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.

Accommodations? Check!

We've had some cooler, dare I say it, fall-like weather this week, and that put me in the mood to take action on our Northeast States trip.  My social media feeds have filled up with the blazing colors of leaf-changes and cozy photos of New England in the fall.  While we'll start our trip while it's still summer, we'll still be traveling over a week into autumn.  

The calendar said I could make our accommodation reservations for most days, so my travel credit card got a work out holding rooms at hotel chains and independent motels throughout the 14 states we'll be visiting.  We also have two nights at Skyland in Shenandoah National Park - it's on the way home but will be a nice resting place before the last push... kinda like when we spent a few days in Gatlinburg as a last hurrah on our Middle States trip. 

We're also splurging on a night at the Hotel Hershey.  In 2015 we made a trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania, and had the opportunity to walk through this historic hotel, and at the time agreed that it would be very cool to stay there.  We didn't think then that we would ever actually make it back to Hershey, but Google maps presented a route that would take us through there.  And don't worry, I've budgeted shopping money for while we're there - and we're taking ice-packs to keep any chocolate we buy from melting on the way home!  DH is excited about getting a new Hershey t-shirt and a new Hershey's souvenir cup.

I still have a few more reservations to make because for some reason, the specific hotels haven't opened their booking windows yet.  And as per usual, I'll be re-checking the ones we've made to see if I can catch a lower available rate or special offer before we travel. 

~ Cindy D.