May 13 – Schenectady, NY – Frosty Acres Campground

We were dry camping over the weekend in Maine so we found a campground in upstate NY. Laundry and showers were on the agenda. The next morning we set out for the Shaver-Hill Farm and Hobart, NY. My dad was born and raised in Hobart and the Hill’s who live just down the road in Harpersfield are family friends. The Hill’s – Dennis, David and Dwayne – had a dairy for many years and ran a maple syrup business on the side. The maple business has grown so much that they got out of the dairy business about 8 years ago and keep busy with a large maple retail business and a distribution business where they sell equipment to small sap and syrup operators. They also tap maple trees and harvest sap in the early spring. We had a great time seeing the operation and catching up with the family.

Next, we made our way a couple miles down the road to Hobart. For those who have never been to upstate New York picture a network of small country roads with small towns  – they call them villages – and a few big ones every few miles. We drove through town checking out all the places we remember seeing when we were kids visiting my grandmother who lived in the area until the late 1980’s. We also checked out the old Hunter homestead which is now painted an obnoxious shade of purple. I don’t think Grandpa Hunter would approve J.

We kept moving south towards Philadelphia and met Nancy’s Uncle Rick for a late dinner in the city.

The Hunter house in Hobart, NY. There are no Hunter's living there now although the shuffleboard court is still in the side yard.

The main drag in Hobart - definitely a small village

May 11-12 – Embden, ME – Alberta Philpot

My grandfather came from a family of 9 kids. We’ve got to know many of them over the years at family reunions. The only one still living is Aunt Alberta. She and her extended family live near the town of Embden in Central Maine. Nancy and I had been to Maine for a family reunion 11 years ago but we didn’t get a chance to visit Embden. Aunt Alberta and her family were great hosts. We saw the sights around their small town and the entire family came over for dinner and a campfire on Saturday evening. We dined on several Maine delicacies - red hot dogs (our North Carolina family had earlier claimed that their red hot dogs were unique), fiddleheads (these are shoots picked from ostrich ferns in the springtime – the ones we had were harvested by cousin Randy), brown bread (a sweet bread made with molasses) and Moxie soda (yep – Maine has its own soda). Believe it or not the fiddleheads were excellent – they tasted like a combination of artichoke and spinach. We enjoyed all of the Maine eats. The family also brought along some extras and stocked our cupboards prior to sending us on our way.

Nancy and I in the Maine woods

Luke and Zach playing on the gravel pile - they spent hours here

Randy, Tara and their family

The kids

Isabella enjoying smores by the campfire

Rob and Rebecca

Aunt Alberta

Betsy, Connie, Rob and Zach

May 10 – Portland, ME – Walmart

Today was a travel day as we headed north to Maine to visit family over the weekend. We did make a stop for dinner near Boston to enjoy a local delicacy – Lobster Rolls!

May 9 – New York City – Liberty Harbor RV Park

We set out for New York City early in the day but timed it right for a lunch stop in Philadelphia. We ended up winding our way through the streets of the City of Brotherly Love to Geno’s Steaks and Pat’s King of Steaks. These two eateries have been featured on TV and claim to have the best cheesesteak in the city. We wanted to judge for ourselves so we grabbed four cheesesteaks from each place and ate! When the votes were tallied, it was a tie. Pat’s was great because they chopped the steak and it mixed with the cheese whiz, onions, etc nicely. Those that liked Geno’s enjoyed the extra cheese whiz – very tasty. Both sandwiches were excellent. Pat’s provided ordering instructions– for example you order ‘wit’ or ‘witout’ onions J We all enjoyed this experience.

We arrived at our campsite in northern New Jersey in the evening and immediately walked the five blocks to the subway station. About 20 minutes and two transfers later we were in the middle of Times Square. The kids loved all the bright lights. We did some shopping and dined on reuben sandwiches at a deli. We decided to call it a day around 12:30 at night and got a ride in a Hummer limo down to lower Manhattan where we caught the subway back to NJ. Good times. The next morning we rode the subway back to lower Manhattan and visited the 9/11 memorial. It was a beautiful tribute to the lives lost there. The names of the deceased are engraved in a bronze plaque that surrounds the original footprint of each tower. Inside the footprint are two separate waterfalls – you can see the memorial in the pictures below. We located the names of the victims that Nancy and the kids did memorial artwork for – their work was included in a 10^th anniversary tribute in New York last summer. We concluded out visit with a walk around downtown visiting Wall Street and Battery Park with its great view out toward the Statue of Liberty. As with Washington, DC, we barely scratched the surface here leaving plenty to see the next time around.

Kids in Times Square

Hummer limo ride

9/11 Memorial

Statue of Liberty as seen from Battery Park

Eve next to Kelly Ann Booms' name. Eve did a memorial plaque for her last summer.

May 6-8 – Washington DC – Cherry Hill RV Park

We’ve been anticipating a visit to Washington DC since we left home. There’s so much to see and do here and a lot of it ties directly to the kid’s studies. We stayed at a great campground with bus service to the subway so we could get our gang of nine back and forth to the city with ease. In addition, we arranged to have a dog sitter stop by the RV and walk the dogs twice a day. Believe it or not our new dog, Buddy, has proven to be very well mannered.  We can leave both dogs in the RV for several hours with no problems at all. This was one of my primary concerns when we “adopted” him a few weeks back.

