Jim & Ginny Are Rolling!

By Jim.

One question we get asked is how we plan our trip.  My answer is that it’s like jazz – there’s a basic structure (long-term planning of a general route and for holidays and special occasions), but we can improvise details (add a stop or visit particular sights) on short notice.

Case in point – the past two weeks.

When we left Washington DC, we were headed to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee for some hiking and to find out if Gatlinburg is as kitschy as it’s reputed to be.  My Crimson Tide gear was washed and ready to wear, which is always an enjoyable fashion statement among forlorn Vols.

I also had some earplugs handy in case somebody forgot the scores of the last 12 Alabama-Tennessee games and played Rocky Top Tennessee.  Fun fact:  In 1972, the authors of Rocky Top, Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, granted the school a blanket license to perform the song as often as it wants to.  The first time the UT marching band played its now-continuously-looped version of the damn song was at the 1972 Alabama-Tennessee game.  So inspired were the Vols that day that they lost, 17-10, and have only beaten Alabama 14 times in the ensuing 47 years.  I still wish they’d shut it up.

On our Sunday drive down Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, we took a mid-afternoon break by stopping at the Natural Bridge.  It’s a 215-foot high arch made of limestone and with a pastoral creek and trail leading to a little waterfall.

Also along the trail is a recreated settlement of the Monacan Native American tribe, which considered the land to be sacred ground.

The arch and adjoining 157 acres of land were once owned by Thomas Jefferson, who purchased them for 20 shillings from King George III in 1774.  During his presidency, Jefferson built a cabin on the property and used it as a retreat.  It’s now a Virginia state park.

We then continued through southern Virginia and stopped for the night just south of Bristol, which straddles the Virginia-Tennessee border.  As we ate our first dinner of Southern barbecue on the trip, we checked the upcoming weather forecast for Gatlinburg and the Smokies.  It called for high winds and possible tornadoes.  Goodbye, Gatlinburg; see you again in January, Tennessee.

We made a new plan.  After a quick drive into West Virginia just to say we’d been there,

we headed east to Asheville, NC.  We arrived at our hastily-booked campground just in time to hunker down and watch the midterm election returns.  When we awoke Wednesday morning (feeling better about the future than we have in a while), a strong odor was permeating the air.  I hoped it wasn’t what I was afraid it was, but I knew better, because that smell is unforgettable – we were near a paper mill.  A quick Google search confirmed it.

That turned into our second itinerary change in as many days.  We’d already planned to visit Lake Norman, NC, near Charlotte, after our time in the Smokies, so we moved that leg of the trip up in our queue and got ourselves into a great little RV park on a finger of the lake.

As we drove to Lake Norman, we heard the news that Trump had fired Sessions and appointed Matthew Whitaker as acting Attorney General.  That motivated us to drive to Charlotte that afternoon and participate in a rally protesting Whitaker’s appointment and the resulting risk to the Mueller investigation.  

Friday night, Aunt Ginny and I visited her niece Audrey, her husband Kyle Collins and their adorable eight-week-old son, Nicholas, who live in the Charlotte suburb of Huntersville.    

The visit conjured up the same feelings we had when visiting the young O’Haras last month – enjoying the excitement of a young family building their lives together, with a bright future to look forward to.

Saturday was a special day.  Ginny toured me around the area where she grew up before moving to Westport.  She showed me Shelby, NC, where she was born, lived and went to grade school, plus the Lake Norman Yacht Club, where she spent happy summers sailing and being a kid.  I know those are good memories, because she glowed as she told stories and rediscovered places from her past.   

When Ginny learned that an old friend of her dad’s, Tom Guy, still lives next door to the Yacht Club, we walked over to his house.  Tom welcomed us in for a visit.  In addition to being a former Commodore of the Yacht Club (as was Ginny’s dad, Roger Dysart), Tom was a hot World War II fighter pilot – he told us his story of nearly getting shot down by Japanese fighters and surviving a crash-landing back onto his aircraft carrier. 

We then drove from Lake Norman to Durham.

My cousin, Libba Adams, lives in Pittsboro, a few miles outside the Durham/Chapel Hill area. Libba and I reminisced about playing on the beach in Panama City, attending a long-ago family reunion in Georgia and – most of all – we swapped stories about the splendid Sallie Horton Lay, who was her aunt and my grandmother, and who was one of the most compelling influences in our lives.  

