As we left Plymouth, we knew we were heading to Long Island to visit my Aunt Eileen, but we also knew that the capitals of Rhode Island and Connecticut were on the way.  We had decided to take the ferry from Bridgeport, CT, to Port Jefferson, NY, the next day, so we had plenty of time check Providence and Hartford off the list.

We spent a quiet night at the Cabela’s in Hartford before heading for the ferry the next day.  The ferry turned out to be a really fun ride, even though we were a little anxious about driving our rig onto a boat.  But, as it turned out, getting the rig across the Long Island Sound was the least of our worries.

This video shows the front going up and us exiting the ferry to Long Island.  It got a little iffy after this because our GPS put us on roads that were a little too small for our truck…but we had time to buy a new GPS to prevent this problem in the future.

We pulled into Tom’s cousins Kevin and Laura’s house right around dinner.  We were greeted by Kevin and their son Joe because Laura was out picking daughter Jane up from college for the weekend, which was great for us since we got to spend time with the no-longer-kids, excepting their oldest son Vincent who lives in San Francisco and was too far away to come home for the weekend just to see us.  :)

When discussing the next day’s plans after dinner, Laura told us that they had a nearby park around the Fresh Pond Reservoir, which turned out to be the perfect walk in the morning.  A 2-mile path runs around the pond, and while it’s in the middle of the city the pond and the path are fenced off and surrounded by a band of woods thick enough to allow you to forget you’re in the city.  Because the path is so insulated from traffic, most regular dog walkers allow their dogs to run off leash, which is great because the rules are that off-leash is okay if the dogs are sufficiently trained to be under the owners’ control.  This rule has caused most owners to have super well trained dogs who trot along with their people, sometimes happily greeting other dogs, and generally enjoying their exercise.  We were slightly embarrassed by our dogs who aren’t well enough trained to run off leash where there are other loose dogs, not to mention squirrels, but it gave us a good chance to work on Ty’s reactive behavior.  Plus, it was a beautiful morning with lots of fall color.

After our walk and breakfast, we decided to go into Boston to walk the Freedom Trail, which includes a loop by the Massachusetts Capitol.  Laura had to work for part of the morning, so we left with Kevin as our driver and tour guide.  As we drove down the infamous Storrow Drive with its multitude of 10’ underpasses, we were very glad to be going into the city in Kevin’s car rather than our camper.

The Capitol building is at the very beginning of the Freedom Trail, so we checked that off the list early in the day.

We spent the rest of the day wandering Boston and seeing the many sights, and ended up walking the whole Freedom Trail with the exception of Bunker Hill since it was almost 5PM by the time we walked away from the USS Constitution.

The next morning we took another walk around Fresh Pond with Joe, before heading south to visit my cousins Maria and Dan in Plymouth.  Dan is Canadian, so our timing was perfect for a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner.  The holiday dinner was also appreciated because their no-longer-kids also came home, so we had time to visit with Maddy and Anna as well as the still-at-home Charlie.  The now-adult Chris Vannozzi also joined us for dinner, so we had a great time catching up with everybody.  We met Chris’s brother Tony and Tony’s wife Kate for breakfast the next morning, and enjoyed not only the company but the real New England diner food.  Later that  day Charlie planned a hike and guided us along the coast to a nearby state park.  It wasn’t as grand as Acadia, but it also wasn’t nearly as crowded, and we stood on the beach and threw rocks which was surprisingly fun when guided by a 15-year old.

We left Plymouth with plans to pick off Providence and Hartford, the Rhode Island and Connecticut capitals.  On the way out, we stopped at a local diner for breakfast with my Wells friend Dee, which was delightful.  But, as we were sitting there, I got a text from Maria telling me that her mom, my Aunt Eileen, and fallen and broken her foot.  Our plans are super flexible, so we volunteered to head for Long Island the next day, after driving through Providence and Hartford.

