Oh, Shenandoah

I think my favorite days of our Northeast Road Trip were the ones we spent at Shenandoah National Park.  We drove in from Charles Town, West Virginia, through the northern entrance on Skyline Drive.  We spent two nights at Skyland Resort in a premium 2Q lodge room with a back deck that overlooked the Shenandoah Valley with a somewhat obstructed view.  We ate two meals at the Pollock Dining Room at Skyland Resort, dinner the first night that was delicious, and lunch the second day (don’t ask me about blackeye pea chili).  We took two official trails (Fox Hollow by the Dickey Ridge Visitor Center) and Limberlost Trail (less than a mile from Skyland Resort).  We drove the whole length of the Skyline Drive, stopping at many of the 70+ overlooks.  The weather ranged from overcast to so foggy you couldn’t see in front of you, to clear and cold (45 degrees).  DH had to buy a hoodie because his thin jacket wasn’t enough.  It was colder at Shenandoah than it had gotten at Acadia in Maine.  We enjoyed the rest and relaxation, sitting on the deck and just watching and listening to nature around us, at least until it was too cold that we had to go inside.  Our room had a picture window so we were able to continue enjoying the view from inside where we had the heat on.  We walked around the Skyland area and visited the Massanutten Lodge that was located within Skyland.  We saw deer and squirrels and chipmunks.  We listened to the wind and found two small waterfalls simply because we were still and listening.

In preparation for our visit, I researched the various trails and picked out two of the easiest ones.  The first one we did was the Fox Hollow Trail that leaves from the Visitor Center near the north entrance to the park.  We talked with the ranger about the trail before heading out to make sure we knew where the trailhead was and to be sure that it was truly a circular loop.  It had an over 300-ft elevation change, and it had been raining on the days prior to us being there, so they advised that it would be muddy but the trail was in good condition.  The ranger we spoke to suggested we take the loop going clockwise because that might be easier with the uphills and downhills.  I commented to DH while we were on the trail that the ranger took one look at me and decided which way I should go.  We were about halfway through the trail when another ranger came from the other direction and I told DH that I figured the first ranger sent the second ranger out to make sure that lady was ok, haha!  It was a good trail, would’ve been better in dryer conditions, but we did it!  I do have confirmation that I am not a hiker, don’t want to be a hiker, and am definitely a flatlander!  But I was so proud of myself for doing it and for being careful and not having any mishaps or missed steps.  I did have quite a bit of mud on my shoes when we got done.

The second trail I picked was definitely more my speed.  It’s the Limberlost Trail, and it’s got about 130 ft elevation change.  It’s wide and has crushed stone for much of the path on the 1.3 mile loop.  It’s designed for an easy walk in the woods which was exactly what we wanted to do!  I was drawn to this trail because when I was maybe 10 years old, my grandmother had checked out a book from her local library when I was coming to visit that she wanted me to read.  It was A Girl of the Limberlost.  This book has stuck with me for fifty years, so of course I had to have my own Limberlost-adventure.  This was my favorite outdoor activity we did on this trip.

And instead of telling you about the beauty of the Shenandoah National Park, I’ll just share some photos here.

~ Cindy D.

Harpers Ferry, WV

We’ve seen a lot of places related to the American Revolution, but we also had a few Civil War related sites.  After we left Pennsylvania, we headed to West Virginia to the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.  I didn’t know much about what happened here nor about John Brown whose actions contributed to some of them, but now I do.  I've learned so much on this trip!

The Harpers Ferry National Historical Park has a Visitor Center where you can catch a free shuttle down to where the site is.  This is such a great idea for the busier NPS sites that have limited parking.  The shuttle runs every 15 minutes and takes about 10 minutes to get to where the structures and museums are.

We spent about 90 minutes there.  There are several buildings you can go inside and see exhibits for.  And there’s the Point where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers meet.  The Appalachian Trail also runs through here.  This was pretty exciting for me because I had watched a guy on Instagram earlier this year who documented his hike from Georgia to Maine.  It was so interesting to me, so I walked along part of the path that was the real live actual Appalachian Trail.  Part of it here goes up some rugged stone steps by St. Peter’s Catholic Church.  Just as I was heading down the steps (careful, careful, careful), the bell rang and startled me!  Thankfully it didn’t startle me enough to lose my footing, but it did make me think about how varied the terrain is all through the A.T. and how careful, careful, careful you have to be!

