Day 13, NY and home

Our last day. We had one stop, Allegany State Park, in western NY. Here we did a short hike to Bridal Veil Falls, Thunder Rocks, and the Stone tower. After an hour or so in the park we piled in the car for our 9-hour drive home. Stopped in Cleveland for lunch and got home about 6pm central time.

Day 12, New York

Today we visited Catskill State Park and the site of the Woodstock concert (40th anniversary today) in central NY and Letchworth State Park in western NY. We also made a stop in Binghampton, NY to visit two old college friends I hadn't seen in over twenty years.

Our first stop was Kaaterskill Falls, where we saw the tallest waterfall in NY. It wasn't a long hike (about a mile round trip) to the falls but it was so humid outside, we were sweating 5 minutes into the hike (except for Jessie). We stayed long enough to get a couple of pictures (the morning sun didn't help with the lighting) and left the park before it became too hot and humid.

Our next stop was Woodstock. Here we visited the monument and walked around the field where 500,000 hippies attended the 3-day concert. Since it was the 40th anniversary, we expected to a see concert or something taking place across the enormous field, but there was nothing. Just an empty field, and suprisingly very few people. The monument was rather unique. It had an image of a hand strumming a guitar as well as some words engraved on it. The heat was really beginning to get to us (and being in an area with absolutely no shade didn't help either) so we headed back to the car and blasted the air conditioning.

We then drove to Binghampton to visit old friends. We couldn't stay long as we had to drive half way across the state to our last stop of the day.

Letchworth State Park is mainly known for its three magnificient waterfalls. The upper, middle, and lower falls are the largest we've seen since our visit to Niagara Falls a few years back. We had just enough time to see all the falls, a deer, and a couple snakes before leaving for our last hotel stay of our vacation.

One short stop to Alleghany State Park in the morning and then a long drive home.

Day 11, Adirondacks and Western Massachusetts

Today started slow with a stop to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory. I was assured on the phone that the factory would be making bears today but when we got there we were told otherwise. We decided the tour wasn't worth the entrance fee so we left and made our way to a ferry across Lake Champlain to upstate New York and then on to western Massachusetts.

Our first real stop was at the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center, where we got to go bobsledding down the concrete track used in the '80 Olympics. The ride lasted 39.07 seconds, as we flew down the 1/2 mile course at 55 mph. It was so much fun, it immediately became one of my favorites for the vacation so far. Afterwards, we took a tour of the newer course, which is used for training. We got the opportunity to walk down this mile long course which would be used for bobsledding, luge, and the skeleton. After we were done with this part of the Training Center, we made our way over to the Ski Jump. We had to take a chair lift and then an elevator up 26 stories in order to see the ramp the skiers jump from. It was hard to imagine that anyone would be crazy enough to launch themselves into the air at a height like this. There were also some people training in a pool down below, so we watched them do a couple jumps too. The passes we had received also got us onto a gondola which took us the summit of Little Whiteface Mountain. The ride up was really fun, but we didn't stay for long; we wanted to go the summit of the actual Whiteface Mountain. We drove 8 miles up an extemely bumpy road in order to get the the summit of this mountain. From the summit we had a great view of all the surrounding mountains and Lake Placid.

We decided to end the day by visiting Mount Greylock in Massachusetts. At the summit was a monument dedicated to soliders of all wars. The monument looked like a lighthouse, and had quotes about death engraved all around it. We didn't stay here for long either because it started raining shortly after we arrived. We did have enough time to get in a couple pictures before it really started pouring, so we left the park and drove to our hotel.

Day 10, Vermont

We started the day off by visiting the Cabot Creamery, where we saw how cheese was made and packaged. The factory was only making cheddar today, but it was really neat to see how all the machines worked together in order to create giant blocks of cheese. We tasted a wide variety of cheeses and dips, my favorite being the Jalapeno Cheese.
We then headed over to the Ben and Jerry's, where we took a tour of the factory. The tour started off with a movie on how Ben and Jerry got their little ice cream business started, and was followed by a talk on how the machinery works to create ice cream through an 8-step process. The tour ended with tasting a sample of the flavor Image Whirl Peace, which was absolutely delicious.

We canceled our Camel's Hump State Park hiking plans for today and added the Von Trapps Lodge to our schedule (this was the singing family from The Sound of Music). The Lodge was a beautiful wooden building which overlooked a blanket of tree covered mountains. We didn't stay long though; we just took a couple of pictures and walked around the lobby and gift shop.

