Where ya wanna eat? Whatcha want for dinner?

Hello friends!  We're just a few weeks away from departure, so I'm working on my countdown list of things to take care of before leaving and adding details such as restaurant suggestions for at least the first several days of the trip.

My travel agent asked me if I keep a spreadsheet for the details, but my preferred method is a word document where I can just dump ideas, website links, and directions for each day.  This has served us well in the past - except for the few days I forgot to consult the document and we didn't do a few things I wanted (yeah, I'm still thinking about that cheeseburger in paradise I missed out on at Margaritaville in Key West).

I spent some time today looking at gluten-free restaurant recommendations for the first few places we'll be overnighting.  I'm so thankful that we have the ability to check out places ahead of time.  When I was first diagnosed with celiac over 12 years ago, every decision about eating out was laborious.  I've since figured out I can actually trust the people on social media to tell it like it is when it comes to gluten-free, celiac safe, gluten-sensitive, or gluten-friendly restaurants and menu items.  When we travel, I try to share our experiences as well.

You may recall that we have two rules when it comes to eating out while traveling.  The first rule is that we don't eat somewhere we can eat at home.  The exception to this rule is if it is somewhere we have in town but never go to (I'm looking at you, Cracker Barrel).  The second rule is choose local, independent over chain when possible.  These rules don't just apply to traveling on vacations; we were just in Valdosta, Georgia, last week for my great-uncle's funeral, so I found a local cafe for a quick lunch after the service.  It was called the Wildflower Cafe.

What's interesting about the Wildflower Cafe is that while talking with a friend about this trip, I mentioned we were going to stay at DeSoto State Park on the way home.  She asked if we'd been to Mentone, Alabama, before.  We've been through but never have stopped.  She suggested we check out the Wildflower Cafe there.  It's a whole different place than the one in south Georgia, and from the reviews and website, it looks like somewhere we'd enjoy.  However, when I looked to plug it into our travel plans, sadly they are only open for lunch on the day we'll be in the area - and we won't be there before they close for the day.  But I'm sure we'll make a trip back up that way another time, so we'll keep it on the radar.

And in case you're interested in some of the other little things on my list, today I crossed of pre-packaging my vitamins.  I use the Vitafusion gummy vitamins, so I like to prepare several days' worth at a time so I can just grab them as a snack (ha ha, my mom thinks I'm looney - I just know if I had to swallow pills, I wouldn't take them).  For the trip, I got some of the little pill baggies, so I got enough ready for the month.  The first time we did a big road trip, I did the same thing, only I didn't think about how the heat in the car would melt them; some packs became a glob.  This time I'll keep them in the cooler.

Thanks for reading!

~ Cindy D.

An ASICS outlet on every corner

My husband has been a runner for over 40 years.  For at least the last two decades, he's been wearing ASICS running shoes.  We usually bought them at the ASICS outlet store near where my parents live in the Savannah, Georgia area.  Every year, he buys two pairs of the model that is going off market because he can get them for a much better price than standard retail.  

But about two years ago, we went to the outlet shopping center to get his new shoes only to find they weren't there any more.  And we don't live anywhere near an ASICS outlet store.

We found an ASICS outlet in St. Augustine; we sometimes go through there on our way to the cruise port at Cape Canaveral.  But we don't always go at the time DH is needing to get new shoes. At least it's an option.

So what does this post have to do with our Northeast Road Trip?  I remembered that one of the hotels we're staying at in New Hampshire is at an outlet mall, so I looked up ASICS Outlets locations and found not only is there an ASICS outlet there, there are two other stops we're making that also have ASICS outlet stores - one in Delaware and one in Tennessee!  So between the three, we can hopefully catch a good sale on shoes.  And if not shoes, then at least socks.  Their socks are amazing!

~ Cindy D.

Itinerary Update

With just two months until departure, we've made a few changes to the last several days of our itinerary in order to make a visit to DH's family in Tennessee and Kentucky.  One of his family members is dealing with some serious health issues, so we decided to re-route and come home by way of the relatives.  The change is adding three states (17 total) and two days (33 in all) to what we had planned before.

So after leaving Shenandoah National Park, we'll head to Roanoke, Virginia.  This works out well because there is a congregation we can worship with in Roanoke - we had been having trouble locating one on our other route.  One of our favorite things about long road trips like we've been doing is meeting fellow Christians in other parts of the country.  We've made new friends, seen old friends, and found we knew people in common with others.  

From Roanoke, we're headed on to Pigeon Forge, TN, and after a night there, we'll head over to the Nashville, TN area.  We'll hop up to Kentucky for a night to see family there before heading home by way of DeSoto State Park in Alabama.  We stayed at the lodging at this state park in 2017.  

Want to make your own map?  I used MapChart to make the one in this blog entry.

~ Cindy D.

Traveling back in time (11 generations)

I've taken over the role of unofficial family historian for DH's family since his cousin passed away.  We recently picked up a box of materials her sister had been holding to pass on to us, and what a treasure-trove it has been!  Her work and collection of documentation, combined with what I can corroborate via Ancestry and other resources has allowed me to trace a branch of their family back to mid-17th century Delaware!