Here are a few pictures from our time at Harpers Ferry.

Once we left, we headed into Charles Town to go to a small restaurant called Homespun.  They had gotten great reviews from the gluten-free community for the limited menu.  I had chili that was really good (unlike some chili I had a few days later).  DH had the chili and a grilled cheese sandwich that he declared the best grilled cheese he’d ever had.  (It did look good, and it made me think of my grilled cheese I had at Henry’s Diner in Burlington, VT.)  They also locally source their ice cream from a nearby dairy, so we bought a pint to take with us for dessert at the hotel.

We stayed in Ranson, WV, which is right next to Charles Town and situated at the top of the highway that takes you down to Front Royal, VA, where you can access the northern terminus of the Skyline Drive.  That’s right, folks, we’re about to spend a couple of days at Shenandoah National Park!  Check out our next blog entry to read about our time there and see some pictures.

~ Cindy D.

Hello, Hershey!

One of the things I wanted to do with this trip was make sure we always had something for DH to look forward to.  And this was one of those days – we were headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania!

DH has been doing much of the driving on this trip as he’d rather drive than navigate, but I didn’t want him to do all the driving, so as we were leaving from Lake Katrine, it looked pretty straightforward, at least until we got to Pennsylvania, so I took the first leg of the day.  Just after we entered Pennsylvania, I stopped at the welcome station for a rest break and then DH was ready to drive again.  We didn’t realize it, but our route on US 209 was taking us right through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation area.  We saw the brown signs after we were on the road, but I hadn’t researched it like I had the Kancamagus Highway through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, so we missed a couple of spots that might have been fun to look at (waterfalls, scenic vistas).  In fact, it wasn’t until we stopped at the next Pennsylvania Welcome Center that we realized what, exactly, we had been traveling through.

For most of this trip, we have stayed off the interstate highways until they were the same roadways as the other highways (I’m looking at you, North Carolina, where this seems to happen a lot!).  But for this day, the more direct route was by interstate highway, so we took that over to Hershey.

We were staying at the Hotel Hershey, a historic hotel from the 1930s, that serves as a landmark and icon for Hershey tourism there.  We had been to Hershey several years ago and looked around the hotel and thought we’d enjoy a chance to stay there if we ever went back.  We didn’t actually think we’d ever go back, so when we were able to add it to our itinerary, we booked a room type that would guarantee we would stay in the historic section of the hotel.

We got checked in but before we had bell services and valet assist us, we decided to drive down the hill to Chocolate World.  This is where you can do several interactive things, shop, and eat.  We hadn’t had lunch and hadn’t figured out dinner, so we decided to just get something from the food bar there.  And a chocolate milkshake!  We picked up some t-shirts and several of our favorite Hershey brand candy which we then had to figure out how to keep from melting before we get it home!

Back to the hotel where it was lovely to have someone else load the luggage cart and haul our stuff up to our room.  And Maisy enjoyed having valet parking for the night, too.  Our room was well appointed and comfortable, although the bathroom was pretty small as is the case in many historic hotels.  There were chocolate kisses on the pillows, and later in the evening, they offered turn-down service where they bring you even more chocolate kisses!  They also give a full-size Hershey bar at check-in.  And they provide bottled water in the in-room refrigerator, and if you want more, you just call the front desk and they bring it to you.  They provide slippers and a robe for use, too – the slippers, of course, are yours to keep, so we did!

We walked around the hotel and out into the gardens that are part of the hotel property.  There is also a Hershey Gardens that is just down the hill that they give you tickets for that we went to the next day.  (They also give you tickets to the Hershey Museum downtown, but we had visited that when we were there before, so we didn’t bother to go over.  But it is worth doing at least once if you go and have never done it before.)  The whole place was beautiful and felt so glamourous!

The next morning we checked out of the hotel, and again, it was so nice to have someone else take our things down and tetris it into the car!  And they offered us more bottled water to take with us for the drive!

