbread cottages’, a collection of small ornate brightly painted wooden house all built in the late 1860s and 1870s. They are all very well preserved but form a bizarre little community with tourists like us snooping around. We forgot to take any photos, so more stock footage.

We wandered around and then hit the buses. Nick selected our spot for lunch, a fish market at the other end of the island. 1 hour and 3 buses later we arrived at Menemsha Harbor. This apparently was used as the location for the harbour scenes in the movie Jaws. It certainly looked familiar. We found the fish place and shared a crab cake, a bowl of lobster bisque and a lobster roll for lunch. We ate it perched on a small bench at the wharf in a foggy breezy atmospheric gloom. The wind blew some bisque off my spoon onto my clean trousers. I’m sure Roy Scheider didn’t have to put up with this sort of trial and tribulation whilst portraying Police Chief Brody. We explored the harbour and caught the 3 buses back to the ferry port.  This was a great way to see the island. Away from the 4 main towns it is really quite rural. The permanent population is about 16000 but this swells to 100,000 in the summer. We were glad to see it a bit quieter, but again, were underwhelmed.  Not sure what all the fuss is about really. This is not on our list of places to come back to. The trip home was sunny until just before we got back to Woods Hole, where we hit the fog bank again. Our plan to sit outside a bar and have a late afternoon beer suddenly didn’t seem so attractive, so we went home and lit the fire instead.

Day 4: We were back in Falmouth for 10am haircuts and afterwards did a few chores. We found an amazing french bakery, bought a big baguette and cycled home to make a ham and cheese sandwich. Felt like we had been transported back to La Belle France for a moment. The afternoon was a riot of laundry and laziness.  At 6pm we pocketed a few beers and scooted back to the beach to watch sunset.

A bit of a treat to be able to catch a sunset on the east coast. After dinner we finally finished the last series of Breaking Bad. We are bereft. Walter and Jesse have been fairly constant companions on this trip. We will miss them.

Day 5: Another lovely warm sunny day, so after brunch we hit the beach again. These days will be few and far between from now on, so all bikini time is time well spent. The sea was amazingly warm, calm and clear. Very eerie to have no waves at all. That evening we headed back to town for dinner and sat out at a lovely Italian restaurant. I had the most spectacular shrimp pasta. Our ride home was the first trip up the cycle trail in the complete darkness. We had lights, but a few rabbits had close shaves. Idiots.

So that, in a nutshell, was our Cape Cod sojourn. Falmouth and surrounds was a jolly nice place, entirely enhanced by an amazingly utilitarian cycle trail.  Next stop, The USA’s smallest state, Rhode Island.

 

 

 

 

4th – 9th Sept: Days 149 – 154

So Rick’s planned short 7 day visit was now curtailed to whistle-stop 5 days and was to start with an 8 hour, 350 mile drive from Burlington to the Maine coast. A 3-state day for us, but actually a 4-state day for Rick who woke up in New Jersey.  We drove across Vermont, a small sliver of New Hampshire and into Maine. We had 2 stops for fuel, 2 stops for coffee  but at lunchtime found ourselves in that rare place in America: the doldrums of fast food.  We managed to find a supermarket with an amazing self-service fresh salad/deli bar, each assembled a container of deliciousness (the boys’ containers somewhat lacking in green), then drove on to find a nice spot to pull over and eat it. We were starving, but unfortunately there were no cute little riverside picnic areas. Or even any lay-bys. Or any pull-out spots of any kind. We drove on for 40 minutes, the food warming up on Rick’s lap, all getting a bit testy. FINALLY we found a bit of dirt big enough to park on and inhaled our lunch without even getting out of Big Dave. Spirits and blood sugars boosted, we continued to head East.

We eventually rolled over the bridge onto Mount Desert Island at about 5.30pm. This was our first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean, and so the completion of our transcontinental journey, a bit of an emotional moment. Mount Desert (pronounced ‘dessert’) Island is home to Acadia National Park and the reasonably well known town of Bar Harbor. The island is shaped a bit like a pair of testicles, although this was not promoted by the local tourism office. Acadia occupies most of the body of the right testicle (as you look at the map), Bar Harbor is in the upper right testicle, and we were staying on the tip of the lower left testicle in a small village called Bass Harbor. Bass Harbour is a very small working fishing village with only a couple of restaurants and a shop/petrol station. Our campground was equi-distant from the village one way and a light house in the other direction, so after we set camp we grabbed a beer each and walked the 0.6 miles up to the light house point to watch the sunset. We weren’t the only ones to have this ideas, as you might imagine.

We had a campfire that evening, and the boys did the predicted brotherly catch-up over ‘a few beers’.

