We left off as we were leaving New York and finishing up our tour of big east coast cities. From here on out, the biggest city we’re going to see is Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is….a wee bit smaller than NYC.
RVing disasters!
We still have the same disaster, which is that Ari’s HappiJac bed (that’s supposed to come down from the ceiling with the push of a button as if by magic!) is still broken. We’ve now taken it to a Camping World for a diagnosis, replaced the control module that Camping World assured us was the source of the trouble, had a mobile RV guy come out to try to fix it when the control module swap didn’t work….and, yeah. Still broken.
Abe’s been sleeping on the cot we rushed out to Walmart to buy, Gus is sleeping in Abe’s bunk, Ari is sleeping in Gus’s old bunk (which is too short for him, so his feet hang over the edge (that’s why Gus is in the bottom bunk; it has a wall at the end, so no room for feet to hang), and Milo gets to keep his bed for now.
We had pretty much given up hope of getting it fixed before we got home, but we have a tiny ray of hope now because a place in Truro, NS is going to take a look at it tomorrow. We will see. It’s two extra hours of driving, so I hope it’s not for nothing.
We also had to replace a tire valve in Acadia. We were on a hike when someone asked us if we were driving a blue van and let us know they’d heard air leaking from the valve. This is the same thing that happened to another tire last summer. Fortunately, we got to this one before the tire went completely flat and were able to drive it down the road to get it fixed and were on our way 15 minutes later and only $20 poorer.
On to funner stuff!
Cape Cod (Eastham specifically) was our longest stop of the trip, but it flew by in a whirlwind of beaches and hanging out with assorted friends and family. Dave’s parents and his sister and her family were there with us, so a lot of time was devoted to kids playing soccer and baseball and other assorted games everywhere they went and to lots of meals together. We had big plans to make it to a Cape Cod Baseball League game, but the game we hoped to see was rained out.
We did manage one longish bike ride and some hiking:
And we went to the beach a lot:
We went on the worst whale watch ever. At least half the boat was seasick the whole time (including a few members of our party), it never stopped rocking, people fell over a lot, and we sort of saw a whale or two from a considerable distance. Everyone on the boat cheered when they said we were giving up and going back. More of that story when I get to the longer posts. Here’s the naturalist telling us about the different kinds of whales we weren’t going to see, back before things got really bad:
Ari and I left (with Dave’s Dad) a day earlier than everyone else to do a couple of college tours in western Massachusetts, and then we all reconvened in Vermont, at the Quechee/Pine Valley KOA (which is about 15 minutes from Dave’s parents’ house over the border in New Hampshire. The KOA was completely full because of the balloon festival that was going on that weekend:
It was a total coincidence that we were there for balloon festival weekend. We considered going, but then we remembered that we generally find festivals expensive and crowded and not all that fun (for our crowd averse group), so we skipped it in favor of a trip to Quechee Gorge:
And to Billings Farm and the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Site (Vermont’s only NPS site). It was Dairy and Cheese celebration weekend or something like that at Billings Farm, so there were lots of cheese samples and also ice cream making:
And there was more family time, as Dave’s cousin and his wife came up to visit from Boston one day (we lived down the street from them back in our Boston days, so it was great to see them again after a few years).
Our final US stop for awhile was Acadia National Park, and Dave’s parents made the trip out there with us as well. Dave had been to Acadia a few times as a kid, but the rest of us had never been. It was pretty awesome. We sprung for an oceanfront site at the Bar Harbor KOA:
This is where we discovered that, while Fergus the anxious Scottie hates sandy beaches with waves, he LOVES calm, rocky beaches. Weird.
We did some hiking:
And Nana and Grandpa offered to take everyone on another boat ride, and we very bravely accepted. And this one was fine! No one was sick! No head injuries! Also we saw lots of seals and birds and stuff:
And then we drove to Canada! Where we are now! More on that next time.
Just by chance you hit ice-cream making weekend? You all do have talent.
That gorge looks far better than any balloon festival could possibly be.