Family Vacation

My in-laws enjoy the unconventional. My father-in-law's engagement gift to my mother-in-law was a piano (he sold his motorcycle to get it). For their honeymoon they backpacked together through the Grand Tetons! Based on the stories from that trip, I asked their son (now my husband) to please not take me on a backpacking trip for our honeymoon. So, not surprisingly, for their 50th anniversary, my in-law's invited their two children with respective spouses and children on a 10-day trip to Maine. Incidentally, my husband has made me promise that we will not invite anyone if we go on a 50th anniversary trip. I'm going to do my best to chronicle the trip for future posterity.

Sabbath evening: We left after a full day at church to drive to my in-law's home where we spent the night in preparation to leave early Sunday morning.

Sunday: We drove out around 6am, our destination: Washington, DC. We arrived at the Steven F. Udvar air and space museum a little before lunch time. Highlights include two flight simulator rides, lots of airplanes, space shuttle, I-max movie on air craft carriers, and more airplanes. Tyson and Kristy joined us about an hour into the museum. We stayed all afternoon and walked more than 10,000 steps! Supper that evening was a special treat: Ethiopian food. The twins were not too excited about the prospect, and shared this freely. However, they ended up enjoying the food, after-all. We spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express in Silver Springs, MD.

Monday: After a yummy breakfast courtesy of Holiday Inn Express, we drove to the College Park Metro Station to ride the metro to downtown DC. The kids loved the fast train! We started the day with a capital tour. I've been to the capital several times, so it wasn't as exciting for me as for the kids. However, I did enjoy revisiting history I'd forgotten. The kids enjoyed playing in the hands-on museum, pretending to be senators getting a bill through congress. We walked to an Asian restaurant for lunch. Amy didn't have a lot of options as most of the food had sesame but she survived. After lunch, we wandered around two different Smithsonians (Natural History and American History), a garden, and Washington Monument (only Michael, Tyson, Caleb, and Enoch ran to see it). It started sprinkeing as we got back to the subway station. We took the train back to our cars and started the two hour drive to our hotel. Unfortunately, I needed to use the bathroom about as soon as we got into the car. More unfortunately, it started raining in earnest about the same time we started driving. Eric dropped me and the two kids off at a CVS in the middle of Silver Springs, MD. It had no public restroom. We walked down the block to a small gas station. It also lacked a public restroom. By now my father-in-law had joined us--he also needed to go. We continued walking down the road (we were now a couple of blocks down-hill from the car). Across the double lane road was a Taco Bell. I was sure they had a restroom and wanted to go there. My father-in-law wanted to go back to the car.  It was raining, traffic was loud, and my father-in-law is hard of hearing. What ensued was a shouting match that I won. We went to Taco Bell and used their restroom. My father-in-law felt guilty for using their facilities and bought some tacos. I figured I give them enough business at their Chattanooga locations so used the bathrooms without buying any food. The trip continued afterward without incident and we spent the night at another Holiday Inn Express. I did apologize the next morning to my father-in-law for not being respectful.

Tuesday: Fun day! Started early again with another nice breakfast at the hotel then piled into the cars for a drive to Ellis Island. Took the ferry over. Really took a trip back in time on this excursion. My mother-in-law found the name of her grandfather (who came through this Island). We then took the ferry to Liberty Island. We ate lunch looking out at the bay while shooing away predatory birds. We climbed as high as we could on the statue of Liberty, took a few gawking pictures, and made a hasty descent. The tower is over-run with thousands of Japanese moths that descend on hapless tourists in droves. The national park is not allowed to use pesticides to exterminate them and they have no natural predators. At least they are a good loitering deterrent...After ferrying back to our cars, we let the kids play at a nearby park--hoping the traffic would improve.

Supper was at the "Loving Hut," an Asian restaurant. Sadly, Amy did get something she was allergic too and had a minor reaction (mostly abdominal pain). We drove up the rode about 2 hours and spent the night at yet another Holiday Inn Express.

Wednesday: I got up really early to do laundry. Kids decided they would get up early as well and they wanted to "exercise," which they attempted to do at the small gym room the hotel boasted. After breakfast, we drove to Old Sturbridge Village and spent the entire day there. Highlights include getting to see the oldest privately owned, American made violin, watching a cow get milked (yeah, I had never seen that before), listening to Michael ask why they say "haws" not "horse" and letting the kids play in a park. We left when the security officers kicked us out. Supper that evening was at Chipotle. I tried to join nominating committee at church via zoom as we continued our drive north. We spent the night at Sacow Inn in Sacow, Maine.

Thursday: Thursday started early. I could definitely sense a change in temperature. It was cool/borderline cold! We ate breakfast in the car on the way to our first light house (Portland Head). We enjoyed walking in the flower gardens and then down to the water front. The kids had a great time clambering over the rocks. There are a LOT of rocks in Maine...After getting lots of pictures we left and drove to the Maine Maritime Museum. That was absolutely fascinating. Enjoyed watching a boat launch, learning the history of lobstering, and watching the kids pretend to pilot a ship. We spent a little too long at the museum. Grabbed Amy some taco bell on the way out of town and ate lunch in the car on the way to our next stop. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the Penobscot bridge, it was closed. So, we looked at the bridge, took some pictures, and headed to Walmart to shop for the weekend. I will say, it is epic to try shopping with 6 adults and 5 children all with strong opinions about what would make a good breakfast/lunch/supper...We ended up with far too much bread :) Finally got to check out, only to discover this Walmart is "bagless." Not sure how we are supposed to get groceries to our cars (which were already overstuffed). We found some empty boxes and I bought 4 reusable bags and managed to stuff everything into the car. By the time we made it to our campground (just outside Acadia National Park) and moved into our spartan cabins it was dark. 