With the day coming to an end, we headed to our hotel. When we opened the door to our room we could instantly smell a strong smoke odor. We notified the front desk, but they told us that since we made reservations through Orbitz, a third party, they had given our room to someone who ordered directly through them. With all the other rooms full, we demanded that our room be sprayed. But when an employee came out from behind the desk with a Ka-Boom bottle in hand, we knew immediately that we had to move to another hotel. So after a series of phone calls and internet searches we now had a room in a hotel that was 100% smoke-free. With a much nicer room that doesn't reek of smoke, there's no doubt we'll all sleep good tonight.

Tomorrow we head to upstate New York. Adirondacks and Lake Placid. Hard to believe we head home in three days.

Day 9, Maine and New Hampshire

Alli: Everyone thinks hell is a place down under, but let me tell you, we found it 4,000 feet up a mountain in New Hampshire, and after hiking for 7 hours we realized that we needed a vacation from our vacation.

Jessie: In a 9.5 mile hike, you would expect to drink a lot of water. Dad and Alli drank about a gallon a piece, and sweated off at least five pounds, while I only drank 8 ounces and never broke a sweat. Before the hike both Dad and Alli planned to break me because it was going to be the highest mountains we had ever climbed, but unfortunately they broke themselves down while I remained in fairly good shape.

Alli: The trail was no doubt the hardest hike we've ever done, but the view at the top was spectacular. We hiked along the ridge (Appalachian Trail) of 3 mountains, taking lots of pictures of the valley below. Everything below us was covered in a blanket of trees, with the shadow of passing clouds rolling over them. We were exhausted and running low on water by the time we reached the summit of the third mountain and decided to rest for awhile before heading down the path. Thankfully though, there was a rest stop/shelter called the Greenleaf Hut that provided us with lemonade, shade, and an opportunity to refill our water bottles. We ate what remained of our lunch here before continuing our decent down the mountain. It took about an hour and forty five minutes to finish the trail, and were so happy when the parking lot came into view. Everyone was so sore so we decided to take a few Advil and make our dinner fast and super-sized so we could relax and wash off in our hotel room. We also decided to cancel the hiking trip we had planned for tomorrow (we had done enough hiking to last us the whole week), leaving Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory and Cabot Creamery as the only things left on our to-do-list.

Mark: While I wouldn't want to hike these trails again I'm glad we did because the view at the top was amazing. The girls were real troopers with only a bit of complaining. Tomorrow we get to sleep-in and have an easy travel day.

p.s. We started the day in Maine at Grafton Notch State Park. The only thing we did here was to see Screw Auger Falls and Gorge. Very pretty, short hike, and well worth the 20 mile detour.

Day 8, Acadia National Park, Maine

Today we spent the entire day in Acadia NP. Here we explored the rocky coastline of Maine. We found anemones, urchins, sea stars, crabs, sand dollars, and much more. We stopped all over the park, what a beautiful place. The view from Cadillac Mt. was amazing. The only thing that could have made the day better would have been sunshine, overcast most of the day.

Tomorrow we spend the day hiking in Franconia Notch SP in New Hampshire.

Day 7, Salem, Mass. and Maine

We started today by going to Salem Massachusetts. We toured The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Birthplace and The Witch House (where the trials took place). We also walked about town for a while, very historic. After eating lunch at a local eatery we decided it was time to move on. While driving out of town Jessie remembered that she had left her camera at the restaurant. So we drove back to town, found a parking space, with time still on the meter, and ran to the restaurant only to notice the camera was gone. We asked at the counter and luckily someone had turned it in, crisis averted.

It was now time to head north to Bar Harbor. Along the way we made a short stop at Wolfes Neck Woods State Park in Maine. Here we walked the rocky coastline, watched a nesting pair of Osprey, and hiked about 1 1/2 miles through the woods.

Looking forward to Acadia National Park tomorrow.

Day 6, Massachusetts

Day six was another busy day. Stops included Cape Cod, Plymouth Rock, and the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston.

We arrived at Cape Cod early in the morning so we'd be able to have a good portion of the beach to ourselves. The water was rather cold, but that didn't stop us from having a fun time. We found a lot of cool rocks (some made excellent skipping stones), dunked Jessie several times, and walked up and down the rocky shoreline. Later we visited the Highland's Lighthouse and overlook. Although they both offered the same view of the beach, it was still neat to see the prism in the lighthouse museum.