We left the Bar Harbor Campground heading for Belfast, Maine, to meet a college friend of mine for lunch.  The original plan had been to leave about 10:30 and get to Belfast around noon, but we of course left a little late, and had to make a stop in Ellsworth to get Tom a new phone since his old phone had finally gasped its last breath and could no longer hold a charge.  As we learned when we came into Texas in August, transactions at the AT&T store are not speedy, and while we were ultimately successful in getting the new phone, we didn’t leave until almost noon, and we were still over an hour from Belfast.

On this trip, we’ve made it policy that when a local suggests we do something, we do it.  So, when Su suggested that it would be worth an extra few minutes to stop at the Penobscot Narrows Bridge Observatory because it was such a beautiful day, we did.  And, of course, it was well worth it.

When we finished taking in the scenery, we proceeded to Belfast, where we met Su at Young’s Lobster Pound, and had what I believe to be the best lobster roll of my life, along with steamed littleneck clams.  And, it was a gorgeous day to sit outside on the dock at a picnic table to spend some time catching up on the past 38 years.

We left Belfast and headed to Freeport for a visit with Tom’s cousin Cathy.  We also hadn’t seen Cathy in decades, so we spent the evening catching up as we sampled beer from The Maine Beer Company, and ate their delicious wood oven pizza.  Cathy then took us to LL Bean, where we picked up a few things we had decided we needed on our journey.  Tom took advantage of Cathy’s internet to get his new phone mostly set up the next morning before we headed out of Maine to our next stop in Manchester, NH, with a promise to at least make a serious attempt to not let decades pass again before visiting.

We made it to Manchester around dinner time and found our friend Emily at her home.  We hadn’t seen Emily in at least 15 years which was, as Emily pointed out, before she was an adult.  Tom and I have been missing Mexican food, so Emily and her boyfriend Chris took us to a local - and very good - Mexican restaurant where we spent another couple of hours eating, drinking beer (because we’re all adults now), and catching up.  We had driven in rain for most of the day, and it was dark and still raining when we left.  Our intention had been to go to the nearby Bear Brook State Park to camp for the night and hike in the morning, but as we got to the end of Emily’s street, just as I was girding myself for an unpleasant drive, Tom asked if I minded if we did the Walmart thing instead of heading into the wilderness.  I found that to be a relief, so we found the nearest Walmart and parked for the night.  Between being at the end of the runway for the Manchester airport, and being right off one of the interstates that passes through the city, and being populated with a variety of people with troubles, we didn’t get the best night’s sleep of the trip.  But, we woke up in the morning and the sun had come out, so we packed up and headed for Bear Brook State Park in the daylight.

We followed the GPS directions to the park, and were very glad we hadn’t attempted it the night before in the rain.  The park is 10,000 acres of undeveloped land, and winding country roads run through it.  Even with the map we stopped to ask directions for where to park, and I’m not sure we would have made it to the campground the night before in the rain.  The morning, however, was another story, and we found the main parking lot for a couple of the trailheads, and had a very enjoyable 5+ mile hike.  The trails were very well done and very well maintained, and during the whole 5+ miles we saw only one mountain biker.  It made us wonder if our National Park quest shouldn’t be turned into a state park journey since it was so nice to have the park virtually to ourselves rather than being part of a line of hikers, but we decided to continue with the National Parks and just throw some of the state parks in when we could.

After lunching and showering in the parking lot, we headed for Concord, NH, our twelfth Capitol building.  It was only about 15 minutes from the Bear Brook State Park, and very accessible - another New England capital that is barely a city.  

We left the Capitol area and headed for the outskirts of Concord to meet another college friend so we could spend the night parked in her and her husband’s driveway.  They visited us in Belize a few years ago, so we were looking forward to seeing both of them again, and we had a lot of catching up to do even though it’s only been four or five years, rather than decades, since we’ve seen each other.  Judith made dinner while Tom and I gave their friends and neighbors camper tours, and we had a very nice evening chatting.  In the morning, Judith made us breakfast before she had to go to work, and left us with brilliant instructions on where to hike before returning to their house to go for a shorter walk with Jim.