The next day brought another special family re-connection.  My uncle (my dad’s only brother), Lee Noel, is a Duke lifer.  He went to college there, had a second career as a key administrator at the Fuqua School of Business and now lives in Durham in his golden years.  At age 88, Lee still has a presence about him that I call benevolent forcefulness.  He exudes warmth, intelligence and dignity.  We had a happy and nostalgic lunch, then he gave us a driving tour of Durham and the Duke campus, capped off by visiting my Aunt Sue at the facility where she and Lee live.  The visit made me one happy nephew.  And Lee met Ginny for the first time and said she’s a “peach” (he’s always been an excellent judge of character)!

After months of good luck with weather, we’ve been slogging through a lot of rain lately.  We’d planned to leave Durham Tuesday morning, but stayed put an extra day to avoid sharing the road with Noah’s Ark.

Tuesday night, we had dinner with my old NFL friend, Jim Steeg, and his wife Jill Lieber.  You think I’m a sports fan – Jim and Jill got married at Fenway Park!

Wednesday, we set off for Kitty Hawk, on the Outer Banks of the North Carolina coast.  About a half-hour out of Durham, our phones starting clanging with weather alerts for where we were heading – heavy rains, gale-force winds and flood warnings (this year, the coastline has had nearly 300% of its average annual rainfall, leaving the ground ripe for bad things to happen).  We stopped, ate lunch, did some research, consulted our weather crystal ball and decided it wasn’t worth the risk to keep going.  Instead of swimming up to Kitty Hawk, we drove down to Myrtle Beach, SC.  We’ll be here until Sunday, when we head to Charleston to visit Coley for Thanksgiving.  We hope it warms up enough by Saturday for us to play golf.

And if it doesn’t, we’ll figure out another improv!

By the way, there’s important update to make to the report on our Washington, DC trip.

One of Gwen’s best friends from Weston is a budding rock-star journalist, and we got to share her company one night in DC.  Jess Bidgood has spent the past few years as a reporter for the New York Times.  She recently moved to Washington to become the national political reporter for the Boston Globe.  When we had dinner with her and her boyfriend Kyle, I didn’t know whether to hug her or ask her for an autograph.

Sorry for the delay in posting this, Jess & Kyle!

Update by Jim.

Ginny posted the paragraph below as a reply to a Facebook comment written about my original post.  Her heartfelt comments express what our emotions were during our time in Washington, and continue to be in response to the divisive words and deeds since the midterms by our “leader.”

***

By Ginny.

What Jim didn’t write about was the emotional experience of this stretch. So much history right there for us to sink ourselves into – just days before the midterms. There were times we just looked at each other with tears in our eyes and asked “haven’t we learned?” From slavery, civil wars, senseless wars, assassinations, loss of lives – determination of a few that grew to many to make us a free people – to make ALL of us free – with equal rights, protections and respect. Then to think about where we are today, with our leader who divides and lies. We wonder if he has ever done the tour of museums and monuments that we just did that are just steps from his “home”. We’re guessing not. We had a lot of speechless moments….. and tears.

***

By Jim.

There have been either three or nine capital cities of the United States.

If the counting starts as of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Philadelphia was the first capital, followed by Baltimore, MD, Lancaster, PA (both when the British were threatening Philly), York, PA (where the Articles of Confederation were drafted, the first known legal document to refer to the “United States of America”), Princeton, NJ, Annapolis, MD, Trenton, NJ, New York, NY and Washington, DC.

But if the starting date is the ratification of the Constitution and the formation of the modern American republic in 1789, New York, Philadelphia and DC have been the only three capitals.  That’s probably the better benchmark, because the creation of the capital is mandated in the Constitution.  Article 1, Section 8 authorizes the establishment of a “District…as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States”.

In 1789, George Washington was sworn in as President in New York.  In 1790, Congress passed enabling legislation, the Residence Act, to create a national capital.  As part of the compromise locating the new capital in the South, Philadelphia was named the capital for 10 years, while the new city and its federal facilities were constructed.  The exact location, on the Potomac River, was selected by President George Washington (who was a former land surveyor).  The city was formed from 100 square miles of land donated by Maryland and Virginia.  In 1846, the Virginia portion of the city (modern-day Alexandria) was returned to the state.

Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French-American engineer, designed the master plan for the city.  The placement of the Congress House on Jenkins Hill (now Capitol Hill), the President’s House, the “grand avenue” (now Pennsylvania Avenue) connecting those buildings and the National Mall were all part of the L’Enfant Plan of 1791.  What may have been the first political intrigue in Washington occurred in 1792 when two surveyors, Andrew and Benjamin Ellicott, made significant changes to the L’Enfant Plan after claiming L’Enfant had not provided them with an engraved copy of his plan.  By 1800, construction had proceeded to the point that Congress was able to convene in Washington and President John Adams could move into the not-yet-finished President’s House (which wasn’t officially called the White House until the Theodore Roosevelt Administration).
If you’ve never been to Washington DC, go (unless it’s July or August).  It’s majestic.  The Capitol, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial are aligned in a straight line along the Mall, accented by the Reflecting Pool.  The Mall and nearby Tidal Basin also are the sites of the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Wall, the Korean War Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR Memorial and the Martin Luther King Memorial, plus the White House is visible from the north side of the Mall.  Most of the Cabinet-level agencies are headquartered in the Federal Triangle between the Capitol and White House.  The Smithsonian, National Archives, National Gallery of Art and the spectacular new African-American History Museum are among the many museums in the same area.  There is a 12-story height limit on all buildings, preserving urban vistas and keeping the city bright and unaffected by skyscraper shadows.  Statues, fountains and parks are everywhere.  It will make you proud to be an American and it will teach you as much about your country as you want to absorb.

Before arriving in DC, we spent a weekend in Northern Virginia with old friends Tim Ruhe and Donna Quinn.

I got off to a slow start Saturday after staying up until 2:30 watching most (but not the end) of Game 3 of the World Series.  Still, we had a great time dodging the raindrops during our brewpub and winery explorations in the beautiful Virginia countryside.

While running errands near our RV park in Maryland on Sunday, I drove past a prep school that’s been in the news recently for the wrong reasons.  I didn’t see Squee, Bart or Donny.

Monday, we took a nostalgic trip (for me) to Annapolis to wake up my memories of visiting Pete when he was a Midshipman.  

Tuesday, in DC, it was all about the monuments!

Wednesday, we visited the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture.  Man oh man, it is SOMETHING!

Efforts to build an African-American history museum started in 1915, when black Union army veterans first lobbied for a memorial to their service in the Civil War.  Glacially, various Presidents appointed various committees to study various proposals.  It wasn’t until 101 years after the initial efforts by those soldiers that this national museum opened its doors.  

Visitors spend an average of six hours in the museum, more than three times the length of an average stay at a Smithsonian museum.  That’s one reason why it’s the toughest museum ticket in town.

There’s a riveting introductory exhibit on the history of the slave trade, followed by presentations on slavery, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, the awakenings of the Civil Rights movement, integration, black power, the mainstreaming of black culture, Black Lives Matter and more.  

 

For us, six hours weren’t enough.  We were uplifted and exhausted when we left.  While walking to our Metro station, we walked past another, more notorious modern “monument” smack dab on Pennsylvania Avenue  Michele Obama would have disapproved of me not going high.  

More museums for me on Thursday (Ginny stayed at the rig and worked) – the National Museum of American History (which, weirdly, is prominently sponsored by Kenneth Behring, the eccentric former owner of the Seahawks) and the National Archives.

There were some cool displays at the American History Museum, such as the original Lego patent.

Lamentably but understandably, photography is not allowed in the sanctity of the gallery in the National Archives where the original Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution are displayed, but it’s hard to look at those – the greatest and most important documents in the country, if not the world – without getting goosebumps.  Go see them for yourself.

Friday was a visit to another anticipated site, the Newseum.  It has lots of displays on lots of subjects, but we ended up being disappointed.  Much of what it shows is the same media coverage of historical events that we’ve already seen elsewhere.  Very little is devoted to journalists and media of industry/historical significance.  H.L. Mencken spent much of his career just up the road at the Baltimore Sun.  Nothing.  Bob Woodward became the greatest journalist of our time across town at the Washington Post.  Not much.  There’s great footage of Chet Huntley and Walter Cronkite, but nothing devoted to the rise, development and significance of anchormen.  One flat-out amazing item on display, however, is a portion of a radio antenna that used to be atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center…

…plus a tribute to the entire profession that has never been more important than now, during the President Fake News regime.  

By Saturday, after a week in Washington and Gettysburg before that, we were museumed-out.  We decided to have a kick-back, do-nothing day – the first one of those we’ve had in awhile.  Plus, I had to get taped up for Alabama-LSU that night.  It turned out to be a good day…and a good game.

Sunday, we headed to southern Virginia, en route to a planned stop in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

By Jim.

We did a dogleg leaving Connecticut.

One of our goals on the trip is visiting all 14 of the Presidential Libraries administered by the National Archives & Park Service.  At the first library we visited, Eisenhower’s, I was given a Passport that, if stamped at all 14, gets me a nice piece of swag.  It also will be a cool scrapbook item one of these days (assuming I ever do a scrapbook).

Back in the day, I made an annual pilgrimage to Hyde Park on President’s Day.  I found the place irresistible – the home of the greatest President since Lincoln, who led his country out of the Great Depression and to victory in World War II, and whose presence is still felt at his majestic estate on the Hudson River.  But as many times as I’d been there, we had to go again to get that Passport stamp, so Hyde Park was our first stop after leaving Westport.  I expected us to go through the motions, after having seen the place so many times.  Pleasant surprise – there’s a new visitors center, a revised presentation of the museum exhibits AND a really cool new statue.

