Maine

Our first day in Maine was on July 23 where we stayed one night at Gregoire’s Campground in Wells. This was close to Kennebunk and Kennebunkport. We tried to see some beaches but were never able to get close enough. Parking was really limited. Instead, we drove to Kennebunkport and walked around for a while. We brought Boo with us because she had been left alone for most of 3 days. We stopped at a place with a dog friendly patio and had a fun drink, an Island Time which was basically a pineapple margarita with black sea salt on the rim. We struck up another conversation and heard about a fish market that also cooked and served seafood at picnic tables on their deck. We were told they had delicious and inexpensive lobster there but it was BYOB. After taking Boo home and cleaning up, we headed there, the Langsford Rd Lobster and Fish House. I had never had lobster and was not very anxious to try it, but it was delicious!!!

On Friday, we moved on to Trenton for 3 nights at Timberland Acres RV Park.

For our first day, we decided to explore Schoodic Peninsula, a remote part of Acadia National Park. It did not disappoint. I think this shows the rugged coastline of Maine to perfection.

Then, we stopped at a cute outdoor patio for a refreshment on our way back to the campground.

We visited Bar Harbor because we have always heard this name. It was a quaint tourist town. Stopping for a beer after some shopping, we met a woman who was traveling alone in an RV.

On our last day in Trenton, we toured more of Acadia, driving to the top of Cadillac Mountain and then picnicking in the park. We walked along a sandy beach and the water was super cold!

We went to Eastport on the 27th where we had a view of the ocean from our camp site. We had a huge grassy campsite. Sometimes whales are seen from here but we weren’t lucky enough to see them.

We drove to Lubec, the eastern most town in the US and visited the Quoddy point light house, the eastern most point in the US. Standing here, we looked at the Bay of Fundy with New Brunswick to the left and Nova Scotia to the right. However, we were a little disappointed in the town as nothing was open. We had hoped to have lunch there.

We continued our day by going to Eastport, the eastern most city in the US. It was fun to walk around and having a beer at the Horn Run Brewery.

We finished our day at the Ole Hooker, a bar that Ken and Wendy Dobie had recommended to us.

New Hampshire

On the 29th, we headed to New Hampshire where we stayed at Beach Camping Area in North Conway, on the Saco River.

For our first full day in New Hampshire, Dave had some awesome plans. Well, some were awesome…!First, we drove to a huge rock, Madison Boulder. This was moved by glaciers and deposited near our campground. They know it was moved in because it is a different kind of rock from the rest of the area rocks. As huge as it is, the base is buried at least 10 feet deep.

Next, we drove to the top of Mount Washington. This is a mountain in the White Mountains and is renowned for it’s extreme weather conditions, year around. It was a 7 1/2 mile drive to the top with fog the last 3 miles. I’m glad I went and Dave enjoyed driving it, but it was nerve wracking.

Then we took a side trip to a covered bridge that we could drive through.

We had supper plans for an Irish meal at May Kelly’s but it was too early to eat so we stopped at Horsefeathers Brewery for a couple. The food at May Kelly’s was awesome and the decor was fun.

We spent our last New Hampshire day chilling at the Saco River, watching the kayakers and people playing.

The drive out of NH was beautiful along the Kancamagus Highway.

Vermont

Our first stop in Vermont was lunch and short hike at the Quechee Gorge on the Ottauquechee River.

… and driving into Vermont. It is beautiful! There were many signs warning us of moose crossing but all we saw were a couple of deer.

We arrived at our campground, Gold Brook Campground outside of Stowe.

Dave updated our map.

4 years 6 months and 11 days, over 275 campsites and 79,705 miles later Jo & I have pulled our trailer into 49 states and stayed in all 50 states together.

I can’t believe the great scenery, great people, and great experiences we’ve been privileged to see, meet and have. Thanks to everyone who we have met and befriended along the way, y’all have enriched our lives .

The US is such a varied and beautiful country. We have been in 23 of the states 2 or more times and have no plans to quit exploring our beautiful country and it’s great people. Maybe we’ll fill in a second map before we finish.