The first night sharing our space was quite tolerable. The dinette became Rick’s bed, and no-one snored too badly.

The next day we off-loaded TC from BD, and took the bikes over to Acadia.  We had bought Rick a cheap bike from Walmart, as this was going to be much more convenient and not much more expensive than renting a bike each time he needed one. We had also bought him some accessories.

Acadia has a great network of bike trails, based on the original old carriage trails, and we cycled about 12 miles through the woods and around some lakes.

We found a lakeside perch to eat our packed lunch and despite the clouds-a-gathering, the rain stayed away. On the way home we stopped in at Bar Harbor. This is a pretty spot, but the town has been taken over by tourist ‘tat’ shops. So we bailed and drove up to the top of the tallest point on the island, Mount Cadillac. Unfortunately the peak was in the clouds so not much of a view, but apparently this spot is the first in the USA to see the sunrise. There was no risk of us experiencing this. After getting back to Tin Can we had a wash and brush-up and risked the rain by cycling to the village and had a seafood dinner at a charming restaurant on the front.

We managed a few drinks outside before it got too cool and then ate far too much inside.  The rain stayed away and we groaned all the way home with full stomachs.

The next day we headed back to Acadia with walking shoes on and a few planned hikes. The first destination was a blow-hole called ‘Thunder Hole’. It was a picturesque 2 mile coastal walk from the carpark to get there but it was singularly unimpressive as there was no swell and we got there a bit too close to high tide. We grabbed a sandwich lunch and then embarked on a second walk in the afternoon. Unfortunately the forecast rain eventually arrived and we were soaking after 5 minutes.

The committee voted to turn around and go and find the car museum instead. Good decision, and the car museum (located mid left testicle) was fantastic with an amazing collection.

That evening the committee decided to go back to the same local restaurant, (and to eat a bit less). We went by foot rather than by bike as the rain continued and umbrellas are a bit more effective at low speed.

The next day we moved down the coast to our next stop, New Harbor, about 150 miles away. Lunch was a highlight of the day: a lobster roll at a waterfront lobster shack.

A local delicacy of basically the meat of half a lobster, mixed with mayonnaise, served in a buttery toasted roll. Expensive, but worth every cent.  It was delicious. Our campsite was a wooded site aptly, but slightly oddly, named Sherwood Forest. We hastily set up then took advantage of the beautiful late afternoon sunshine by cycling the 3 miles down to the Permaquid lighthouse.

This lighthouse features on the Maine quarter, the design winning a vote by the Maine residents.

Back at camp we set in for another evening of campfires and booze, introducing Rick to the fine game of  Weasel Bag. He was a natural.

We had an early start in the morning as we had booked a boat over to Monhegan Island from New Harbor.

We had to be at the wharf by 8.15am, which was a 15 min cycle away. It was a lovely sunny day, but breezy with a good running swell. Luckily I had some seasickness tablets because the next hour was ‘challenging’ and my eyes did not leave the horizon for the whole trip. Even Nick was a bit green by the time we arrived on the island.  Monhegan Island is about 12 by 1.5 miles and has about 40 full time residents.

It is criss-crossed by hiking trails with a rugged coastal loop trail around its perimeter. We had 5 hours on the island before the return boat. We started with coffee and then did a 2.5 hour hike around the lower perimeter loop.

The coast was amazing and rugged and stunningly beautiful. As we returned to the village there was a small ‘oasis-in-the-desert’ moment as we stubbled across the Monhegan Brewing Company. The boys had a couple of pints of the beer and I had some of the finest ginger beer I have ever had.

Lunch was more delicious seafood offerings from a small shack on the beach (Lobster BLTs: or LBLT, and haddock chowder) and after another coffee and a mooch around a couple of small galleries and shops we were back on the boat. The trip home was much calmer and we had another lovely evening by the campfire.  Dinner was breakfast sandwiches. Crazy.

Sadly Rick had to leave us the next day. We packed up and headed towards Portland airport. We deposited him at departures, and reassured the parking official that we wouldn’t be cluttering up the drop-off lane too long. He looked worried enough to make me think that he was half expecting us to start the generator and put the awning out. We didn’t need a big emotional goodbye as we will be in the UK next month and be cluttering up his spare room for at least a week.

We headed down to our stop for the next two nights, York Beach, on the southern Maine coast. Our hostess was a very chatty affable chainsmoker called Diane who had a tiny dog which looked more like an animated fluffy slipper. Both were lovely. The town was a cute little seaside affair with a cool beach, lots of eateries, ice-cream shops, a small arcade (We converted $25 of cash into 30 minutes of fun and 2 very plastic LED yo-yos) and, you guessed it, another light house.  We cycled around, admired some large summer homes, visited the next little village (with lots of other sunday afternoon day-trippers) and did a small coastal walk (none of the advertised seals, lots of people looking for seals) and generally blithered about.