Inconveniently, the bathroom with flush toilets was a good 1/10 of a mile trot away. There was a portapotty conveniently placed at the edge of our camp, but still a good bit offset from the cabins. I do not do portapotties in the middle of the night. So, I made a functional chamber pot out of a trash can. Worked great.

Friday: Nothing beats a good camp breakfast outside in the fresh air. Unless it's the good camp dinner we had later Friday evening. Kristy and my mother-in-law have camp cooking down to a delectable science. Before lunch, we hiked around the bay and the boys had fun catching crabs and then dangling them menacingly in front of hapless Tori. We ate lunch at the visitor's center parking lot and then headed out on our first hike. Sand Cove Beach was the start of our first hike. I wondered why anyone would name a beach "Sand Cove" but I discovered sand beaches are very rare in Maine, so when there is a "sand beach" it will be included in the title of the name. The trail had few switch backs and essentially went straight up the mountain. The kids enjoyed clambering over the rocks at the top. Have I mentioned yet that Maine is very rocky? We took the visitor's bus back to our cars and then headed back to camp for showers, supper, worship, and bed.

Sabbath: Another exceptionally good breakfast started Sabbath. We decided to try doing church on the trail so headed right out. Our plan was to hike Cadillac Mountain. The trail up was quite steep and treacherous. I was worried about my in-laws making it down. So was Tyson. At the top, we joined a bird watching group led by a ranger from Kansas (random fun fact!). We asked him about possibly trying an easier hike down the mountain. He suggested going down the Bubble Lake trail down. We ate lunch at the top, and since it was crowded, decided we would try church farther down the trail. So we started back down the "easier" trail. Initially, this seemed a brilliant choice. The trail led through a wooded area and seemed easy. Then, it took a sharp turn and literally dove straight down the mountain. It was so steep that there was a ladder in one section and wire steps on other parts. It was far worse than what we had come up. Sadly, by the time we figured this out, it was too hard to go back. So down, down, and down some more we went, knees screaming in protest. Thankfully, all 11 of us survived, intact. Another 2 miles of flat hiking, and we limped into to a bus stop, where we caught a bus back to the cars. I slept through the drive back to camp, which apparently was very beautiful. We finally did church that evening.

Sunday: We ate a quick breakfast and got everything packed up because today we planned to go whale watching! It was raining by the time we left camp (thankfully didn't start until after we were loaded) which put a bit of a damper on our enthusiasm. We drove to West Quoddy, Maine (the easternmost part of the USA). Our car took a quick jaunt into Canada to visit Roosevelt's home on Campobello Island, NB, Canada. The Halls didn't have passports so couldn't go into Canada. I spent quite a bit of time uploading passports and COVID vaccine records to the Canadian travel site. This saved us time at the border. It was literally the shortest border crossing I've ever been through. We ate lunch in the car on the way back to the US and met Tyson and Kristy at the boat dock. By now it had stopped raining. We boarded our ocean vessel and headed out to sea. It was a smooth ride and the sky was turning blue by the time we got out toward the edge of the Bay. We saw two hump back whales, Minke whale, harbor seals, gray seals, and harbor porpoises. The hump back whales put on a fine performance. After the boat ride, we stopped by another "Sand Beach" and did a brief hike around it. We then came and crashed at our commodious air B&B in a large restored coast guard home. Our bedroom faced the east bay. It was breath-taking.

Monday: Woke up early and watched the sunrise from our bedroom window. Well, tried to watch the sunrise. Sadly, a cloud cover obscured the sun. But the colors were gorgeous. After a delicious breakfast with surprise muffins for my in-law's 50th anniversary, we were off. Started the day hiking around the light house, peat bogs, and bluff views. It was so beautiful. We then piled back into the car and drove to Baxter state park where we had another air B&B for the next two nights. We took the kids to a nearby park and everyone played together (including adults) for about an hour. An early bedtime felt good for us all.

Tuesday: We drove into Baxter state park hoping to do a couple of hikes and see a moose. Our first hike was to "Niagara Falls." Our second hike was around a beautiful lake but without any moose. By now, it was raining and the temperature was dropping quickly. We really wanted to see a moose. Our third hike took us around a lake where we were told we would "definitely see" a moose. Hikers coming out said they had just seen a large moose. With eager anticipation we ignored our stiff fingers and cold ears and noses. The boys were as quiet as mice (definitely an accomplishment). We saw moose scat, moose footprints, and moose trails but NO LIVE MOOSE (or dead ones either). We caught up with a ranger who explained that the moose population in the area has been devastated by "winter tick disease." Sadly, we returned to our cars without the pleasure of a moose sighting. That evening we packed everything so we could leave early on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday: We drove from Baxter, Maine to Boston, MA. On the way, we saw "our" moose from the comfort of our car. Dropped dad off at the airport and then headed into Boston for the Freedom Trail. Did all but bunker hill. Lots of great history, pictures, and really cool memories. Ended the day with supper at Chipotle before heading to our little Inn, forty-five minutes south of Boston.

Thursday: Drove to Plymouth Rock and took a very quick picture before speeding off to our 9am appointment at the Bates' house. Enjoyed our tour their and figuring out some family connections with our tour guides: Sherri Rampton and her husband. Then we got into the car and drove, drove, drove. Kristy and Tyson were wise and went around NY City. We drove through the center and thus sat in the express lane parking lot. Did not get into Greeneville, TN until 1:45 am. Thus ended our 14 state and 2500 mile adventure.