Sprinting (for us) South with a Visit to Hershey PA…

With our plan to slowly move down the east coast of Massachusetts thwarted by hurricane Jose we decided to move inland. Sharon was also able to get an appointment at the Mayo in Jacksonville Florida earlier than we had planned so we decided since rain was predicted for most of New England for the next two days  we'd just make a beeline south. We traveled like we never have before.

Before moving south though we were able to meet up with Imperial Bonita Estates (IBE) friends, Jean and Roy, whom we first met in Florida. They have a place on a lake in northern New Hampshire so we drove up to visit them. What a nice place they have and what a great day we had visiting them. They even treated us to a pontoon boat ride around the lake they are at. What a treat it was getting back on the water. For those of you that don’t know IBE is just north of Naples Florida and it was hit very hard by Hurricane Irma. Our friends have a place there and it will need a lot of work on it before they can get back to their winter home in Florida.

We moved on three consecutive days traveling about 200 miles each day with the endpoint being back at our friend's farm near Toms Brook Virginia. We usually only like to travel less than 150 miles and stay no less than two nights in order to have some time to explore each area a bit before moving on. Sharon also wants to make a short trip back to Raleigh to be a part of Katie's initial wedding gown shopping.  So by making this mad dash we hoped to make up most of the time we need for a short visit to see Katie and arriving in Jacksonville in October.

Our first day was leaving New Hampshire around New York City into Massachusetts and finally as far as the Danbury Connecticut Welcome Center at Exit on 1 Interstate 84N at Mile Marker 2.5. This would be our first ever stopover for the night in a rest area. What made us choose one was Connecticut allows overnight stays in their rest areas and even has a separate parking area for RV’s away from the truckers.

After traveling 210 miles we were happy to settle in and disconnect the car. We still wanted to check out the nearby towns even though we had less time to do so. Danbury Connecticut is a nice sized town with an interesting downtown area but we didn't;t have time to really explore it. We then drove across the New York state line to Brewster NY. It was not as interesting a downtown and much smaller than Danbury but we did find a brewery called Bull & Barrel Brewery. It had decent though not spectacular beer but was WAY too pricey for our tastes.

The next day we traveled through New York and New Jersey into Pennsylvania driving about 275 miles. We pulled into the Hollywood Casino in Grantville PA. They allow overnight parking in their lot (no hook ups for the 2nd night in a row). We set up and unhooked the car and made the drive over to Hershey PA. We took the free tour at the Hershey Chocolate Factory and really enjoyed it. We couldn’t leave without having some Hershey Ice Cream as we remembered loving the Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream enjoyed In Pennsylvania during our first year as full-timers. We also ate out at a small diner that was well, underwhelming so no need to mention it especially since it may have been the worse Philly Cheesesteak I ever had! Bummer. Oh well…

The next day we drove the remaining 210 miles south through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia settling at last at our friend's farm in Virginia… Whew!!! Over 600 miles in three days is traveling fast for us. Normally this would have taken us at least ten days to move this far but at least we are now back on track to continue our slow trek south....…

NOTE: We are near Toms Brook Virginia and will spend about a week here before heading south to spend some time with our daughter who recently got engaged in North Carolina…

Parker River National Wildlife Refuge and a Minke Whale…

We sure enjoyed our last few days in sunny New England. A couple of afternoons we took off to explore Hampton Beach NH and the coastline going south. Hampton Beach is quite large and nice but certainly has some pricey parking for visitors who wish to spend some time there. Fortunately it is off season so we found a lot of state parks along the coast which have no fees for entering at this time of year.

We stopped at several of the state parks north of Hampton Beach such as Rye Harbor State Park, Cable Beach and North Hampton Beach. The rocky shoreline along this part of New England is quite scenic and fun to explore especially during low tide. Our driving days started out overcast but ended up exceptionally nice as the day wore on.