While searching on Google for things to do in Stowe, we found there is a unique pizza place with really good pizza and unique decor so we decided to check it out. Piecasso lived up to its name!

The next day was our busiest in Stowe. First we went to the Von Trapp family lodge where we had an informative history tour of the Von Trapp family followed by a film of the “real Maria”. It was interesting to see the differences and similarities to the Von Trapps from The Sound of Music. That portion of our day ended with a question/answer session with Sam Von Trapp, grandson of Maria and the captain. HIs maternal grandmother was a Peterson from Marshall, Minnesota so we had to have our picture taken with him.

We had a German lunch at the Von Trapp bierhall. This was started by Sam’s father, Johannes who first tried to bottle water from the aquifers under the property. When that failed, he started bottling beer instead.

Then we took a drive to Smugglers Notch. This is a very steep, winding road that got its name because smugglers used the rocky path and caves to move supplies to and from Canada during the war of 1812.

We rounded out our day by walking around Stowe. We had been told about Stowe, which is why we came here in the first place. There are some pretty churches and houses but we were a little disappointed that there were not more things to do or enough cute shops.

On Thursday, we had some errands in Burlington, like oil change and grocery shopping. We had a picnic lunch beside Lake Champlain.

For our last day in Vermont, we went to the first Ben & Jerry’s for a dessert. This location does tours on Sundays and Mondays. We arrived here on a Monday but were not aware of the tour schedule so we missed out on that but wanted to visit and sample anyway! It was fun to see the old flavors graveyard. Apparent;y, once dead, they can come back to life.

We also went to a cidery and had a couple of flights to sample the ciders.

New York

On August 6, we went back to New York where we spent 3 nights at King Phillips Campground near Lake George. We decided not to do a lot of sight seeing in the area but took a lake excursion on Sunday. What a beautiful self-contained lake. There are a lot of expensive homes on this lake!

Quebec and Ontario

On a chilly, drizzly day on August 8, we moved into Canada to visit our friends Jo and Fern at Camping Angie Gardien. Our route took us through Montreal. Between the traffic, rain and confusing freeway, I was not thrilled to return to Montreal. (I had been here on a post-college trip for my honor society in 1984.) However, it was great to see Jo and Fern and meet their new Doodle, Elton. Boo was thrilled to see her old friends too.

Jo and Fern took us to Ottawa for our only full day here. Ottawa is the capitol of Canada. It was neat to see their government buildings and some embassies. (missing some photos here due to my phone issues)

New York

We went back to New York on August 10 to Cooperstown Family Campground. Our purpose to be here? Well to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, of course! We took pictures of the plaques of all Minnesota Twins Hall of Famers, especially the two inducted a couple of weeks ago. While walking to the Hall, we passed a man who commented on our Twins jerseys, “Go Twins”. It turns out he lives in the east somewhere but is from Mankato, Minnesota!

We also visited Doubleday Field, where the first baseball game was held. Baseball was “invented” here in Cooperstown where a man named Dabner Doubleday wrote down the rules for a stick and ball game, similar to games he had played as a child in England.

We also stopped for an appetizer lunch at Hard Ball Cafe.

We went to Watkins Glen State Park for three days, after fellow RVers had recommended we see the Fingerlakes region. This is 11 long, narrow, fingerlike lakes south of Lake Ontario. Watson Glen is on Seneca Lake, the second longest at 38 miles.

This is a huge state park with a lot of camping, but mostly tenters. While there, we visited a winery, brewery and hiked the Gorge Trail.

We finished the day with a beer at Seneca Lodge, right outside the campground.

We went to North Tonawanda, near Niagara Falls on the 15th. The campground is so-so but it really didn’t matter as we are still able to do the things we want to do.

Supper on our first night was with Connie and Kieth, RV friends we met last winter in Florida. They live less than 20 miles from our campground.

Our first full day in this area, we went to the US side of Niagara Falls. It is so beautiful and magnificent. We did walk most of the way across the rainbow bridge for a different view so had to go through Customs to get back.

The next day, we drove across the bridge to view the falls from the Canadian side. As beautiful as they are from the US, they are more magnificent from this side.