We spent 2 long days in the city. We visited the Capitol Building and got the guided tour. We also got a chance to set in on the House while they were in session. I was excited to see some lawmaking first hand. We were there for about 30 minutes and almost the entire time was spent introducing and then discussing a bill to allow soapbox derby racing in the Capitol city. Yep – you read that right. Evidently these races have happened for 72 years in a row which means, presumably, that there has been 72 times that congress has “approved” it. What a joke…  To say that it was a disappointment seeing our elected representatives spend their time and our money dealing with such nonsense is an understatement. It left me to wonder how much time they spend on pointless legislation. I was not impressed. Another thing that struck me is the amount of public works projects going on around the city. There was construction everywhere. Almost the entire National Mall from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial was under construction as where many of the buildings that lined the mall. Part of this work involved digging up huge swaths of lawn to install a new “green” drainage system to reduce the amount of irrigation required. There were huge piles of dirt and pipe everywhere and tons of heavy equipment. The costs for this project alone had to be astronomical – I bet the payback is measured in millennia. Of course there were American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signs up on all the projects. Again – not impressed. The good news is that should be very easy for Congress to identify some discretionary spending that can be cut from the budget because they see it on a daily basis!!

We visited the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of American History. The kids enjoyed the animals and Jim, Nancy and I enjoyed the pop-culture memorabilia. We also visited Arlington National Cemetery and saw the eternal flame at JFK’s grave, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Robert E Lee House that sits atop the hill there. The Lee house has always been my favorite spot in DC. The history of the site and how it came to be a national cemetery is fascinating and the view overlooking the city is amazing. Incidentally and not surprisingly, the Lee house is also undergoing renovations. We also visited the Lincoln Memorial which ties in nicely with some of the Civil War history we’ve been learning about. Our two days in DC left us feeling like we barely scratched the surface of all the history here. We definitely left plenty to see and do the next time we’re in town.

Jim and kids in front of the White House

Kids standing on the white star marking the geographical center of DC. It is located in the middle of the Capitol building.

Bronze of Ronald Reagan in the Captol rotunda

JFK's grave and the eternal flame looking up at the Lee House in Arlington National Cemetery

My girls

View out over DC from the Lee House. In the foreground is the grave of Pierre Charles L'Enfant - the man who layed out the city of Washington DC.

Capitol Building

May 5 – Williamsburg, VA – Mall Parking Lot

Nex
t up we set our sights on Williamsburg, Virginia. The colonial-era history here is a big draw as the kids have been studying early American history. Our first stop was Jamestown – site of the first permanent English settlement in the US with 104 settlers arriving from England in the spring of 1607. Although nothing remains of the original wood fort, archeologists discovered its exact site in the 1990’s and the fort walls and a few buildings have been reconstructed so you can get a sense for what it was like. Evidently the site was only found in recent years because most people assumed that it had been washed away by the river many years ago. Active archeological work continues at the site so there will no doubt be more information gathered over time. The National Park Service oversees the park and we got a great tour by one of the volunteer park rangers. There is also a private museum nearby that displays many of the items found in the excavations and has interesting profiles of some of the settlers buried there. Interesting stuff…

About 20 miles away from Jamestown is Yorktown. This is the site of the last major battle of the Revolutionary War. It is here that Lord Cornwallis surrendered his troops to George Washington, leader of the Allied Forces – American and French - effectively ending the Revolutionary War. It was 2 years later that the Treaty of Paris was signed which formally established America as an independent nation. Yorktown today is very much like it was during colonial times – perhaps a bit smaller as many of the homes and buildings were destroyed during the Revolutionary and later the Civil War. It was fun to walk the town and see many of the historic buildings. One thing that I found interesting – there was a huge memorial commemorating the battle here and the independence that followed. Although the memorial was authorized by congress shortly after the British surrendered the monument wasn’t actually built until 100 years later. Why?? Evidently the government didn’t have the money to pay for it. Novel concept…

Lucas and Pocohantas



Jamestown fort - excavation work in the foreground and the fort wall in the background. The fort wall surrounded an area about 1 acre in size.



Jamestown fort - reconstructed shelter with fort wall behind and the river in the background

Monument at Yorktown commemorating the final surrender of British forces

Close up of the inscription on the Yorktown monument

Yorktown

Yorktown house of a prominent citizen and patriot dating to colonial times

May 4 – Raleigh, NC - Billy and Dianne Mitchell

We met up with our North Carolina family today. In addition to the Mitchell’s, Ray and Teresa Shrum, Robert and Amy Wellbrook and daughter Kiersten and Rebecca Mitchell joined us. We see this part of our family every 2 years at family reunions so reuniting with them in an off year was great. They fed us well introducing us to a North Carolina delicacy – the red hotdog - and we had a great time catching up. Billy had a new concrete driveway poured – a long, sloping one no less - a month before so the kids had a blast riding their scooters. The kids also happened to find ticks in the woods next to Billy’s house. Nancy had to pick 8 ticks off of them at day’s end. Usually they are mesmerized by new and strange creatures – not this time. They didn’t even ask to add one to their collection of bugs being amassed in the back of the motorhome.

Robert, Amy and Kiersten

Billy and Diane with the range targets that were hanging next to their front door. Southern hospitality??

Ray and Teresa Shrum