Summer 2013 in New England -- History, Roots, and Chowder

Monday, July 1st

Welcome to Road Trip 2013! Our StarCraft camper is packed and we are off on another adventure, and we couldn't be looking forward to it more. Last year, we traveled over 8000 miles through New England, to Canada, across the northern states on US route 2 as far west as Idaho and back to Maryland. This year it's Charlie turn at genealogy hunting. His ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War to establish our Nation's independence and in the Civil War to preserve our Nation's union. So we will travel to the civil war battlefield of Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland, and on to the gravesites of some of his soldier ancestors, to towns holding fond childhood memories, to the awesome spectacle of Niagara Falls, to New York's Finger Lakes region, and to Mt Washington in New Hampshire. From there we will return to Maine, the state that stole our hearts last summer, to Mystic CT, and home by way of St Michaels MD where we will enjoy a traditional Maryland crab feast with good neighbors and friends. Sounds like a great plan, doesn't it?

We started our trip on June 29th within 2 hours of our planned departure time, and I consider that a success! Maybe next trip we'll also give the camper a more thorough maintenance check first. We had not one, but two, leaks in our water supply system. Not happy about that, but I was able to trace the water line and close valves to the offending component and we are using the auxiliary water storage tank instead of the city water supply. (Thanks to the mechanical sense I've gained from my dad, my brothers, and all those engineers I worked with for 30+ years!) So that problem is solved, but a part of the toilets water valve was also cracked (Honest, we did drain all the lines before winter!). Luckily, we were able to locate an RV shop today that had the part in stock -- fantastic! So we're ready to roll with all the bells and whistles working again. Woohoo!

So time spent fooling around with the leaks limited the time we had available to tour the Antietam Battlefield. But we were able to go to the visitors center and watch a nice movie and listen to a fantastic talk about the battle by one of the volunteers. We purchased the CD and started the auto tour, and will definitely go back to complete the tour. We stayed at the Hagerstown/Antietam KOA. It had a ton of attractions for families with young children. We thoroughly enjoyed breakfast there -- Swiss chard omelet with Swiss cheese - yum! But, really Verizon. Can you hear me now?? Why do you have no signal in the entire Hagerstown area?? I had better signal in the middle of Montana! Geez, don't you know I have a blog to do?  That evening we enjoyed a delicious meal in Sharpsburg at the Benders Tavern.


From there we drove, a good bit of the way through pouring rain (Nice driving, Charlie!),to the Kinzua East KOA. It is one of my favorite KOAs. The rest rooms and showers were spotless and the owner is really nice. My favorite part? The young boy, probably about 7 years old or so, standing on his front porch and waving at the people driving by in their cars. Yes, we both waved back.

Guess what. Canadian border patrol have no sense of humor. Charlie doesn't like Canada. But we did enter Canada and saw Niagara Falls and they are great. While there I had my first Starbucks of this trip to use up some Canadian currency. I liked it, a lot. Then we went to Best Buy and bought a new laptop. Tomorrow I'll buy a USB cable so I can download pictures from the good camera. Yea, that's right. The new computer doesn't have a port for a SD card. Sigh.

Time for a glass of wine. Next stop, Maid of the Mist -- boarding on the American side of the Falls!