We left Jim and Judith’s and headed for Boston.  We were traveling on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend and were worried about traffic, but we were heading into the city rather than out so the traffic was heavy but manageable.  We drove through the narrow streets of Cambridge to get to Tom’s cousin’s house in Belfast, where we spent Saturday visiting, seeing the Capitol, and walking the Freedom Trail.

We left Augusta and headed for Acadia National Park.  We had a beautiful drive through the Maine roads, with the foliage near peak.  Through our camping apps, we had found a campground that was still open and didn’t require reservations not too far from Bar Harbor so we headed there with the plan to backtrack and stay at the Walmart in Ellsworth if we couldn’t stay at the campground.  Fortunately, even though it was Friday afternoon in prime leaf-peeping season, the very large Bar Harbor Campground still had a choice of sites for us and we found a pull through site without any hookups in the sun.  We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the campground and looking at the views of the harbor.

In the morning, we took advantage of the free Island Explorer bus service, which provides propane-powered buses throughout the park and out the Bar Harbor road.  The service is funded by LL Bean, and works brilliantly.  Too many people already access the park in their private vehicles, so there’s a lot of traffic on the roads and the parking lots are packed, and we couldn’t imagine how much more hectic it would be if people weren’t taking advantage of the bus service.  The best thing for us was that the buses even allow dogs, so we were able to board at the campground, change in Bar Harbor to a bus going to a trail head, hike the trail end to end with the dogs, and then catch the bus at the end of the day to get back to Bar Harbor to get the bus back to the campground.  The buses go frequently enough and are on a predictable schedule - even with an app that shows where they are! - so we never waited more than 10 or 15 minutes for a bus.

The bus from Bar Harbor to the North Ridge Cadillac Mountain Trailhead was packed with cruise ship tourists.  Bar Harbor just started letting cruise ships dock in the town in September, and lots of cruise ship tourists decided to visit Acadia.  Most weren’t really prepared for hiking and dropped off on the shorter trails, but we still saw plenty of people on the trails.  We can’t decide whether the number of people using the park is a good thing or a bad thing; it’s good that the park is so accessible and so many people take advantage of it, but it seems somewhat incongruous to be on the trails in the beautiful natural space with so many people around.  

On our second day in Acadia, we intended to take the motos to the other side of the park, but it was too cold and windy to ride.  So, we waited until the afternoon when it warmed up a bit and got back on the bus with the dogs and headed to the Jordan Pond area of the park where we hiked around Jordan Pond with a side trip up South Bubble.  The Jordan Pond loop is wide, flat, and very easy hiking, but we decided to add a challenge and hike up South Bubble.  I checked to make sure the Bubble loop was dog approved, and found that it was.  However, as we neared the summit, there was a stretch of trail that required the dogs to be lifted from ledge to ledge.  I squawked and whined and wanted to turn around before one of us ended up going over the edge, but Tom kept going, with the dogs, and we eventually made it to the top where the view was well worth the climb.  Fortunately for me, the trail down the backside was much less challenging and we made it back to the flat pond trail without any injuries, except perhaps to my psyche.

Despite waking up to frost on the moto seats on our third morning in Acadia, we eventually bundled up and headed for Schoodic to see a different part of the park…and have a lobster lunch.  I was very slow because I’m not a very confident scooter driver, and because it was even colder when I tried to go over about 40mph and I couldn’t wear any more clothes and still expect to be able to move.  But, we made it to the restaurant that had been recommended for lunch, then on to a hike, then to the lighthouse, then back to the campground.  I’m sure there were a few drivers who wouldn’t have been heartbroken to see me drive off the edge of the road and disappear, but nobody exhibited excessive road rage and we safely made it back to the camper.

We arrived in Vermont just in time to enjoy my brother’s two days off, which meant that we ate very well and went on a great fall hike to the top of Mt. Hunger, which is very near his home.  We were also (sort of) lucky that his wife was a bit under the weather, so we were able to spend a day with Nicole as well - although it would have been better if she felt better, but at least she tested negative for covid.  We also got to have dinner with my cousin Biz and her husband, as well as friends Brenda and, in the morning for a hike, her husband Steve - with the dogs Ruckus and Molly.