In 1641, a 14-year-old named Johan Anderson arrived in New Sweden (Delaware) having been hired and sent from Sweden to work as a farm hand.  When he was 19, he became a soldier for the Governor of the territory.  As a gunner, he wore armor, and as a result, he picked up a nickname - stahlkofta - which is the Swedish word for steel coat.  His nickname became a name of reference for him and was anglicized to Stallcop / Stalcup.  

Johan (John) Anderson Stahlkofta (Stalcup) is DH's 9th-great-grandfather.  Church records and other documents from the area confirm the descendants of Johan that we were able to connect through 11 generations.  DH's ancestors lived in New Castle County, Delaware, for five generations before being located in North Carolina.

While reading through the records, I realized that the older generations are buried at the Old Swedes church in Wilmington, Delaware.  We have a day on the itinerary where we are driving through northern Delaware, so I had to see whether this was somewhere we could stop for a bit.  It's now known as the Old Swedes Historic Site - and they offer tours of the church and property as well as a self-guided tour of the cemetery.  

We had planned to go to the Fort Delaware State Park on our way from Rehoboth Beach to Winterthur Museum and Gardens just outside Wilmington.  Timing doesn't allow us to do both the state park and visit the Old Swedes church - so we're opting for a visit with DH's multiple-great-grandparents who are recorded as being buried there.  If we're lucky, we'll be able to find the exact locations in the cemetery.

I know, I'm a little bit excited about making this family connection with our trip.  I think it's so cool to find connections that go back that far.

~ Cindy D.

Three months out - working on the details

It's been a while since we began planning our next adventure to the Northeastern U.S., but now we're just over three months away from launch!  So that means it was time to start filling in the itinerary with options for each day and location.

If you've followed along with our previous road trips, you'll know that we like to find things to do, not just at our overnight location but also along the way.  We try to stay off the interstates when possible, and if my map skills are accurate, we'll be able to do that for this trip, too.  And that makes it possible to add some interesting things to do to the itinerary.

For example, one of our early days will take us by the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park in Wilson, North Carolina.  I found out about this place when I did an internet search for "things to do between {insert departure location} and {insert destination location}" and one of the top results was from wanderlog.com. I used this same search for every other leg of the trip and was rewarded with a variety of activities and experiences we likely would have missed.  I will try to remember to mention when I'm blogging about which things were the result of our internet search.

One of the challenges of traveling is managing my celiac disease by finding gluten-free food options.  My greatest disappointment is how celiac disease keeps me from being able to freely enjoy travel food finds.  It means for every meal we have to have a plan ahead of time - no just finding something along the way.  For this trip, we're not staying at any Air BnBs, so we'll be dependent on restaurants and hotel microwaves.  Of course we can pick up some things from the grocery stores that we can pack at the hotel for next day's lunch.  I was worried about keeping things cool because even though we usually bring ice packs with us, not all hotels have a freezer in their little refrigerators to get them ready for the next day.  But I found a solution on Amazon for making our own ice packs that are supposed to be leak-free.  (I invariably end up with pin-holes in ziploc bags when I try to DIY it.)  I'll let you know how they work out!

So with these things sorted out, next step is to just enjoy the summer!  We'd love to hear what adventures you have planned.  And if you're visiting Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Shenandoah National Park, or Acadia National Park, we'd love to hear about your experiences and recommendations!  Drop them in the comments! 

~ Cindy D.

Just checking in

It's been a while since I last updated the blog, but that doesn't mean our planning stopped for our Northeast Road Trip.  It just means I've gotten more efficient at road trip planning and don't have the need to document every single decision point like I did when we first started taking extensive road trips.

That said, we're under six months from departure, so it won't be long before we start making activities reservations and adding details to our daily itineraries.  I have the lodging all sorted, and some general idea of things we may want to do along the way, but if you've followed us before, you'll know I like to have a list of options so we don't waste precious time deciding what to do because we don't have any options.

~ Cindy D. 

The Fate of the Day - overlaying American Revolutionary War battles on our itinerary

I have always had an amateur interest in Colonial American history and the period of the American Revolutionary War.  In school, one of my social studies curriculum fair projects was a map of key battles that my dad helped me rig up so you could press a button and a Christmas light would show where a battle had occurred while you could read a brief description on the side.

When we started planning our Northeast states road trip (which I'm now abbreviating as NERT - NorthEast Road Trip - my sons tell me that's a ridiculous acronym), we kept adding sites to visit that were significant during the American Revolution.  One of these is Fort Ticonderoga in New York.  In fact, we were going to just pass through on the way to Vermont, but once I started looking at what all there was to see there, we adjusted the itinerary to allow us much of the day to explore.  (On our Middle States trip, we had a few late additions to our itinerary that I wish we'd had more time for, so I'm thinking about that now.)

Anyway, DH brought a book home from the library the other day:  The Fate of the Day - from Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston - which is 2nd of a trilogy, beginning in 1777.  I'm not so much for reading about history - I'd much rather watch a documentary or visit a museum - but I started flipping through the book and reading the descriptions of landscape, terrain, logistics, etc., of how troops moved in, through, and about the parts of New York, Vermont, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania we'll be visiting.  I'd already been studying the Google maps and AAA maps to become familiar with the area, so it was pretty cool to look at the old maps from the late 1700s and think about how what we'll see next year would have looked like 250 years ago.

The stories the land could tell....

~ Cindy D.