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.

Portland, Maine

Several years ago I had the opportunity to go to Portland, Maine, for a work conference.  While there, I did some sightseeing and I really liked the Old Port area.  So when we began planning a trip that would take us to Maine, I wanted to take DH to see Portland.

We drove into town on a Friday morning, arriving at 9:45 AM.  Our plan was to take a trolley tour around the city, and we found one that also went to the Portland Head Light.  This allowed us to see as much as we could without having to drive ourselves or figure out parking.  We parked down by Long Wharf and then walked to the trolley ticket window where we were able to get tickets for the 11 AM trolley tour.  That gave us some time to walk around and do some shopping in Old Port.

Before we made this trip, I had ordered a few new t-shirts from Life is Good that I really liked.  So when I saw a Life is Good shop, I had to go in.  We bought a couple of shirts.  We didn’t want to carry them all day, so we dropped them off at the car.  It was then that we noticed a shop on the corner – you’ll never guess what it was!

It was Ethan Allen!  If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that I was disappointed to learn that the Ethan Allen of Vermont fame was not, in fact, a furniture maker.  So of course we had to go in.  I took several pictures of the furniture arrangements to pretend that I was at Ethan Allen, of furniture fame’s, home, ha ha!

The trolley tour was a lot of fun and we got to see a lot of the downtown Portland area and learn about the history of the area.  The best part was when we went to South Portland to the park where the famous Portland Head Light is situated.  If we didn’t do the trolley, we were going to drive out there the next day, but when we saw how the place was set up, we were glad we had front-door drop-off service with the trolley.  We had about a half hour to take pictures and such which we found was plenty of time.  On the way back to the end of the tour, we had some extra time, so the guide took us for a closer look at the lobstering boats and traps.

We got back to the car around 1 PM, ready for the next item on our itinerary.  I had been looking forward to visiting Maine Flavor, a gluten-free ice cream store where they make gluten-free waffle cones and cookies for ice cream sandwiches – as well as a variety of handmade ice cream flavors.  I had read about them several months ago and added them to the itinerary for our afternoon in downtown Portland.

When we put the address into the GPS, she told us that Maine Flavor may not be open yet as it was reported to open at 2 PM.  Bummer.  But wait!  Let me call them and find out if the hours are really true.  The lady who owns the place answered the phone and as we talked, she invited us to come on by anyway, that she’d open up for us since I’d come all the way from Florida!  Her name was Susan and she was so sweet and welcoming when we met her.  And let me tell you, it was so worth going by.  We got the oat waffle cones which were thick and sturdy and most of all, delicious!  And because we were still in Maine, I got the maple flavored ice cream.  It was so good!!!

From there, we headed over to the hotel in South Portland.  We were able to check in and get settled for the rest of the afternoon and evening.  The hotel had an indoor swimming pool that looked inviting, so I got ready to go for a swim.  Just as I was about to get in, the fire alarm went off, so we had to evacuate the building.  I’m so glad I hadn’t already gotten in!  It turned out that a staff person has bumped into the fire alarm and set it off.  I still got my pool time afterwards.  It was nice that they had good ventilation in the pool room because sometimes it’s not and it’s hard to stay in long.

We did have a few repairs we had to handle for the room.  When we first checked in, the thermostat indicated it had a low battery, so we got them to come fix that.  Then after my swim, I found out that the shower was a seriously slow drain AND that instead of putting body wash in the shower, they had put body lotion.  Thankfully I noticed before washing with lotion – yikes!  So we reported both issues and someone came up to unclog the drain.

I have been doing hotel reviews on TripAdvisor every day.  My common themes in the reviews are about water pressure, towels (fluffy or not fluffy), and whether we had to get things repaired in the rooms we were assigned.  I try to live by the concept of make things better than they were when you got there, and I realize that there are some things that the hotel staff won’t know about unless the guests tell them.  But it does seem that there should be some sort of routine maintenance checks on things like clogged drains and batteries that need to be replaced.  Whenever they ask me at checkout how things were, I do let them know of anything that needs to be repaired/replaced or if I’d had any other issues.  Sometimes they offer me extra points for the hotel loyalty program.  But I don’t do that for the points – I do that so that the next person staying in the room won’t have to.

The next day, we didn’t try to get out early as it was chilly and we didn’t have a lot on the itinerary for our second day in the Portland area.  We went out to Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse which is on the campus of Southern Maine Community College.  It was a cute lighthouse, but we couldn’t walk out to it because it was too treacherous for me.  There were people who did walk out, but they were younger and more sure-footed than we are.

Next we drove the short distance to Bug Light Park to see the Bug Light lighthouse.  This one we could walk out to, and there were quite a few other people there, too.  While we were there, a couple of tour groups from the cruises that were in port showed up.  So we were glad we were about ready to go when the crowds started coming.

We needed to get gas, so we headed to the Costco that was just a few miles from the hotel.  We also wanted to check out the store and see what they had.  Gas was $4.12/gallon.  The store was sampling a lot of items, and every one of them that day were gluten-free!  That never happens at home, or at least not the days that I go to Costco!

We went back to the hotel for a while and decided to get our laundry done.  The weather was beginning to get cooler and we only brought two pairs of long pants / jeans with us, so we thought we’d better take advantage of the time we had to get reset again.

