Road Trip for Three, 2011-12

Dave says:

Here's a summary of our travels to date, to be expanded on by several future postings. Text only for now. Pictures have been taken, but right now you'll have to take the standard one-way trip to the future to see them...

After leaving Barretts' on the 19th of July for a night in a very nice lean-to in Baxter State Park, we successfully climbed to the highest point in Maine on July 20th, up Katahdin's Cathedral trail (which Isabel didn't like at all). That evening we headed back to meet Anne Huberman at her amazing camp at Sunset Lake in New Hampshire for a relaxing day there on the 21st. It was a rather full day of hiking, so we didn't actually make it to New Hampshire until after midnight. Thanks for staying up (and/or taking naps) so late for us, Anne!

We had to get to Sunset Lake in time to relax, to make up for the 22nd, when we had to be in Syracuse to meet the movers and get 536 Allen Street cleaned out... and also get to Strong Avenue for Isabel's surprise birthday party (!) Rachel, Lauren, Olivia, Hannah, and Orla were all there waiting for her.

The next week was spent in Syracuse at Valarie and Olivia's house, with Isabel and Olivia going to MPH camp with and cooking up a storm in the mornings, and Calvin at Discovery Camp with Max in Thornden Park. The only unfortunate event was Calvin getting a bump on the head in a kid-to-kid collision on Thursday morning, which was painful for a few days but didn't seem to do any permanent damage.

After an unexpected road trip to Iowa City (see the next posting) we headed back through Wisconsin and across Lake Michigan to the house of Debra Johnson and Chanol Ezekiel Wilkie-Jones (see the following posting) and back to Rachel May's house for a night on August 6th. I made it
to my lecture in Norway, NY (about Adirondack Hermit Noah John Rondeau and his coded journals).

We headed on to Boston rather late in the evening after stopping for dinner at the always-hospitable Streznewski-and-Reillys in Albany. Alex and Bob are not hyphenated, you see, they just have different names, like me and Sarah... but they are both good cooks. Unlike me and Sarah. Meaning, unlike me. I'm still a not-good cook, unless you like omelettes.

Back to the subject at hand: we arrived in Boston far to late (or early) to want to wake anybody up, so our wonderful cozy cartop tent came into play again: we spent the latter part of the night in a comfortable corner of a Blue Hills Reservation parking lot in Milton, just a few minutes from Olivia's dad's house in Canton. I was familiar with this part of the outskirts of Boston from my three weeks at Curry College earlier in the summer, attending Wolfram Research's NKS Summer Institute.

In the morning, August 8th, we showed up to meet Olivia and Bryan for a trip into Boston via the handy-dandy public transportation network that starts right outside their house; we spent an enjoyable day in the city, mostly at the Science Museum. The next day we took Olivia to Nantasket Beach for three, shall we say, refreshing dips in the North Atlantic. And some ice cream. Lots of people on the beach, but not too many in the water for some reason...

That evening we headed down to Rhode Island to the Fisherman's Memorial Beach Campground, in hopes of seeing some more slightly warmer ocean (and to check Rhode Island and Connecticut off our Grand National Tour list.) It was a warm windy evening, so we did get down to the ocean late that night -- a very nice walk, with some fairly impressive waves rolling in, but the beach was very rocky there and we wouldn't have been tempted to swim again anyway.

On August 10th Inconvenient Reality intervened, in the form of an earache that started bothering Calvin after midnight, and spread to both ears during the day and became various degrees of excruciating the following night, when we returned to Sunset Lake to say hello to Joel Huberman (who had arrived from Buffalo after our last visit), Anne and her brother, Joel and Anne's daughter Amy, Amy's partner Alena, Amy and Alena's son Alexander, and Rachel Massey and her friend Kate.

A trip to the Emergency Room in Peterborough seemed to straighten Calvin out pretty quick -- so now I'm making Calvin choke down seven days' worth of disgusting pink medicine, and darkly speculating that he would have gotten better just as fast without it. In any case, Calvin was in fine form for a final evening of "Oh, Hell" around a card table... I did fairly well, but failed to take first place due to Joel's evil and effortless low-bidding strategy.

Back to AlexnBob's in Albany on Friday night, August 12th, where it was proven by test that four kids can fit in a cartop tent overnight, along with extraordinary quantites of plastic playthings. And Saturday at a civilized late-morning hour we took off for Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and spent the late afternoon at Kelly and Fiona's grandparents' house and at the Kids' Castle, Doylestown's curiously appropriate Leathers playground.

On Sunday, August 14th, we spent the day wandering through Henry Mercer's amazing reinforced-concrete buildings, Fonthill and the Mercer Museum, with Bob and Alex and Kelly and Fiona -- but that's another weblog posting and will be told another time.

Then we were thinking of drifting south from there to the D.C. area so as to be there for our scheduled White House tour on August 18th... but there weren't quite enough dots to connect. Then I realized that Binghamton was a nice easy drive from Doylestown, right on the way to Syracuse -- and a quick call confirmed that Lizabeth Cain and son Orion were there that evening and didn't mind us dropping by. Erik Hoover and other-son Tim were in Seattle, but that's just an excuse for another visit later...!