Our next stop was Plymouth Rock, which lasted about 20 minutes. Plymouth Rock was a giant boulder on display outside in its own little monument. It had the year 1620 carved into it, and at first glance I thought it read 1020. I had to do a couple of math problems and some history reviews in my head before I realized I misread the date. We also walked down to the harbor where a replica of the Mayflower was docked. All in all, it was a short trip but definitely worth the stop.

The last thing on our list was the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston. We took a subway into the city, and then followed a brick line that passed all the historical buildings and monuments. Since the day was already coming to an end, we weren't able to do as much as the trail as we would have liked. Some of the major things we saw were Paul Revere's House and Old North Church (a lot of the locations were featured in the movie National Treasure). Boston was such a beautiful city, and I could really see myself living or going to college here. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we would have enjoyed spending the whole day in Boston, but we still did pretty well with making the most out of the time we had.

Day 5, Connecticut and Rhode Island

We started the day off by first making a quick stop at West Rock Ridge State Park and then driving to Mystic Connecticut. The small town reminded us of our trip to Colonial Williamsburg because of all the shops, churches, shipsmiths, and public demonstrations. We walked around for a couple hours, and got the chance to go aboard a few of the older ships. These ships were all at least a hundred years old, and it was neat to see how specific parts had to be hand made. The photo show how skilled we are at working the ship timbers.

About a mile down the road was the Mystic Aquarium. It was a rather small aquarium, compared to the Shedd, but it was still worth seeing. The first thing we got in line for was the XD Theater. We expected to see a really cool movie in 3-D with moving seats but it turned out to be one of the lamest things we've ever seen. The rest of the aquarium was enjoyable though. Highlights included a sea lion show, petting crabs, rays, and sea stars, and feeding parakeits by hand.

Our dinner stop was Mystic Pizza, which became famous after being the location of one of Julia Roberts first movies. Our half cheese - half chicken pizza was delicious, and we highly recommend it to anyone planning on visiting the area.

After our time in Mystic, we went to Beavertail State Park in Rhode Island. We only stayed about 45 minutes. This gave us time enough to walk along the rocky shores and explore the tidepools. Jessie managed to rescue a small fish that was beached on the shore. We watched as Jessie nursed it back to life and helped it to swim again. We took a couple of pictures before heading out, and after all the fun we had today, we couldn't wait for the upcoming beaches we'd get to visit tomorrow. Cape Cod.

Day 4, New York City

We started the day in New Jersey, taking a ferry to the Statue of Liberty. We had made reservations weeks in advance to go up to the crown. Lucky we did. By doing so we got to go to the front of the 300-or-so person line and save two plus hours of extra waiting time. Only groups of 10 were allowed in the crown at a time, and it took us about 5 minutes to climb the 354 stairs. The view from the top was amazing. In the crown we had the opportunity to get a closer look at the tablet and torch, and experience a great view of NYC. Afterwards, we made our way back down through the observation deck and pedestal, taking dozens of pictures along the way. The statue was so beautiful, we had to capture it from every angle.

After we were finished with Lady Liberty, we made our way to the Staten Island Ferry. We had so many things we wanted to do in New York, we didn't know where to start. The first thing we needed to do though was purchase a Metro Card (pre-loadable subway ticket) as we didn't want to have to walk all over Manhattan. We made our way to the furthest thing on our to-do-list which was Central Park. It's hard to believe that a park, hundreds of acres in size, would be in the middle of such a large city. We walked around for about two hours, mainly stopping to see the fountains, Shakespeare's Garden, and Belvidere Castle.

Our next stop was 30 Rockefeller Plaza. There wasn't a lot we could do here except take pictures of the Today Show building and the golden statue of Prometheus, but it was still worth the stop as we are all big fans of the 30 Rock TV show.

We were working our way back to the Staten Island Ferry and made our last stop the World Trade Center area. We were expecting to see some kind of memorial, but the Freedom Tower was already under construction. The whole area was blocked off by a giant curtain, but we managed to find an opening where we could look in. Standing there it was hard to imagine the devastation that took place on 9/11.

We then hurried to catch the next available Staten Island Ferry, wanting to be able to have a bench seat after all the walking we had done today. Once we were back at our car, we drove off to our hotel in New Haven, CT with another day's worth of site-seeing behind us.

Day 3, Northern NJ

Our first stop today was at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. A daunting 3 mile hike that took us up 700 feet in elevation to the summit of Mount Tammany, which overlooked the the Water Gap and Pennsylvania. At the beginning of the trail we noticed a sign saying black bears were active in this area. On our way down the mountain we were lucky enough to see one a couple hundred feet off the trail as it casually ate blackberries.