The best encounter was at Seabrook Town Beach in Massachusetts as we saw a whale not far from the shore. A fellow we spoke with said there had been sightings of a Humpback Whale and that is why he came hoping to see it. I am pretty sure that is what I saw rolling in the sea since it was large and greyish like the many humpbacks I have seen before in Antarctic waters in my past travels…

A while later we spotted a Northern Minke whale actively feeding really close to the shoreline. I was able to snap a few photos although they aren’t great. However, if you click on them to enlarge them you can see some of the fish scattering as it breached to feed on them. How super cool it was to see my first ever Northern Minke!!! We happily watched through our binoculars until the whale turned out to sea.  Awesome.

South of Seabrook MA we stopped to explore the really cool little town of Newburyport MA. It turned out to be a really neat little historic town with several old buildings to explore. We also browsed a consignment shop called Oldies which had several interesting antiques. One table I would have surely bought if we had a house,  whew… close call!

After exploring Newburyport we drove further south over to Plum Island. On the far south end of Plum Island is the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. What an absolutely beautiful, pristine and natural beach we found on the southernmost tip of the refuge.

There was a beautiful flat sandy beach on the point  and a small hill adjacent to it.  It was near this hill where we found a fabulous rocky beach. The rocks along the beach which are normally underwater were exposed due to low tide and made the rocky beach profoundly interesting and surreal. We simply loved seeing this cool beach on the wildlife refuge.

After finishing up our drive we of course had to go back to Smuttynose Brewery near our RV park to have one more of their delicious craft beers. We also stocked up on our favorite Rhye IPA  which lucky for us was on sale for $10 per six pack. We now have more beer in our RV than we have ever had but I will be sure not to let it go past its peak freshness date…

NOTE: We decided to put some miles between us and Hurricane Jose since it will likely impact any fun we wanted to have along the Massachusetts coastline so we have scooted about 600 miles south over the last three days to Virginia…

Looking for Pilgrims in all the wrong places…

  “The Plymouth Rock”

Cool morning air greeted us on Friday morning as the temperature dipped into the mid forties but as soon as the sun rose the temperature rose nicely into the mid sixties. A good day for a drive to Plymouth, Massachusetts, a place where the Pilgrims landed in the Mayflower… or so we were told!

             

One of the first places most people go when visiting Plymouth is the famous Plymouth Rock. As we were taught in grade school this is where the Pilgrims first landed and founded Plymouth Colony in 1620 after disembarking the Mayflower. But this is not necessarily all true says Wikipedia…

“a 94 year old Elder of the church named Thomas Faunce (who was the town record keeper for most of his adult life), identified the precise rock his father had told him was the first solid land the Pilgrims set foot upon. (However, the Pilgrims first landed near the site of modern Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod in November 1620 before moving to Plymouth).”

So the Pilgrims first landed in P-town (Provincetown as the locals call it) but Plymouth can still lay their make the claim for some fame by saying that it is where the Pilgrims first made a permanent colony. So to see the infamous rock in the harbor of Plymouth you need to lok for a structure that loos like a shrine of sorts where the tourists are flocking to see and photograph it.

Plymouth is a nice little town and very friendly for walkers. There is pay parking everywhere and the closer you get to the rock the more expensive the parking. However, if you park in town, a mere two blocks from the harbor, parking is free along the side of the road for a two hour limit. From here we walked the Pilgrim trail through the town of Plymouth and took in all the sights: the rock inscribed with the year 1620, the Plymouth harbor, the Mayflower two docked harbor side, the old churches, the William Bradford statue, burial hill and other 1600-1800’s sights.

After enjoying our time in Plymouth it was time to tend to some chores as the laundry basket was overflowing so off to the coin cleaners we went. We have a few more (chilly days) left here at the Cape Cod Canal before we head to Connecticut with Monday our next moving day… and no, we didn’t find any Pilgrims!!!

More Beaches and a word about our park…

Wednesday was another fabulous sunny day near 80 so we once again made a trek to the beaches and this time we focused on those around the Chatham, MA area. There are some great beaches in this area and Chatham has a lot of beaches but the best of the best in Chatham in our opinion was South beach.

South beach not only had really good birding along the shoreline but as an added bonus we were able to see both species of seal common to this part of the cape, the grey seal and the harbor seal. We sat near the tip of South Beach to enjoy our lunch while watching a parade of seals swimming just offshore. There were literally hundreds of seals swimming from our right to our left but never back the other way… we thought Why not??? Most of the seals paused to stare at us allowing great photo opportunities. 