FDR’s most famous line (from his first inaugural address) was, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”   As relevant as that still is today, we saw another quote that also resonated: 

Then we shifted gears from history to family by visiting Ginny’s nephew, Connor O’Hara, and his wife Alley and their toddler Caiden in Wayne, NJ.  It gave us a warm feeling to see a young family happily building their lives.  They’re living in their first house, they have a wonderful child and another on the way, and they’re flourishing in their careers – they have so much to look forward to.

After that family interlude, we drove to one of the most history-steeped places in America, Gettysburg, PA.

Gettysburg is the site of the most famous battle of the Civil War.  Before it was fought, Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia won a series of battles in Virginia and Maryland.  Lee planned a daring invasion of Pennsylvania, starting in June, 1863.  His objectives were to seize munitions, crops and supplies to send to warn-torn Virginia and seize the nearby capital city of Harrisburg to put political pressure on the Union to seek a negotiated peace to the war.

The battle began on July 1, 1863.  Lee’s Confederates broke through Union lines and occupied the town.  Union forces retreated to defensive positions on the outskirts of town, which had the tactical advantage of being on high ground.  These positions were barely held by the Union (led by General George Meade, who had only been appointed by President Lincoln to this command the previous week) on July 2.  Confident of victory, Lee ordered a frontal assault on the middle of the Union lines on the following day, the deadly Pickett’s Charge, which was repelled by the Union (depicted here in an amazing cyclorama at the Visitors Centers).  

Lee’s men fell back, then retreated that night, escaping capture that might have ended the war right then and there.  Nevertheless, the Confederacy never recovered from the one-two punch of losing at both Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Mississippi on consecutive days (Vicksburg was Ulysses Grant’s first major victory, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River).  The war continued for 22 more months, but the tide turned towards the Union after July, 1863.  Lee’s aura of invincibility was shattered at Gettysburg.

The casualties from the battle were staggering – more than 7,000 American soldiers (Union and Confederate) killed, nearly 11,000 more missing and more than 33,000 wounded.  It was left to the 2,400 people living in Gettysburg to deal with the carnage.

The Soldiers’ National Cemetery, now called the Gettysburg National Cemetery, was established as the burial ground for 3,512 Union troops.  It was consecrated on November 19, 1863, at a ceremony attended by 15,000.  The featured speaker was a famous orator, Edward Everett, who spoke for two hours, describing the battle and its strategic context.  After Everett’s speech came President Abraham Lincoln, who had been invited to the ceremony to deliver “a few appropriate remarks.”  Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, only 271 words long, is perhaps the most famous speech in American history.  Everett subsequently wrote President Lincoln a letter stating, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

Today, the battlefield sweeps around the town of Gettysburg.  The area immediately south of downtown is now a national military park.  There are over 1,300 monuments throughout the battlefield, placed by veterans groups and state legislatures in the places where their troops served.  

One hundred fifty-five years after the battle, the park and cemetery are somber places.   

The outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg and the restoration of the union after the defeat of the Confederacy are now taken for granted.  However, as we toured the battlefield (first on a tour bus and then by driving and hiking), we could see just how close the Confederacy came to victory.  A few minutes here and a few yards of ground there, and the outcome would have been different, with profound effects on the nation and the North American continent.  It’s sobering to realize how naive it is to take for granted our strength and stability, in these days when there is so much uncertainty about our liberties,  institutions and national character.

From southern Pennsylvania, we headed south to the Washington DC area to visit old friends and see some of the sights of our nation’s capital.  (Sorry, we’re a little behind schedule on our reports!)

By Jim.

Ginny’s heartfelt post on Connecticut will be hard to match.  We decided that our visit to Connecticut was so special, each of us should express our own feelings about it.

Despite wearing my Alabama heritage on my sleeve (especially during football season, as you may have noticed), I lived in Connecticut almost half my life – 32 years.  That’s more than twice as long as I lived in Alabama, and way longer than I lived in California, Oregon and Washington.

Connecticut defined my adult life.  I moved there right after law school, when I went to work for the NFL in New York City.  My children were born there and virtually all of my memories of being a father are based there.  Whether it was riding a commuter train from Darien to Manhattan or driving from Litchfield to Bristol (or, ill-advisedly, driving from Weston to Far Hills, NJ), it was my home during most of my career.  I grew to love fall foliage, the aroma and warmth of a crackling fire, the hushed beauty of the morning after an overnight snowfall, the warm days and cool evenings of summer, sunsets in the Litchfield Hills and the camaraderie of hockey parents as our kids skated around rinks all over the state.  I met Ginny in Connecticut (our first date was at the Inn At Newtown), and it’s where we launched the magical mystery tour of a life that we’ve been sharing for almost 11 years.