For our restaurant meal, we went to Docks Seafood in South Portland.  Several years ago, they converted their kitchen to have completely gluten-free fryers which meant I could have fried shrimp again!  I had really enjoyed it when we were in Virginia Beach, and while I had also enjoyed the fried haddock I had in Bar Harbor, my favorite seafood is shrimp.  And at Docks, they served a huge plate of fried popcorn shrimp – even better because I haven’t had popcorn shrimp in ages, either!  In addition to the shrimp (DH got his grilled), we shared an order of salt and vinegar fries.  These are hand-cut and soaked to get the extra starch out, and then brined with the vinegar before being fried.  I know all this because the server was also one of the cooks.  I told DH as we were eating that I wished we had gone to Docks the day before so we could have gone again, that’s how good it was to me!

So, overall thoughts about Portland.  DH wasn’t crazy about the crowds and narrow streets and parking.  He enjoyed the trolley tour, especially the stop at the Portland Head Light.  That was a highlight for him because he recognized the icon that it is.  I loved the Maine Flavor ice cream and the Docks Seafood.  And the Portland Head Light, especially without it being a hassle to get to it.  I also love my new shirts from Life is Good.  One of them says, “Play more, Worry less.”  I’m glad to be retired so I have the time to play more!  The downtown port area was pretty much as I had remembered it from when I was there before.

Portland is the last of the big cities we have on our itinerary, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with paid parking and crowds and narrow streets.  Tune in to our next entry to find out more!

~ Cindy D.

An observatory, a botanical garden, and a maritime museum

After three days at Bar Harbor, it was time to get back on the road.  We’re going home!  Or at least beginning to head south.  But don’t worry, there’s still plenty more that we found to do.

We did a total reset while at Bar Harbor, meaning we adjusted some of our packing and how we wanted things situated in the car for the next phase of travel.  We also needed to restock on a few things such as Diet Coke and salty snacks.  We had passed a Walmart in Ellsworth, Maine, on our way into Bar Harbor, so we stopped there on the morning we left.  We only bought a few things because I didn’t want to pay the deposit for drink bottles that I wouldn’t be able to recoup.  We did find a brand of potato chips (A Taste of Maine) that were really good.

Remember a few days ago when I told you that the front desk clerk at the Eastland Motel had made a recommendation of something to do?  Well this was the day we were going to see to it.  There is a fort in coastal Maine that is called Fort Knox.  It was the original fort, while the one in Kentucky is the second Fort Knox.  This fort held a lot of artillery for the Continental armies during the American Revolutionary war.

But also at the fort sight is access to the Penobscot Narrows Observatory.  This is an observatory in the top of a tower on the bridge that crosses the water right by Fort Knox.  You go up over 400 feet in the elevator and the views are pretty cool.  The story is that when the bridge was being replaced, the wife of the head of the Maine Department of Transportation told her husband that it seemed to her that there was room in the towers to add an observation area, so they did!  The observatory and the fort are run by the state.  There’s a nominal admission fee for both.

I thought the fort was pretty cool.  There were several areas where the walls were lined with red brick that I thought would make a great loft space.  And it was bigger than my parents’ apartment in their assisted living community!

Here are a few pictures from the observatory and of the fort.

We left from the fort headed to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.  This garden is part of the American Horticulture Society’s reciprocal gardens program, so it wasn’t going to cost us anything for entry, so it didn’t matter to me if we spent 10 minutes or 100.  We were watching our time because we had one more stop to make and the weather was beginning to turn drizzly, so we knew we might have to go pretty quickly.  We ended up spending about an hour there and definitely made up the cost of our AHS membership with this visit.

The best part was the dahlia garden was in full bloom, and boy, was she showing off!  The flowers were spectacular!  I think I found another happy spot – definitely another #flowersmakemehappy place!   I think I told every single bloom in the dahlia garden how beautiful she was.  I know I took a lot of photos and even made a video.

Another cool thing that the gardens has are the trolls!  There were two that were easily visited from the gardens while the others were out on the walking trails that we didn’t have time to visit.  They made me laugh and were so sweet… for trolls.

Next we headed to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine.  We had been told this was a “must do” while in this area of Maine, so we made our way from Boothbay to Bath.  This is a site where many ships have been built over the years and they have a lot of history and several exhibits about the ship building process.  The site has several original buildings from when it was an active shipyard.

One fun exhibit at the museum was based on the works of Maine author Chris Van Dusen who has written and illustrated several children's books.  I've place a hold on the ones that are available at our public library so when we get home, I can take a better look.

We had planned to walk to dinner just a few blocks from the hotel where we were staying in Brunswick, Maine, but it was pretty drizzly, so we asked the ladies at the information counter at the Maritime Museum for recommendations for dinner.  They gave us the printed list but then mentioned a favorite of theirs that wasn’t on the paper.  It was called Margaritas which is a chain in the northeast of Mexican food.  That made it an easy choice for us, so we went there after the museum and before checking into the Brunswick Hotel.  The food was good and so plentiful, we probably should have just shared!  I got the loaded nachos as they were able to make it with gluten-free chips. Oh my!

The hotel was nice and it was located in downtown Brunswick where it looked like there would have been things to walk around and see but the weather wasn’t conducive, so we pretty much just got things into the hotel and hung out for the night.  The next morning, we were headed to Portland, Maine, but before leaving Brunswick, I wanted to check out Wildflours Gluten-Free Bakery, a gluten-free bakery which we just don’t have in our area.  I picked up three different muffin flavors and a maple glazed donut.  So good!  It’s nearly a week later as I’m writing this and I just finished the last muffin.  They were so big that I had to cut them in half!

Next up: another day, another lighthouse, and ice cream for lunch.

~ Cindy D.