We may never know why they continued in only one direction but it was a hoot to watch the seals and gulls gallivanting and strutting their best stuff. After lunch we randomly stopped at various beaches on our way back to the park along the south side of Cape Cod. We referred to these beaches as the angry beaches since the surf was more aggressive and the wave action more intense. Horseshoe crab exoskeletons were littering the shoreline along with abundant sea grass.

  

Thursday we decided to stay closer to our park as we really hadn’t spent any time at it yet. So the plan was for a morning bike ride and our decision was to ride from the park to the west end of the Cape Cod Canal and then back to the east end of the canal. This circumnavigation of the Cape Cod Canal meant our bike ride would be around 13 miles.  Since it was relatively flat it made for a real pleasant ride.

With weather looming on the horizon (a cold front was on it way) we decided the afternoon would be spent on the beach adjacent to the park. About 1/4 mile away from our site is a long (mostly deserted) beach. We plopped our newly purchased beach chairs (only $6.50 each at the closeout sale here on the Cape). The waves were slowly lapping the shoreline and the weather was perfect except for the clouds on the horizon… after a few hours the park ranger came by warning us of a storm moving our way with 50 mph winds and hail.Amazingly, on the way back from the beach there were thousands of tree swallows swarming over the grassy covered dunes. It felt a bit like an old Alfred Hitchcock movie…Sigh,  we reluctantly left the beach and went home to await the storm… some rain, no wind, no hail… so no bad storm for us however the temperature dipped down into the forties here tonight and will only reach the mid 60’s for the next several days.

 

What’s next? We booked a spot near Mystic Connecticut for our next stop and will leave here on Monday heading west. Looking over the route to see how we will best avoid traffic and tolls in and around the New York city area as well as Philly and DC further south.

     

Cape Cahhhd National Pahhhk….

We left the Alfalfa Farm Winery at around 10:00 pm since we only had to drive about 100 miles to just the other side of Boston. We elected to take the inner loop around Boston so we left the winery on Highway 1 and then got onto Interstate 95 (the inner loop). Traffic was fairly light and then we got onto state route 3 which took us to our next stay at Scusset Beach State Reservation.

Reader Ed told us about this park and the location was perfect for our needs so we made the reservation and Ed was right… this is a great park. State owned, large sites, 30 amps with water and right on the Cape Cod Canal. We got settled into our site and did our normal drive around the area to see “where we were.”

The next morning we woke up to a glorious sunny day and the high was expected to be around 80. This called for a beach day!!! As a result we planned to take the hour plus drive to the end of Cape Code north of Provincetown to see Cape Cod National Park. The drive on highway 6 to the end of the Cape was pleasant and mostly wooded and the traffic was fairly light. Once we got to the end of the Cape the scenery changed from a forested area to that of a surreal landscape of rolling sand dunes and wide sandy beaches…

We made our first stop at Herring Cove Beach and what a stunning sight it is… the beach is wide and sandy and the water is blue as the Antarctic ice and just about as chilly. There weren’t many people on the beach but those that were had this almost hypnotic look about them as the waves lapped the shoreline with that soft hypnotic crashing sound. The sand at the Cape is coarser than most beach sand we were accustomed to which was nice as it was easier to clean off but it was harder to walk in as your feet would sink deeper into the sand (even in the wet sand).

We walked the shoreline for a ways and noticed that some RV’s were right on the beach and wondered how they got there. Later we found out you can get a permit to go off the road through the park service. There were many requirements to be able to get this permit but having a full sized spare and a shovel kept us from being able to even consider it.

The rest of the day was spent hiking and sitting on the beach as we visited other beach sites such as Race Point, Marconi Point, and Nauset Light Beach. The highlights of the day were not only the pristine beaches and the landscapes of water and rolling sand dunes but we also got to see the piping plovers (a life list bird for me) and a large group of feeding grey seals off the coast of Nauset Light Beach.

As with most National Parks Cape Cod is another jewel that our government was wise enough to preserve for all of us to enjoy…

       

It continues to amaze me as to how we are always so tired after a day of lounging at the beach… what is it about coastal environments that seem to just suck the energy out of you?