When we planned this year-long trek of ours, we knew we wanted to be in Connecticut in October and we knew we wanted and needed to be there for a good long while, to reconnect with so many people who were and still are special.

Our sentimental journey also included some steely-eyed practicality.  The Northeast is not, shall we say, particularly RV-friendly.  After futilely searching for a place to park The Big T anywhere near where we planned to stay, we booked a room at The Westport Inn and dropped the rig off at a nearby Freightliner dealer for some scheduled maintenance.  Practicality then morphed into good luck, when the hot water system on the rig started acting up and we found an authorized repair dealer just up the road from the Freightliner dealer to fix it.

Before getting to Westport, we spent the weekend in Old Saybrook at the weekend house of Mike and Lisa Foster, just a short walk from Long Island Sound.

Then it was on to our old home turf.  As Ginny has already described, the whole week was a blur – so many people to see, so many places to go.  We smiled so much, our cheeks got sore.

We went to NYC one evening, where Grand Central hasn’t lost its recently-restored grandeur,

visited Jay Moyer Bob Raskopf and Gary Gertzog, dear friends from my NFL days (with whom I had so much fun, I forgot to take pictures!) and had a belated birthday dinner with JJ.
We drove up to Litchfield one day to visit old haunts…

and enjoy a special lunch with old friends Bill and Betsy Goff.

We were beyond lucky to be in town the same weekend of a big party, where we got to visit with some old friends we might not otherwise have gotten to see.

Nostalgic visits aren’t the mere wallowing in memories – they are a chance to savor people and places that define our lives and give them special meaning.  THAT was our visit to Connecticut, a place like no other for both of us.

 

By Ginny.

 

 

 

By Jim.

Where has the time gone?  We knew that the New England leg of our trip would be a whirlwind, and we were right.  As a result, we’re behind on our postings.

We got to Boston (Foxboro, actually, which was the closest RV park we could find) on October 9, when the whole area was angst-ridden about the Red Sox-Yankees American League Division Series. Nobody does baseball-related angst more acutely than Boston does, and we arrived just in time to watch a taut, down-to-the-last-play Red Sox win.

Wednesday, October 10, was our much-anticipated trip to the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.  It’s magnificent.  The building was designed by I.M. Pei – Jackie’s choice at a time when Pei was relatively unknown.  “He was so full of promise, like Jack,” she said; “they were born in the same year. I decided it would be fun to take a great leap with him.”

What a leap it was.  The Library is located on Cape Cod Bay, just south of downtown Boston.  

It exudes class and the dynamic optimism of the 60s, which felt painful at this time when we have a President who has created a climate of crassness and retrogression.

It also recalled a time when Presidential words inspired, instead of causing fear and agitation.
One of our best ad-libs of the trip was deciding Friday morning to go to Newport, RI.

A century ago, Newport was the capital city of the Land of the Robber Barons.  The amazing ocean-front mansions (the Vanderbilts and the Astors actually called them “cottages” at the time) are still there, but it’s now a vibrant coastal resort town with plenty of sights, galleries and restaurants catering to the proletariat.

We walked the entire Cliff Walk Friday afternoon, which took about four hours.  It’s immodestly beautiful…and the surf was up!

When we got back to the car after our walk, we had another You Can’t Make This Stuff Up moment – Ginny bumped into one of her old Weston friends, Liz Montelli, on the beach next to where we were parked.  

Liz and her husband, Andy, opened up their beautiful home to us and we had a wonderful time together Saturday morning.  Ginny will have more to say in a separate post about this and other personal connections she made this week.

Speaking of wonderful times, we were taken out on the town Friday night by Matt Cohen, one of my son Pete’s best friends.  

And it is one great town!

After that, Connecticut beckoned!

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked the other way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

Maine poet Edna St. Vincent Millay summed up her home state pretty well with that one.

Maine has at least its fair share of fun facts.  It’s the only state in New England that didn’t become a state in the 18th century.  It seceded from Massachusetts, which required the consent of the Massachusetts legislature in 1819, then was grated statehood the following year as part of the Missouri Compromise (by which Missouri was admitted to the union as a slave state, thus keeping equal the number of slave and free states).  Maine is the only state in the country that borders only one other state (New Hampshire).  Alaska and Hawaii border no other states and every state but Maine in the lower 48 abut at least two others.  Maine produces 99% of the nation’s blueberries and 90% of its lobsters.  It’s the easternmost state and the  northernmost of the lower 48.