Tomorrow off to Massachusetts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30th Aug – 3rd Sept: Days 144 – 148

The Adirondacks are a mountain range in Upstate New York and our journey across them started with an overnight stop in a riverside camp in a town called Poland. We underestimated the ability to buy fresh groceries in the town and ended up at the petrol station buying a salami and a tin of sliced mushrooms.  Sara’s ‘invention test’ for dinner it was to be! It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, the camp had a lovely clean swimming pool and that was where we spent a couple of hours while the laundry was in progress. Multitasking extraordinaire. The main excitement of this stop was what we found to buy in the camp shop. Check out ‘Teeny Dave’. It was meant to be….

 

We had a lovely peaceful night and set off across the (small) mountains in the morning. The drive through the Adirondacks was very beautiful. Lovely wide smooth roads, swooping ups and downs rather than hard climbs, lots of handsome NY towns including Ithaca, home of Cornell University. (One of only 8 Ivy League Universities, the others being: Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Uni of Pennsylvania, Princeton & Yale.) It was cool and there was suddenly a vague tinge of brown and yellow on some of the trees, as if autumn had suddenly hit today, on the 31st August. C’mon. Summer didn’t really start til the middle of July.

Our next stop was the bizarrely named ‘Ausable Chasm’.  This is another deep steep sided narrow river gorge also known as the Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks. This is a bit of a leap of imagination, but it was cool.  We had 2 nights here. The first was very quiet and we had our area of the campsite to ourselves. The second night was the Friday of a 3 day holiday weekend (Labor Weekend) and the camp was suddenly chock-a-block with folk getting away for the last weekend of summer.  The chasm is privately owned, and there is a not-inconsiderable fee to walk through through it, and around the rim trails. You can also float down the river on a raft, or in a tube when the the weather is warm.  We didn’t do any floating, but did a good enough walk to earn our dinner. It was quite impressive, but again, we lost these photos.

The highlight of this place was our evening at the Ausable Brewing Company. This was a nano-brewery a couple of miles cycle ride from camp. It is located down country lane in a red shed, surrounded by fields and flowers. It is run by two brothers and is only open 3 days a week (because they don’t make very much beer). On each of those evenings a different local food truck rolls up to feed the customers and there are tables and chairs dotted around the garden and in the adjoining open-sided barn. The sun was shining, there was a happy buzz of locals and holiday-makers, a tolerable smattering of kids, not enough dogs, the beer was excellent, the food truck was a was selling amazing BBQ ribs and there was some half decent live music from a man with a guitar.  A bliss evening.

We managed to get home before darkness fully set in. Luckily the road home was quiet and our merry weaving didn’t leave us in a ditch.

The next day our plan had been to get up early and get the nearby ferry across Lake Champlain (I was previously convinced this was called Lake Champagne…) into the town of Burlington, Vermont, to spend the day mooching around, then pick up Nick’s brother Rick from Burlington airport at 4.30pm. We awoke to a message from Rick that his flight out of the UK had been cancelled and he was going to be delayed by 24 hours. This was a shame, as he was only coming for a week anyway. We had planned this week as mainly a Maine coastal trip, with 2 stops across country to get us there.  The delay turned this into a one stop drive.

We got a later ferry, decided to bypass Burlington that day and headed off to our next stop in a village called Stowe. This was luckily only about 30 miles from Burlington, so we could easily go back to pick up Rick the next day, and then do a 3 hour drive to our next stop. On the way to Stowe we called in at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory Tour and Ice Cream Shop. Here they have a ‘Flavour Graveyard’ where all the past incarnations of their products are preserved. The original shop was opened in Burlington itself and interestingly Ben (Cohen) learned to make ice-cream by taking a correspondence course when he failed to get into medical school, and because he has no sense of smell or taste he put lumps and chunks in the ice-cream to give it mouth feel. Something that is very important for his own enjoyment of food. Oh, the facts just keep flowing’.  Anyway. We called in with full bladders and low blood sugars, took one look at the crowds, saw that the only food on offer was ice-cream, had a wee, and got the hell out of dodge to find a proper lunch. This is to prove we were there.

Once installed in camp and on the other side of a sandwich we felt much more human and jumped on the bikes to explore Stowe. It was very pretty and gentile with a nice cycle path that we took a ride up as far as a mini-golf course. Here, in the baking sun, stuck behind a family with seemingly 17 kids and no sense of urgency, we had our second USA Mini Golf Challenge. Nick evened the score to one all.

