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Travel Day
Today is travel day. We’re heading from Connecticut to Rhode Island. The drive time is only about 50 minutes but this little jaunt will put us within spitting distance of Newport, Providence, Bristol, Block Island and beaches. Throw in some hiking and biking and we’ll have more to do than our allotted 10 days will allow.
This is only our third move with the RV but our anxiety level is way down. Getting the bus seaworthy and driving the beast isn’t as challenging as we originally feared. It’s pretty much a matter of battening down the hatches, dumping poo, unhooking everything that needs to be unhooked, making sure the kitten doesn’t get crushed in a retracting slide, and we’re ready to go. Set-up is just reversing the process (except we don’t reload poo, at least not straightaway). The whole process might take us an hour, but with practice I think we’ll get it down to 30 minutes or so. Besides, most of the chores needed to disembark are things we have to do anyway – like cleaning and putting stuff away.
We’ve found that traveling like this is far better than herding on to an airplane. It’s even better than a normal road trip that involves packing and unpacking suitcases and a car. Whoever said “getting there is half the fun” must have been smoking crack for that half of the trip. Traveling is painful. Destinations are awesome. So here’s to more destinations with less travel . . . Cheers!
Ordinary, Extraordinary
I’ve never been here before, and it feels a little like an adventure. Not an “Adventure”, with a capital ‘A’, like an Indiana Jones escapade or even a gorilla trek in Gabon (on the to-do list, btw). But a small adventure of exploring something unfamiliar.
And it’s not at all about the destination. There isn’t anything at all “touristy” about this area and no reason why a traveler would venture here, except out of necessity. And indeed, I’m here on a perfectly ordinary errand; to pick-up Shannon at the New London, CT, train station. But it is that juxtaposition between the ordinary and the unfamiliar that has me excited. Every day now is a kind of adventure; an exploration of the unknown.
I wonder if it is possible for the unfamiliar to become routine. I hope not, this is too much fun.
Happy Birthday to Me
For my 39th birthday we undertook the first hike of our new life. This hike, a fairly simple one, is to Kaaterskill Falls, a two drop waterfall in the eastern Catskill mountains of New York.
The hardest part is getting to the trail head, which requires braving oncoming traffic, along winding roads with no shoulder . . .
And navigating the wreckage from over-night storms . . .
But after a short hike, we arrived at the deserted waterfall (one of the benefits of being able to get here during the middle of a work day) and set up a nice picnic on a flat rock overlooking the falls and the pool of water beneath. Happy Birthday to me!
Settling in Nicely
Ever since we decided to do this we’ve worried that Tabitha might have difficulty adjusting to the new environment. For most of her 12 years, she’s lived in the same house and has rarely ventured outside. She’s not much of a traveler, and we didn’t know how she’d cope. But thankfully it looks like she’s settling in nicely, as we all are.
Everywhere Once 