For purposes of our trip, the funnest fact is that Maine’s coastline is longer than California’s, if you count all the squiggles – 3,478 miles to 3,427.  There are lots of squiggles – inlets, coves, bays, harbors, plus 3,166 off-shore islands.  

After coming over the mountains out of New Hampshire, our first stop was Belfast, a genuinely charming little town about halfway up the coast.

Our first full day there, we teed it up at the beautiful Samoset resort, a few miles south of Belfast.  The weather and the setting were special.

After golf, we treated ourselves to our first lobster dinner of the trip at Young’s Lobster Pound, a classic Down East joint with a view of Belfast across the Passagassawakeag River (no, I haven’t been drinking and typing – that’s really how it’s spelled).

Sunday, we got a bonus visit from Gwen, who celebrated her new job by flying from San Diego to join us for a few days before settling into full-time employment.  Mom was especially happy about all of this!

During a spell of cruddy weather, we explored Belfast and its harbor…

discovered a long-lost family enterprise…and were tempted to buy a Brett Kavanaugh Christmas ornament.

Wednesday, we drove another hour up the coast to Bar Harbor and the glorious Acadia National Park.

We tried to climb Cadillac Mountain, but the combination of soggy ground…and foggy vistas…
made us stop before we reached the top.        Nevertheless, it was a hike full of scenery and smiles.
Bar Harbor is surprisingly tacky and touristy.  It’s an almost-daily docking spot for big cruise ships.  However, the surrounding area is full of little harbors (some of which are replete with lobster traps!), villages and more than a few big, old-money estates.

We also enjoyed some downtime.  Our campsites were on waterfronts.  We enjoyed scenery, campfires, meals, playoff baseball and college football on TV and just hanging out…and Sting is still dreaming of driving the rig!

October is the end of the “season” in Maine.  In Belfast, boats were being taken out of the water and towed to winter storage.  We caught one great restaurant in town for breakfast, then found it closed when we tried to go back the next day for seconds. 

We were on the front end, not the peak, of fall foliage.  There’s still more green than color, but there’s enough color to let us know what time of year it is.  We also noticed a lot more color at the end of our time here than at the beginning (40-degree nights will change leaf colors quickly).

We had to say goodbye to Gwen on Thursday, but then connected with Ralph and Kim Klinke, dear friends from Snoqualmie Ridge, who were visiting Bar Harbor on a photography and hiking excursion.

One highlight of our time together was hiking up to Bubble Rock Overlook, from where we could see not only the precariously located Bubble Rock (proving that glaciers have a sense of humor)…

but Jordan Pond and the Atlantic beyond.

We all indulged in another lobster dinner after that adventure.  Ralph and Kim had never eaten lobster in the shell before, so we coached them up – “See those cracks in the shell made by the restaurant?  Break them apart there and eat the meat.”  What priceless expertise.

We also played golf at the eighth oldest course in the U.S. , Kebo Valley, near Bar Harbor.  It’s a classic track, proving that 350-yard par 4s can be treacherous.

Our coolest evening – literally and figuratively – was sunset at Schoodic Point.  At sunset, it was full of rocks, waves, cameras and friendship.

We had high expectations for our time in Maine, and they were exceeded.

Next stop:  Boston (which will be in a good mood after the Red Sox blowout of the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALDS).

My nostalgic post-before-last about our supposed final trip to Vermont wasn’t quite true.  After leaving Lake George, we had a cross-Vermont jaunt on our way to New Hampshire because, to paraphrase the locals, you can’t from theah to heah without going through theah.

We drove past Killington Mountain, where the Noels used to do their skiing while the Kaesers were at Stratton.  Killington was where I experienced one of my earliest you’re-getting-old moments – I taught Pete and Abby how to ski there, then one day they zoomed off and I couldn’t keep up with them any more.

Woodstock is right up there with Manchester (and Stowe, which is farther north) in terms of Vermont towns with scenery, history and a cool vibe.  Happily, it also has a Main Street wide enough to drive The Big T through without any angst.

We also passed a willpower test by eating lunch at the excellent Long Trail Pub & Brewery without the rig driver partaking in any refreshments (although a six-pack of Long Trail’s excellent Harvest Maple Brown found its way into the fridge for later use).

Leaving Woodstock, we saw our first covered bridge of the trip.  More would follow.  

Soon after leaving Woodstock, we crossed into New Hampshire, our 25th state of the trip.  En route to our campsite, we had a biiiiiig moment – a moose sighting!  S/he was in a grove of trees near the highway, calmly foraging for something more interesting to eat than leaves while a dozen camera-toting tourists snapped away frenetically.  We overheard one woman say she’d lived in the area for 26 years and this was only the second moose she’d ever seen.