Thus we got to show off the cartop tent again, to an appreciative audience -- Erik and Beth have a car with an appropriate roof rack, so maybe they'll borrow the tent the next time they're driving out through Iowa City... Dinner, good night's sleep, breakfast, lunch, yum. More ice cream, yum^2!

Off to Syracuse on Monday for a day of dealing with various house and bank and travel details, and one night camping out at 536 Allen -- only one tenant had moved in yet, and anyway we have to maintain residency ourselves, or else fill out piles of annoying paperwork.

On Tuesday the 16th, after a morning trip with Bela and Max to see a 10am one-dollar showing of _Alpha and Omega_ at Shoppingtown Mall, and lunch at the Martin-and-Harris's, we finally headed for the Adirondacks... to a birthday party, oddly enough, of someone the kids had never met: a surprise 86th birthday party was happening in Thurman for Myrtle Putnam Buyce.

When she was Isabel's age, Myrtle was living at Putnam Farm at the base of Crane Mountain, back in the 1940s when the place was still a working farm -- and the blacksmith shop next to the Putnam farmhouse was still decades away from yielding up its timbers to be reconstituted as the Buffalo Boys' cabin (now Sarah's, Calvin's, Isabel's, and mine) in its current location. Myrtle told a story about how she and her siblings, Jay the youngest being age 3, climbed Crane Mountain and got caught in an impressive thunderstorm... an adventure worthy of the Crane Mountaineer record books, for certain!

After the party we headed on to North Creek to check out the huge mosaic opposite Sarah's Bakery (different Sarah) and talk to Kate about the progress since Isabel and Calvin worked on it during the Art and Nature Camp week(s). Then out River Road to say hello to the grand-Greenes and eat some much-appreciated dinner, and then on to the cabin in Johnsburg for the night -- finally! First overnight there since the Tour officially began. Or has it even begun yet? Maybe this is all just summer vacation.

On August 17th we climbed Crane Mountain in the morning -- beautiful day but the swimming is getting a bit brisk again. Nice to have the inner tubes up there by the pond... and I think it's time to get started on The Raft. In the afternoon we headed for North Bethesda, Maryland, or rather Garrett Park, where Tara and Shep Smith recently moved with kids Morgan and Ben, to be closer to Shep's job. Unfortunately Shep and the kids were in Connecticut for the week, but again there's nothing wrong with return visits, as long as we don't wear out our welcome...!

Thursday the 18th Tara gave us a lift over to the Grosvenor station on the Red Line for a quick trip into the heart of Washington, D.C., where we arrived in plenty of time for our 10:30am White House tour. Had to hide our backpack with camera and water bottle and so on, though, in a low-traffic part of the shrubbery outside the Commerce Department across the street -- no such appurtenances are allowed in the White House, and no lockers seem to be available nearby to put such things in. Kind of an odd bit of security theater, but common sense does seem to be a bit thin on the ground in D.C. these days.

After the White House tour -- self-guided and somewhat anticlimactic (it certainly is an impressive building, but all of its official occupants were hiding from the flood of tourists, as they probably do every day before noon) -- we headed on down to the National Mall to wander the Museum of American History and the new Museum of the American Indian, where we were advised to get lunch.

Wow! Best museum cafeteria food ever! I think Calvin enjoyed his maple-cured turkey with wild cherry jelly just as much as I liked my pulled buffalo-meat sandwich, and Isabel didn't have any complaints about her Mesoamerican taco or the fry bread with honey, either.

We walked past the Washington Monument and tried to get to the Lincoln Memorial, but they'd gone and dug up the reflecting pool -- what a mess! -- and a thunderstorm was threatening. Also our feet were aching that particular painful ache that only walking around in a museum can cause -- we hadn't had any problem climbing up and down Crane Mountain the day before, after all, but here we were after just a couple of miles wanting nothing more than to go lie down somewhere. Is gravity heavier in museums, or what is the operating theory here?

On the walk back to Tara's house from the Grosvenor station, Calvin and I picked up a twenty-foot bamboo stalk, and I sawed it up into several pieces and tied them together into a gun or an axe or something -- all of which was good for just about as much entertainment for Calvin as the entire trip through the National Mall and all its museums. Boys will be boys still...

Friday we left the D.C. area and headed for -- of all things -- New York City, or rather Jersey City... as if we hadn't had enough big cities already by this time! But it was very much a worthwhile trip, since we were able to meet up with our cousins (the kids' cousins-once-removed) Amy and Kit Wiitanen, who are working in NYC at the moment. We arrived rather late, but early enough move in and inaugurate Amy's new apartment at 84-and-one-half Morris Street in Jersey City, and to clean out all the remaining slices from the pizza place next door.

The next morning, Saturday the 20th, we had a wonderful breakfast at the Brownstone Diner and Pancake Factory, and then an easy drive from Jersey City through New York City and Connecticut to Pinewoods. Valarie passed us on the Mass Pike, but she had to go pick up Olivia so we still got to Pinewoods first -- ha! -- mere minutes before Sarah arrived from the Boston airport, having been shuttled to Pinewoods by her friend and fellow medical-school sufferer Jessica Shanahan.

The Tour will start again in a couple of weeks, after Pinewoods is over, followed by the "Dave Camp" week in the Adirondacks with Calvin's and Isabel's friends from Syracuse.

Further bulletins as events warrant.