We spent a little over an hour at the Hershey Gardens.  The best part for me was the Butterfly habitat.  They have over 300 butterflies at any one time.  It was so neat to watch them.  I even had one land on my arm!

The flowers in the gardens were beautiful, too.  One of my favorite activities on this trip has been to visit gardens – I guess if you’ve been following along, you’ll already know that!  #flowersmakemehappy.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

These are the flowers they make Reeses Cups from.

~ Cindy D. 

Another American Revolutionary site, another President's house, and an extra state

Thanks for sticking with us on our trip report.  Congratulations - we've made it to day 23, and something unexpected happened on this day.  Read on to find out.

When we were in Maine, we had bought a few bottled drinks only to find that we had to pay a deposit on them.  We were talking about it with my uncle in New Hampshire and he explained to me how the states surrounding New Hampshire all had those deposit requirements and pay-per-bag, too.  So when we realized there was a Shaw’s grocery store across from our hotel in Merrimack, NH, we stopped there to stock up for the rest of the trip before leaving New Hampshire.  I know it seems silly, but a nickel is a nickel, and a dime is a dime!  (This is not the unexpected thing.)

We were headed to New York state again, and to get there, we were crossing the southern part of New Hampshire and Vermont.  It was a beautiful, scenic drive.  We really loved seeing this part of the country.  This is one of my favorite "from the car" photos.  Here are a couple of others.

Along the way, we stopped in Bennington, Vermont, to see the Bennington Battle Monument, erected in memory of the significant events of the American Revolutionary War that prefaced the turning of tides at Saratoga.  When we visited Saratoga’s battlefield days earlier, we had learned some about how the troops in the area had kept the British army from obtaining much needed supplies.  The battle monument has an elevator that will take you to the top for what is supposedly a spectacular view, but on the day we were there, the elevator wasn’t running.  Instead, we just enjoyed a lively discussion with the staff guide who was manning the exhibit area at the base of the monument.  We opted to not drive the five miles out to look at the Bennington Battlefield because we still had a long way to go for the day.

We stopped to get gas at a Valero in Bennington ($4.15/gal) before heading to the Apple Barn and Bake Shop.  We discussed getting an apple pie, kind of as a joke since the last time we’d been in Vermont, we got a blueberry pie.  DH had finally finished that pie.  Instead of pie, we opted to get maple creemees for one last time. (We planned to stop here, but we didn't expect to have creemees again, but this is not the unexpected thing.)

Our trip route was designed to form a sort of figure 8 by the time we get back home, so this day’s journey was going to take us back across part of where we’d wandered before. We were headed to Lake Katrine, NY, for the night, and I thought we'd just go from NH to VT to NY.  But wouldn't you know it?  The highway took us through a tiny corner of Massachusetts!  This is the unexpected thing!  We hadn't planned to go through Massachusetts, but because we were there, I made sure to drink some water from my 50-states water bottle so I could add the Massachusetts sticker to it!  It also means that even though we had dropped Kentucky from our itinerary, we'd still make it to or through 17 states on this trip.

We were headed to Lake Katrine by way of President Martin Van Buren’s home in Kinderhook, NY.  The site is off NY Hwy 9.  We had been on NY-9 previously when we visited FDR’s home.  The Van Buren historical site has a home that you can tour, but we weren’t there on a day it was open for tours.  So we walked around the property and enjoyed the break from the car.  It was also nice that there were good restrooms available here.  I also got my NPS Passport stamp.  I think fondly of my coworkers who so thoughtfully gave me my passport book as part of my retirement gift.  Here is a picture of the house and property.

We made it to the hotel, got checked in, and did some laundry.  We also got reorganized because the next day, we were going to be living it up at the Hotel Hershey including bell services and valet parking! 

~ Cindy D.

From Maine to New Hampshire

Just over 20 years ago, we joined the Disney Vacation Club.  One aspect of DVC membership is the ability to exchange your DVC points into other timeshare/resorts through groups like RCI or, in the old days, Interval International.  One day I was just browsing through the options available and saw a really cute resort in Ogunquit, Maine, right on the Maine coastline.  It looked like a great place to have a northern seashore vacation.  But we weren’t going to Maine any time soon and didn’t want to make a trip just to go to Ogunquit all the way from Florida, so I put it aside in my mind.

