Travel dates: June 13-14, 2016 My grandfather grew up in Saugerties. When I told my mom we were going to be stopping there, she said I should go by and see the house he lived in. But she didn’t know the address, so it would have required some research and/or calls to extended family, and […]
Boston Minuteman Campground and Minute Man National Historical Park
travel dates: June 11-13, 2016 Let’s take a moment to reflect on my title up there and on the fact that the campground spells minuteman as all one word, whereas the NPS site splits it into two. Is there some deep significance to this? Is it like how the Wallace Stevens poem is called “The […]
Great Smoky Mountains Trip, Part 2: Outside the Park
A great feature of a trip to the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, TN area is that it has a little bit of everything: there’s scenic beauty and hiking and general outdoorsiness if you’re into that, or there are overpriced cheesy tourist traps if that’s more your speed. Or there is the third way, the way of perhaps […]
Great Smoky Mountains Trip, Part 1: Inside the Park
We’re only 3-4 hours from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, depending on which part we’re trying to get to, so I feel like it really ought to be our National Park….yet this was only the second time we managed to make it there as a family. The first time was only a year ago, […]
Imagination Mountain in Cosby, TN Campground Review
I’m once again interrupting the posts about our long early summer trip to talk about our late summer trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. Choosing a campground near the Great Smoky Mountains is a daunting task. First you have to decide what area you want to stay in in or near a huge park that […]
The Breakwater in Provincetown + Old Harbor Life Saving Station + Highland Light: More Cape Cod
Back when I was in grad school, Dave and I and a few friends randomly decided to go to Provincetown, MA one weekend….in January. There was still snow on the ground from a recent storm, but the actual days we were there were unseasonably warm. This was back before my obsessive planning phase, and one […]
Cape Cod with Kids: Eastham, MA and Cape Cod National Seashore
Even though we live in the Southeast, the vast majority of my kids’ beach time has been spent on Cape Cod and on the west coast. They don’t really have much of a grasp of the idea that the ocean can be warm. We compound the problem by often visiting the Cape in June, when […]
Atlantic Oaks in Eastham, MA: Campground Review
We’ve spent a lot of time on the Cape over the years, but somehow Eastham had never been on our radar before. Now that we’ve been there, I’m not sure how we kept missing it; it really is an ideal location for exploring the Cape. It’s farther out from Boston, so the crowds are lower […]
Arriving in Cape Cod: Afternoon in Falmouth
Dave’s grandparents bought a house on Cape Cod, in Falmouth Heights, back in the early 60s when beach houses on Cape Cod cost approximately 10 cents. Or, anyway, some amount that made them within reach for middle and working class families. So Dave grew up spending time there almost every summer, and I joined him […]
A Day at Mystic Seaport
We came pretty close to skipping Mystic Seaport when we were itinerary planning. We just went to Williamsburg, VA a couple of of years ago, and this seemed like pretty much the same thing, only with more boats. It’s expensive. Maybe we should just skip it and get to Cape Cod a day earlier instead. […]