We stayed in Conway, NH (North Conway, actually – there are five villages in the town), which is north of Lake Winnipesaukee and at the south edge of the White Mountains, home of big, bad Mount Washington.

One morning, we visited some of the covered bridges in the Conway area (one of which, weirdly, has a gift shopping in the middle of it that smells like the worst Yankee Candle shop you ever walked into).

We then stumbled onto a hidden jewel, Echo Lake State Park, featuring the spectacular Cathedral Ledge.

We took the dogs on a nice little hike to Waterville Valley and Sabbaday Falls, back near where we’d spotted the moose the previous day (who had moved on, thus sparing everyone the spectacle of Roxy trying to make friends with a moose).

The one rainy day we had in Conway, we ate lunch at a brewpub that has an all-time no-smoking sign.

Thursday, it cleared up and we dragged ourselves away from the Blase Davis – Kavanaugh hearing long enough to climb Mount Washington, the tallest peak east of the Mississippi.

Well, we didn’t literally climb it.  There’s a train that goes to the top.  I dare anyone to find a more interesting train ride – three miles, 3500 feet of elevation, with an average grade of 25% that includes the 37% grade called Jacob’s Ladder.  It was the first railway in the world to use a “cog” system – a rack-and-pinion located in the middle of the track.  The trains all have a throwback look and feel, but they’ve been retro-fitted with more modern technology (although our locomotive had a steam engine, meaning we had to stop halfway up to reload with water).

The railway has been operating since 1869.  It’s always been about tourism.  When built, it was the alternative to a dirt road for getting to the hotel at the top of Mount Washington (a popular destination for the well-heeled to escape the summer heat – President Ulysses Grant was an early patron).  The road is still there (now paved) but the hotel is not – there’s now a weather observatory and a visitors center at the summit.

And views.  Oh, the views!  On a clear day (which we were lucky enough to get – the peak is fog-bound 300 days per year, one of the reasons why the mountain proclaims itself as having “The Worst Weather in the World”), you can see five states in a 100-mile panorama.

The trip back down was more intense than the ascent.  The guy who was our happy-talk narrator on the way up was our all-business brakeman on the way down.  Everyone thought his priorities were fine.

We timed our trip perfectly, relative to the historic events in Washington (DC, not Mount) that day.  Our trip to the summit was during the lunch break of the Blasey Ford-Kavanaugh hearing, and we got to listen to most of it on the radio while driving to and from the mountain.  Mount Washington was more uplifting…in more ways than one.

The Lake George/Saratoga area is one of America’s most important historical sites, although it doesn’t get much fanfare.

The Battle of Saratoga (there were two, actually) in 1777 is considered the turning point of the American Revolution.  After the Colonists kicked General Gentleman John Burgoyne’s self-important fanny (fun fact – the field commander responsible for America’s victory was Benedict Arnold), France began providing us with military aid.  In fact, Saratoga is recognized as one of the 15 most decisive battles in world history.

Only a few miles up the road from Saratoga, Lake George and nearby Lake Champlain (a few miles east, on the New York-Vermont border) were the strategic hubs of the north-south trade routes between Canada and New York in the late 1700’s.  One of the Colonies’ earliest victories in the Revolutionary War was the 1775 seizure by Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys of Fort Ticonderoga (located on Lake Champlain, only a few miles from Lake George – the name “Ticonderoga” comes from an Iroquois word meaning “at the junction of two waterways”).  Cannons from the fort were then sent to Boston to help lift the British siege there.

By the time Ginny and I got there, everything had calmed down and the area had turned into a haven of scenic beauty.

The Mohawk word for Saratoga is Serachtague, “place of swift water.”  Saratoga Springs is famous for its mineral baths, which Ginny and I indulged in.  It’s also known for its swift horses at the vintage racing track in town, which had closed for the season by the time we got there (although we attended a race day there a few years ago – it’s one of the classic venues in all of sports).  The term “upset” is part of our sporting lexicon because the horse Upset was the only horse ever to defeat the legendary Man-O-War, and it happened at a 1921 race in Saratoga.  A few years later, in the early days of the NFL, Art Rooney used a big Saratoga track payday to keep his Pittsburgh Steelers in business, at a time when the team was on such shaky financial footing that Rooney said, “The biggest thrill wasn’t in winning on Sunday but in meeting the payroll on Monday.”

As we were setting up and unpacking in our Lake George campground (the nicest place we’ve stayed on the entire trip) Friday afternoon, we discovered via social media that two of our best friends from Tuscaloosa, Robert and Ruth Reynolds, were staying in Saratoga Springs.  After a couple of phone calls, we ended up spending the evening with Robert and Ruth.  