In the morning it was hosing with rain, and was forecast to do the same all day. This makes packing up a bit miserable, but we were brave and soldiered on. We drove back to Burlington and considering it was Sunday the place was jumping. Tons of traffic, people everywhere and queues forming at all the restaurants for lunch. Crazy. We found somewhere to park, somewhere to eat, did a bit of shopping and then headed out to a supermarket near the airport for a proper stock up for the impending arrival.  As we were negotiating our way through town Rick rang with more bad news. His flight into Newark had been delayed and despite a 3 hour connection, he had not managed to make his flight to Burlington. The next flight wasn’t until the next morning. Blood and Sand. We quickly discussed some other options, but in the end, waiting until the morning was going to be the best of a bad bunch. Now we were going to have to do a planned 2 night trip across country in one epic day. The man wanted a bit of a USA road trip, that’s what he was going to get, by crikey.

Our next dilemma? Where to stay that cold rainy night? A hotel, that’s where! Some hasty research was done, and we were soon booked into the nearby Best Western which had an attached bar/restaurant and a room with 2 beds and a bath. Every cloud has a silver lining.  We did our shopping, started the generator so we could open up TinCan, put the shopping away and pack our overnight bags (aka the shopping bags) and within half an hour I was luxuriating in the tub. We had a nice dinner sat at the bar, a terrible night’s sleep (unfair) and were at the airport by 9am to finally greet our visitor.

28th – 30th Aug: Days 142 – 144

We continued our journey across NY state and put in a 2 night stop in Watkins Glen. This little known corner of America is best known for a couple of things:

1. The Glen: a smallish but beautiful steep sided gorge with some amazing rock formations and waterfalls, and a very lovely 1.5 mile walk up it.
2. The Glen: a very well known motor racing track, if you know about these things. This was the first place to host a major car race following WW2 giving the petrol heads of this land somewhere to burn some gasoline and tyre rubber. In 1948 this started as a street race around the small town and graduated to a purpose built track 5 yrs later. It hosted Formula 1 Grand Prix 1961-1980 and remains an important NASCAR and INDYCAR venue as the premiere road racing venue in the USA. I, of course knew none of this.

We travelled from Niagara to Watkins Glen though the back roads of Up State New York. This area was a bit less polished than I had expected. More homes that needed repainting, more lawns un-mowed and a bit more junk in the gardens. Still very pretty though and we saw our first Amish horse and buggy on the road. We did a very small detour about 30 miles from our destination in order to visit the Corning Museum of Glass.  This was established by the Corning Glass Works in 1951 in recognition of 100 years of manufacturing glass.  The museum is now housed in a monumental purpose built building and has 45000 pieces of glass, some over 3500 years old. It was fantastic. The gallery areas were in huge minimalist spaces and the museum areas showed that those olden day folks knew some stuff too. There were even some science areas and demonstrations explaining fibre optics and such.  The highlight was watching a live worship where a glassblower knocked up an amazingly ornate bowel in 20 minutes. Quite a talent.

After we had absorbed all the culture that we could accomodate, we headed off to Watkins Glen. The town is in an area called Finger Lakes, and sits at the lower end of Seneca Lake. This is one of a group of long thin glacial lakes and is 38 miles long. We got to our camp at about 5pm, on a lovely sunny evening. We set up and then wandered down to the park area on the lake edge to watch the sunset with a bottle of fizz and a bag of cheesy crisps; last event in the anniversary celebrations. I know, we are all class.

The next day, after a hearty brunch, we donned our walking shoes and set off to walk up the gorge path. The entrance was only about a mile from camp on the edge of town and on the way there we had a coffee sat on a bench on the main street and watched the world go by. There are a lot of trucks that go through this town, so this was not peaceful pastime.  The pavements have plaques sunk into them, each commemorating a different race car driver that had won an event at The Glen. We came across this familiar name.

We found out that a few days after we leave here The Glen is hosting the Indycar Grand Prix. Nick was gutted to be missing it, but I reckon that finding accomodation would have been a little trickier. Anyhow, we have a date to pick up Rick in Burlington, so we must roll onwards!

The racetrack itself is not in town, and unfortunately we didn’t manage to get up to it.  Wonder if we could have given Big Dave a bit of a thrash, Tin Can and all…?

The walk up into the Glen was lovely. There was a well formed stone path built into the side wall of the gorge and lots of great photo opportunities. Unfortunately we also lost these photos in the great memory-card disaster, but here is a stock photo.

That evening we walked back to town and had dinner and a drink sat up at the bar in the local craft brewery, Roosterfish. We got chatting to an interesting chap called Dries and spent a few hours swapping stories and anecdotes.