We also spent some time at a local Verizon, Best Buy and back to Verizon. A few days earlier, I had dropped my phone into some water, for literally 2 seconds. It got too wet to be dried out and I had to get a new phone. sigh….

We finished the day with a light lunch at Margaritaville Niagara Falls.

Ontario

On August 18, we drove to Milton, Ontario to visit our friend Laurie. Unfortunately, Laurie was not feeling well and we were not able to get together. We had extended our summer trip by three days and drove a lot of miles to see her so it was quite disappointing. Plus, we don’t know when we will have another opportunity to see her.

Instead, we visited two breweries in Milton.

Pennsylvania

We had a one-night stay in DuBois, PA at a KOA. This was really neat and huge. We had a 5 mile winding road drive to the campground, after getting to the gatehouse!

Back to the US on the 20, this time to Christmas Pines Campground in Auburn, PA. Our stop here was about 12 miles from the Yuengling Brewery which was really fun to tour. Yuengling is the oldest brewery in the US and is still owned by the original family. Schell’s in New Ulm, MN is second oldest family owned brewery so Dave had fun sharing stories with the tour guide.

Note the tunnels…It took 10 years of manual labor to dig out the two tunnels and 3 connecting tunnels.

Continuing our journey, we reached Hershey Road Campground in Elizabethtown, PA for two nights. We had fun playing mini golf at the farm themed course.

On August 24, we went to Hershey Chocolate World where we took a cute, kid-style ride through the chocolate factory. Even though it was designed for kids, it did a good job of explaining the process of making chocolate. When finished, we shared a Yuengling Hershey Porter.

We ended our day in Hershey with a beer at Iron Hill Brewery.

August 25 brought us back to Rockville, PA to Hickory Hollow Campground for two nights. We had stayed here for a night on our way east but came back as we head west. Our reason to return was to see the Flight 93 crash site near Shanksville.

After seeing the other crash sites from 911, we were amazed at the personal detail included in this memorial. It was by far the most emotional. There is a special black granite path that is the same as the flight path as the plane was coming down. Inside, there are many pictures and in some cases, actual things gathered at the crash site. We were able to listen to some of the messages that passengers and crew left for their families. We learned that because this crash was in an open field rather than a city, it was easier for investigators to gather information about the hijackers, including a credit card of one of them. We learned that the 40 (probably fewer because at least one had already been killed) passengers and crew voted to storm the cockpit in hopes of regaining control of the plane or at least preventing injury to others (they already knew it was a larger scale hijacking). Thirty people agreed to the attempt.

We saw the field where the plane crashed, marked by a large granite boulder. The memorial wall looks solid from a distance, to show their solidarity but there are 40 individual panels, one for each victim. Forty hemlock trees were planted because the hemlock trees around were destroyed by the crash.

There is also a beautiful “Tower of Voices” where 40 wind chimes are hung, to speak to the world.

This was such a moving, emotional visit.

We drove to a nearby, newly opened brewery for one beer, Forbes Trail Brewery. What a neat place!

Ohio

We were back in Ohio for one night and had a Harvest Host stay at Lincoln Way Vineyards. We sampled a wine slushy and listened to two different singers through the afternoon and evening. Dave’s cousin Bryan’s son, Doak, came out to spend some time with us, since we were in Wooster where he goes to college.

Indiana

We got to Cedar Lake Ministries in Cedar Lake, IN on the 27th, after having our weekly Bloody Mary’s at a wayside rest along the way! This is not the prettiest campground we have been to but also not the worst.

On the 29, we were invited to friends Joel and Jackie’s house for supper. We brought along a couple of bottles of wine and Boo who got to play with their new puppy. Thank you guys for the delicious meal of stuffed chicken breast and seafood empanadas. It was great seeing you and your beautiful new home.

The next day, we met my niece Liz and her fiance David for supper. We had not since them since Liz’s graduation from law school over 4 years ago. What a great evening!

Iowa

August 31 found us at another Harvest Home, Millstream Brau House in Amana, IA. I wish we had gotten here earlier in the day to check out the town and shops but we enjoyed our beers and appetizer supper.

Minnesota

We got back to our Minnesota “home” on September 1 and can’t wait to see friends and family.