Saturday was our long-anticipated reunion with Rebecca Graham.  Rebecca and her husband Jesse were dear friends of ours in Litchfield.  It’s hard to believe it’s been over six years since we lost Jesse to cancer.  Rebecca now splits her time between New York City, where she works, and Lake George, where she has reunited with her teenage boyfriend Rich.  Together, we had a happy day.  Jesse would’ve wanted it that way.

We got back to the rig in time to watch Alabama-Texas A&M, which turned out a lot better than Oregon-Stanford did later that night.

Our other anticipated event in Lake George was the Adirondack Balloon Festival, for which we woke up at 5:00am Sunday morning.  Held at the nearby municipal airport, it featured 100 hot-air balloons launching shortly after sunrise.  Part of the event’s charm was its informality – we were able to mingle among the balloonists as they set up.

And when they all rose with the sun, it was a sight to behold!

After an exhilarating morning of balloons, our afternoon was tranquil.  We explored the town of Saratoga Springs, then went to the Roosevelt Spa for a mineral bath.  Well, it was mostly tranquil – as we soaked in our tubs, the background music was harps, cellos, oboes…and the thrum of the nearby Willie Nelson concert.

Next stop, New Hampshire – the White Mountains and Mount Washington.

Most of our trip has been about exploring new places.  Our stay in Vermont was different.

Vermont’s natural beauty is magical, no matter the time of year.  October leaf season epitomizes what sightseeing is all about.  Golf provides heart-grabbing moments when you get to follow the ball flight against a backdrop of green mountains.  Hiking is probably the official pastime of the state.  The skiing is good (not great, but good), and accessible to New Yorkers and New Englanders.  The state just has a vibe, from the Ben & Jerry’s factory to aging hippie glassblowers to covered bridges.

Ginny and I started visiting Vermont long before we met each other.  Then we made our own memories together – our first vacation together with our kids, plus occasional weekends for special occasions or no occasion at all.

We stayed in Manchester, in the southern part of the state (also near our next stop, back west to Lake George, NY).

I also got to scratch a 35-year-old itch.  Ekwanok CC is a private club that shares a stone wall with the Equinox golf course that’s part of the same-named resort in Manchester.  Equinox has been one of my favorite tracks since the early 80’s and I always looked over that wall with curiosity about what that other course would be like.  This trip, I finally finagled my way onto Ekwanok (with a big assist from my old USGA pal, Jeff Hall).

Ekwanok is a classic New England course in perfect condition and worthy of its rank as the #1 course in the state.  

But when we played Equinox the following day, it was like saying hello to an old friend…a scenic friend.  

Monday, we traded our golf shoes for hiking boots and climbed a mountain – Stratton Mountain, the largest ski mountain in southern Vermont.

The climb was steep but the views at the top were worth it (yes, we started our hike in that village in the pic)!
The Stratton bear was at the peak to greet us.   

We also had two exceptional meals at local restaurants and generally ate too much and drank too much the whole time we were there.  Just for old time’s sake.

As we left Vermont to go back to Lake George for a balloon festival there this weekend, we had one of those experiences that renews your faith in the goodness of people.

Interstates, U.S. highways and state highways are all okay for us to drive The Big T on.  They all have bridges strong enough for our 18-ton load and overpasses high enough to go under without bumping our 12-foot-tall roof.  Things get less certain when we’re on less travelled roads.

Our route from Manchester to Lake George included a long stretch on a county highway.  This turned out to be fine – until we got to an old bridge with only a 10-foot clearance and a weight maximum of 10 tons.  Fortunately, Ginny was driving ahead of me instead of us towing the Jeep behind the rig.  She sent me an SOS when she got to the bridge, which gave me enough time to stop and make a u-turn before getting to it.  Just to add more spice to this little hot sauce moment, I also was getting uncomfortably low on fuel (during our hour-and-a-half drive, we’d passed one gas station, which didn’t have diesel – did I mention that Vermont is very rural?).  So we’re pulled over to the side of the road, figuring out an alternative route, when a couple pulls up behind us and asks if we need some help.  We said yes and explained why.  It turned out that they not only live in the area and know all the roads, the guy is a truck driver and knows all the bridge heights, weight limits and where to get diesel.  They didn’t just give us directions, they insisted on leading us to the nearest town and to the nearest gas station (which I couldn’t have gotten the rig into had he not led me to the back entrance that he uses to get his truck into the place).  Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head at your good luck, shake the hands of the people who are so nice to you and keep driving.

P.S.  Happy Birthday to my daughter Abby!!!