Month: October 2015

Days 103-104:  For more than three months we only got rain on our travel days, but now we finally entered a nine-day stretch of damp and dreary weather.  While visiting Paul’s second cousin Cindy and her husband Paul in Charlottesville, we resolved to meet next summer in New England, along with Cindy’s two brothers, to share memories, photos, and genealogical notes on our Lowry and Martine family heritage.  Among other delectables served to us by Cindy and Paul were paw paws from their paw-paw patch (very tasty!).

Abby & Payam met us at Cindy & Paul’s, and on the way from Charlottesville to D.C. the four of us hiked up Humpback Rocks along the Blue Ridge Parkway and looped back to the car on a short section of the Appalachian Trail.  On this misty and foggy day, the woods were peaceful, and we occasionally glimpsed some interesting gnarled trees among the tall hardwoods.

Days 105-107:  Despite the demands of a busy fall semester during her Ph.D. studies at American University, Abby still found the time to treat us to some home cooking and take us for a stroll through the National Arboretum.  We took her shopping for groceries and home improvement supplies (she doesn’t have a car).  While she was busy teaching, we went biking and visited Amy’s high school friend Debby and her husband Craig on Monday.

On Tuesday we did some sightseeing and went to the American Museum of Art.  The portraits of prominent early Americans were not only pleasing art, but they were accompanied by informative explanations of the lives and accomplishments of their subjects, characterizing life in the colonial era and early 1800s.

Days 108-109:  On the way back to New England, we met Amy’s sister Ruth at Salt Springs State Park in northern Pennsylvania.  We were the only ones in the small rustic campground.  This park is owned but not staffed or funded by the state.  Instead, it is ably managed by a volunteer organization.  The spring the park was named after was initially hidden by the local Native Americans from the early settlers, but later revealed for a large sum of money.

The American settlers built a salt works there, but it wasn’t productive enough to prosper.  A woolen mill was built there in 1858.

In 1902, an oil and gas company drilled a well over 2000 feet deep, but abruptly abandoned the project.  For many years, the farmhouse next to the site used the methane bubbling up from the well shaft for their lighting and cooking needs.  We explored the network of hiking trails in the park, including ones along the scenic Fall Creek gorge.

Days 110-111:  The last planned stop on our trip was an Aliner rally at Williamstown in eastern Vermont.  Ours was one of 35 Aliners camped there.  It was a nice time to visit with some friends we had made at last year’s rally and pick up bits of information on Aliner camping.

On Saturday afternoon we took a tour of the large granite quarry operated by the Rock of Ages Corporation.  Granite was once extracted there by blasting with black powder—there are huge waste piles of broken rock from those days.  Nowadays they carve out huge blocks of granite using precision saws and drills, with very little waste.  The “Barre Gray” granite formation is estimated to be large enough to last another 4,500 years!

Days 112-113:  On the way from Vermont to N.H. we detoured by way of Naugatuck, Conn., to attend the graveside memorial service for Amy’s stepmom Maude, who passed away while we were out in California.  We were surprised to find the campground at the local state park already closed for the season, despite glorious New England fall weather on the first weekend of October!  We resorted to camping in a Walmart parking lot for the first and only time on our trip.

Practically across the road from there, we walked around Amy’s old neighborhood where she grew up through her junior high years and she reminisced about her childhood friends.  At Maude’s burial the next morning, it was good to see several of Amy’s step family, whom we hadn’t seen for a while.  Entering N.H. on our final day’s drive, we paused in Keene and briefly visited Amy’s grad school friend Kathy, who with her husband Steve had joined us for a hike during our very first Aliner outing, back in May 2012.

14Oct:  It has been nine days since we pulled into our driveway at the end of our whirlwind tour to California and back.  Four of those days were devoted to another trip with the camper, so we are still in the process of settling into “normal” life again.  The encore trip was to Connecticut, on the occasion of Paul’s 50-year high school reunion.  The festivities were spread out over two days, allowing bonus time for socializing as well as a leisurely walk along the Farmington River among the fall colors.  We also visited the eastern Connecticut shore village of Noank to see our friends Wayne & Hildegard, who took us hiking and to a chamber music concert one day, then walking along a Rhode Island beach the next, in superb fall weather.

Back home at last, it will take a while to establish our retirement routine, now that we are at home and don’t have to go into work.  Did we enjoy being on such a long trip?  Yes, it was great.  We would love to do it again, and hope to head out to the Pacific Northwest and Canadian Rockies in 2017.  Next summer, though, Amy wants to stay home so she doesn’t miss a second year in a row of blueberry season and swimming in our lake.

This year we added 18 states to the number in which we have camped with the Aliner, hiked, and biked (Conn., Penn., Minn., N.D., S.D., Wyo., Ida., Nev., Calif., Ariz., Colo., Neb., Iowa, Ind., Mich., Ohio, W.Va., and Va.).  What were the highlights of our trip?  Visiting family and friends across the country was certainly high on the list.  It was also fun exploring scenic canyons, mountains, and forests, as well as learning a lot of interesting natural history and cultural history of the diverse areas we traveled through.  After nearly four months of traveling, it felt like we had barely scratched the surface of what North America has to offer.  If we had to name the one most interesting place we saw, both of us would probably vote for Mesa Verde National Park.  There were several other ancient pueblo ruins in Arizona and Colorado that were also very interesting.  Despite general similarities, each site highlighted some unique insights into ancient life in the arid Southwest.