Hey–we’re back on the road, doing our first long RV trip since 2018! (Because 2019 was our England/Ireland trip, and 2020 was 2020). It has been very nice traveling again, and relearning how to stuff all six of us into a tiny space.
Right now we’re on the New Hampshire coast, where it is very, very hot (it was 97 today). I get really sad when we go north to escape the heat and there are days when it’s hotter wherever we are than back home in Georgia. But I can’t really complain because 1. we’re not in the Pacific Northwest right now and 2. The new trailer’s AC is doing a great job keeping things cool. Also it’s supposed to cool way down in a couple more days.
If I remember correctly, I usually do quick summary posts as we go along during summer trips and then do more detailed posts later at an extremely leisurely pace. And these posts are also where I talk about RVing Catastrophes. So right now I’ll cover just the trip up here and our first big stop, which was at Normandy Farms, outside of Boston.
Our first big stop was SUPPOSED to be several days in DC, but then Milo and Gus’s AP exams were rescheduled, and we had to push the whole trip back a little more than a week. So instead of a leisurely trip up the coast with a DC stopover, we drove four days in a row to make it to Boston in time for our Normandy Farms reservation.
There was much rain for the first few days, with rainy stops at Hagan-Stone Park Campground in Greensboro and at a KOA right next door to King’s Dominion in Richmond. This was our third stay at Hagan-Stone, and we realized that we’ll be staying at three separate campgrounds for the third time this year; before this I don’t think there were any we’d made it to a third time.
The King’s Dominion KOA did not make as good of an impression on us as it might have on a less rainy evening. The drainage was not great.
We had added that stop at the last minute; originally we’d been thinking we’d make it all the way from Greensboro to New Jersey in one 500+ mile day. But I’m glad we didn’t do that.
The next night we stayed at the much nicer and drier Turkey Swamp Park in New Jersey, on the recommendation of Jeremy from The RV Atlas . We had a lovely wooded site and our first campfire of the trip:
And then the next morning we got to hang out with Jeremy himself for awhile before we left. We had a great time chatting about RVing, kids, schools, coffee, etc. etc. Sadly, busy kid schedule issues kept us from being able to see Stephanie and the rest of the family, so we’ll just have to stop over again sometime in the near future! Jeremy has the only photographic documentation of this meet up, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
Then we set off on our drive from New Jersey to Massachusetts and encountered our first RVing Catastrophe of the trip. As soon as we started driving, the van started shaking when we drove either under 40 or over 60. Or so. At first we thought it was just the not great northeast roads, but eventually it became clear there was more going on. Google told me that this was almost certainly a tire issue. The tires looked fine upon visual inspection, and there really wasn’t anywhere to pull off with our giant trailer and deal with a tire issue on the New Jersey Turnpike, so we proceeded nervously, at exactly 55 miles per hour, and finally made it to Normandy Farms around 7:30.
Dave spent the next morning a tire place down the street, and, long story short, we have four brand new Michelin tires now. The diagnosis was a slipped belt on one tire and at least one more that wasn’t looking so hot, either, in some way or another so they recommended replacing all four (the guy added, “and I’ve never heard of this brand of tire…”) This is all aggravating because we bought those tires not very long ago (maybe 2 years ago), and, as near as I can tell, the most likely reason for them to be giving us so much trouble after such a short time is that they were crappy tires to start with. We bought them from a place we had liked a lot and gone to for years, but then it was bought out by another company, and the tires happened during the short period of time we kept going there before we had one too many bad experiences and bailed. And it was a safety issue, since the eventual result would probably have been a tire blowout (interestingly, the shaking wasn’t really noticeable not towing…so I guess it’s probably a good thing we were towing so we caught it early). Anyway, lesson learned–don’t go to places that suck and sell you crappy tires, and don’t buy a brand no one’s ever heard of before.
The day that we spent getting new tires was also the only rainy day of our Boston area stay, so that worked out pretty well at least. We spent the day laying low, staying dry, and recovering from our four days of driving.
Full review later, but Normandy Farms is a really great campground: beautifully maintained and with a ton to do. We were there the week before their summer season starts, so there were only scheduled activities on weekends. But we took advantage of the heated pool and the disc golf course at least.
Once we had our new tires, we still had four full days to spend checking out the Boston area. We actually lived in Boston for awhile when we were first married (Ari was born there), but it had been awhile since we’d been back to do touristy things. The first day we drove to New Bedford, MA to see the Whaling Museum there, because whales are great:
We walked over to the waterfront to have lunch, and it was pretty (and the light was good):
The next day was Wednesday, when the Museum of Fine Arts has $5 admission in the afternoons. We’d never made it there when we lived in Boston, and all of the kids were excited to see it (Abe wasn’t exactly excited, but he did well). We drove in for this because they have dedicated (albeit expensive) parking. The main order of business was to find all the works from AP art history (which both Milo and Ari have taken) that they have on display. Like J.M.W. Turner’s “The Slave Ship:”
Thursday was our Freedom Trail day; we took the commuter rail this day to avoid dealing with parking in the city. We started off with the swan boats and said hello to the duckling statues:
And then lots of walking! And freedom!
Dave’s parents drove down from New Hampshire on Thursday night (we were all spending the next week on Cape Cod together) and stayed at a hotel nearby, so we had dinner with them Thursday and then we all met up with Dave’s Aunt Kathy Friday to walk the World’s End Trail in Hingham, where there are very nice views of Boston:
And that gets us through the first week and a half or so of the 7 1/2 week trip. The itinerary changed a bit since I last posted about it, so the current list of stops post Boston is Cape Cod, the coast of New Hampshire, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, Burlington, VT, near Bard College in New York (Milo wants to tour the conservatory there), the Finger Lakes, Niagara Falls, Cleveland, Detroit, Mackinaw City, and Cincinnati.
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