But when we started planning our Northeast Road Trip and I saw Ogunquit on the map, it reminded me that I really wanted to go check it out, so we added it to the itinerary as a pass through, stop and look around a minute place on the way from Portland, Maine, to where my uncle and his family live in southern New Hampshire.

This day was a rainy, drizzly kind of day, so I’m glad we didn’t plan much for Ogunquit.  In fact, the weather actually put us ahead of schedule so we had to scrap our lunch plans and find something else to do so we wouldn’t be too early for our planned visit with the relatives.

The one thing I wanted to do was walk along the Marginal Way.  This is a 1.25 mile paved footpath that goes along the rugged coastline of Ogunquit allowing you to walk safely but feel like you’re on the edge of the cliffs and rocks.  It provides wonderful views of the Maine coastline.  It's a good place for a stroll, but it's not like a boardwalk like we saw in Virginia Beach.

About halfway, there’s the Lobster Point Lighthouse which is so cute – and I’m almost as tall as it, haha!  We just walked from the northern end of the Marginal Way to the lighthouse and back as we only paid for an hour of parking.  Here are a few pictures from our walk and the lighthouse.

Speaking of parking, when we left from Burlington, Vermont, I had removed the ParkMobile app from my phone, thinking we were done with it.  But that’s the same app they use for Ogunquit parking, so I had to get it set back up for the hour we parked there.

If it hadn’t been raining, we would have enjoyed browsing some of the shops and cafes, but even with the rain, there were lines out the door and wrapped around the buildings and down the sidewalks of some of the more popular spots.

From Ogunquit, we headed towards New Hampshire, ending our week’s stay in Maine.  We saw quite a bit of DH’s 50th state while we were there.  We did stop at the Maine Visitor Information Center on the way out, and at that point we figured we had been to five of their seven locations.

We planned to eat lunch in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at a restaurant called 110 Grill that gets lots of good reviews, especially related to their gluten-free options and handling.  But while we were driving that way, I realized that this location was in downtown Portsmouth and it required parking at a parking garage.  No thank you!  It was already going to be a bit earlier to eat lunch than we wanted, and I was so done with paying to park!  I mean, I get that’s how it is in some cities and more congested areas, but wow, I never set up a “parking” fund!

So instead, we drove on to North Hampton, New Hampshire, to visit the Fuller Gardens.  This wasn’t originally on our itinerary but I had seen it on the American Horticultural Society’s reciprocal network map.  This is a small garden on the property of former Massachusetts Governor Fuller (1924).  It is right along the coastline among beautiful homes (mansions, really).  The Fuller mansion has been demolished, but the gardens were saved.  Because it was a drizzly day, there were only a few other people there, so that made it nice to stroll around and pretend like the gardens were my yard.  Their dahlias were also in full bloom like the ones at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden where we were a few days before.  Here are a few pictures from our visit there along with a couple of the beautiful houses along the way.

We still hadn’t figured out lunch so I was trying to find something on the fly using my Find Me Gluten Free app and the Google.  I could see that we were about to be headed into no services land on the way to my uncle’s place, so I had DH pull over so we could sort it out rather than passing by all the options.  I found a BBQ place that seemed like a good option, so when I put it into Google maps, it said “you have arrived.”  We were right across the street from it, and neither one of us had even noticed!  The food and service were good, too.

We made it to where my uncle lives mid-afternoon and we had a lovely visit for about 2 ½ hours with my uncle, aunt, and cousin.  We haven’t seen them since 2013.  My cousin also is gluten-free, so she had made a delicious gluten-free apple cake for the visit.  It was so delicious, and it was so great to not have to worry about it because she is as vigilant as I am.

From there, we headed to Merrimack, New Hampshire, where we spent the night.  When we arrived, we found that we had been upgraded to a suite, so it was nice to have the extra space in the room.  The next two travel days were about getting to Hershey, Pennsylvania, but we also found a few things to do along the way!

~ Cindy D.