 

26th – 28th Aug: Days 140-142

I’d not ever had a burning desire to visit Niagara Falls but we were going to be so close that it seemed silly not to swing by. Nick had been before with his Dad in March 1990. He remembers it being so cold that the Falls were half frozen and there were hardly any other tourists.

We booked 2 nights just north of the Falls in a village called Lewiston. Driving here took us from Pennsylvania into New York State. We navigated around the suburbs of Buffalo and had our first ‘low bridge’ experience. Luckily that only involved a hasty stop and me running around in the road to halt traffic so we could execute a 5 point turn, rather than top-slicing the roof off Tin Can. Sometimes the lady in Google Maps gets it wrong…

The first night was our anniversary so we booked a nice restaurant in Lewiston itself. I broke out a dress, Nick donned shirt and slacks and as the best dressed folks in the whole darn campsite we got an Uber to the village. As a happy surprise there happened to be a rather large jazz festival afoot. The main street was closed to traffic, had a stage at each end, was lined with numerous vendors of beer and food and was filled with a happy crowd. The sun was shining and we had a very cool hour of apperitifs listening to the music and soaking up the buzz. Our meal was excellent and we managed to get our return Uber just ahead of the going-home crowds after the last band.

 

The next day I might have felt a little shabby, and might not have had an appetitive for breakfast sandwiches. I know. Unfair.

After a period of time and some appropriate drugs (I healed myself) I was feeling better and we called another Uber to take us down to the Falls. Following recommendations from multiple sources we took our passports and walked over the Friendship Bridge to the Canadian side, with only a mild and completely unfounded anxiety that they might not let us back into the USA on our return.

I have some observations, and some corrected personal misconceptions regarding Niagara Falls:

1. American side shabby, Canadian side smart.
2. In my mind, the river ran the other way and the American and Canadian sides were switched.
3. It is actually 2 falls. American Falls and Horseshoe Falls. I really didn’t know this. Horseshoe falls is the Niagara I had imagined.
4. The view is so much better from the Canadian side.
5. There is a lot of water coming over those darn waterfalls.
6. There are a lot of people who come to look at those big darn waterfalls and only about 5% have any spatial awareness or manners.
7. Whoever is in the business of manufacturing disposable ponchos is making a good living out of the Niagara Falls tourist industry.

Once on the busy but nicely manicured Canadian side we wound our way slowly through the crowds down to Horseshoe Falls. Nick remembered doing a tour though tunnels behind the falls, just him and his Dad, and it being weird as the cascading water was frozen solid. We opted to do the same tour and joined the queue to get the lift down. Nick doesn’t deal with heights well. My Bête Noir is a touch of claustrophobia. Oh. They packed us into those tunnels. Hoards of yellow poncho wearing folks, rustling and shuffling along, each waiting for a turn to stand at the end of a tunnel mouth to watch a wall of white water cascading down in front of them. Not my thing at all. I felt much more relaxed once we got to the open air area at the base of the Falls. It really was epic being so close to it. Very wet, very noisy and a perfect photo opportunity given the backdrop of the cascading water, the Maid of the Mist boat and the rainbow. I cannot share a picture of this with you, however, as the memory card of the camera decided to error.

Here is a stock photo for your reference.

America and American Falls

Horseshoe Falls and Canada

 

With weary bodies after so much walking and excitement we shuffled back across to the USA, were re-admittted without drama, got an Uber home and had a nice cup of tea.

 

25th – 26th Aug: Days 139 – 140

Having spent 8 weeks in Michigan, Pennsylvania only had the honour of our presence for one night. We were just passing through on our way to Niagara Falls, and found a stop just west of Erie, on Lake Erie. We really can’t be bothered to do long driving days as it makes us both grumpy, so we generally only do a maximum of 150 miles, or 3 hours a day.  Never manage to get on the road before 11am, need a stop for lunch and very important for camp to be well and truely set up by beer o’clock.

Our camp for the night was a wooded place, inhabited by long term seasonal campers and there were definitely some twitchy curtains as we made our way to our back-blocks site at the rear of the park. Also amazing that such an out of the way campsite can be so close to a railway line…those horns…

We did very little except watch a few more episodes of Breaking Bad after dinner and I got stung by a wasp. Exciting times.

In the morning as we were leaving Erie we found ourselves in our favourite place, Walmart!  A fabulous start to our 17th wedding anniversary 🙂

Had to get a few supplies for our impending camper-guest, Nick’s brother Rick, who is joining us for a week soon. Going to be cozy with the 3 of us, but he is fully house trained and a bone fide camper so it should be all good!