After spending a couple hours at the Gap we headed out to Wawayanda State Park. We were originally suppose to reach the park in an hour, but when we were a mile or so away from the entrance we hit a detour which took us on a 1.5 hour search for a way in. Twice we called the park office to ask for directions, but their advice only took us back and forth between both ends of the detour. Our next plan was to ask the locals, but those we talked to couldn't remember the street names, and one old man kept refering to us as "foriegn explorers." Determined to get to the trail (it had now become our mission) we decided to go around the barriers we had come across on our first attempt through. It was just our luck that the hours spent searching for Wawayanda were all for nothing; the road that was supposidly "under construction" didn't have a single traffic cone on it past the initial barrier. Sick of having to drive around town for so long, we were all reluctant to go hiking, but since we were already there we decided to give it a try. The trail was by no means worth it. The poorly marked, difficult trail led us through swamp-like conditions and made this stop fun for no one. When we finally got to our destination, a lake at the top of the mountain, we were so tired that the only thing we did was take a couple of pictures before returning done the mountian. We hurried back to the car and immediatly drove to our hotel.

As I'm writing this entry I can look out our window and see New York City with the impressive Empire State Building dominating the skyline. I can't wait until tomorrow, when we finallly get to travel to the Big Apple.

Day 2, Eastern PA

The girls are sleeping so I'll write the blog tonight. On day two we had another long drive to eastern Pennsylvania. Here we had stops at Ricketts Glen and Hickory Run State Parks. At Ricketts Glen we did an amazing 4.5 mile loop hike where we saw about 20 waterfalls that ranged anywhere from just a few feet to 90 feet high. If you're ever in this area I highly recommend that you put this on your list. This was a last minute add to our trip but will probably wind up being one of our favorite stops.

Hickory Run was a great way to end our day. Here we saw the boulder field, a National Natural Landmark, which is an area about 400' x 1800' in size. No hiking just scrambling over the rock field. With the sun low in the sky and dark clouds on the horizon the lighting made for some amazing photos.

I did discover that I left our tickets to the Statue of Liberty at home but was fortunate to have saved the email with a PDF file attached and was able to reprint them at our hotel tonight.

Easy day tomorrow. Short miles and just a couple quick stops. Might even have some extra time in New York City. Alli is looking forward to the Big Apple, personally I'll be glad to have it behind us, I much prefer the hiking aspect of our trips.

Day 1, Cleveland, OH

Our vacation started with a 3:00am wake up call. After finishing off as many leftovers as we could manage we made our 7 hour drive to Cleveland. Our first stop was the Great Lake Science Center. With 3 levels of hands-on experiments, we explored everything from plasma balls to water vortexes to smoke generators. We also had the opportunity to watch the movie Galapagos in the Omnimax theater, where we learned about the research scientists are gathering in order to continue the work of Darwin's theory of evolution. The last thing we did before we left was the Center's new Darwin exhibit, where Jessie had a little trouble following the clearly marked path. Seeing her almost walk through doors that would have surely set off an alarm was nearly worth the entrance fee itself.

Since we wouldn't have been able to check into our hotel right away, we decided to make our way over to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first thing we saw was Johnny Cash's tour bus. I was so excited, I walked right past it. We didn't have enough time to make a day out of this museum, so we decided to see how much we could access without paying for an entrance ticket. I will be the first to tell you that the Hall of Fame had some of the whitest walls I'd ever seen in my life. So to summarize in two words: WORTH IT.

Our next stop was our fabulous hotel room, where we were greeted with unmade beds and a very distinct smell. Luckily, we were upgraded to a nicer corner room with a much bigger bathroom. But with daylight remaining and 1/3 of our family wanting to hike, it only made sense to head out to Cuyahoga National Park while we still could. It was a nice park that had trails leading through caves and ledges, which we really enjoyed. We stayed for about an hour, trying to take as many decent pictures as we could with the dwindling sunlight, before grabbing a bite to eat at a local Mexican restaurant. The food was tasty but we had filled up on chips and salsa so fast we didn't have much room left for the main course. To end the day we made our way back to our hotel, spending the rest of the night watching 30 Rock and Conan O'Brian.

Pre trip planning

Our trip this year is to the northeast. We have stops in PA, NJ, NY, CT, RI, MA, ME, NH, and VT. We will leave on Thursday, August 6th and return on the 18th.