After a summer on the road, we are back in in Salem, MA!!! Road Trip 2017 has come to an end... :(
We are starting to acclimatize to life off of the road... sleeping in the same bed... waking up in the same place each morning... it is a bit like finding your sea legs, or maybe your land legs again after a long journey. We are undoubtedly stronger and closer as a family for surmounting such a huge trip as we did this summer. Emma is bigger, taller, smarter, faster, and more talkative than ever. She says more with her eyebrows than most people can do with their lips. Even better, we understand her so well after 24 hours a day of talking to each other. 

We were hoping to blog more on the road, however, travelling with a 16 month old ended up sucking up what little spare time we had. We did keep notes and may post them here in the future.

We are not yet ready to go back to the real world of work, school, lunches, meetings... but we are so excited that Emma will be going to The Joany Noany School for Exceptional Granddaughters this fall in Winthrop. Bruce has a new job and Andrea is back in Revere for the school year. We still have many more photos to share and stories to tell, but we wanted to leave you with a few statistics from our amazing trip this summer.

Statistics from the Trip:
Total Miles Driven:                                                       10,405
US States Visited:                                                          29
Canadian Provinces Visited:                                           5
International border crossings:                                      4 (twice into Canada, twice back into USA)
Number of National Parks/Monuments/Historic Sites:     38, of which 16 were National Parks.
*Also 4 additional National Monuments not administered by the NPS (Chimney Rock, Bears Ears, Grand Staircase Escalante, and Canyon of the Ancients). Plus one Canadian National Park (Banff)
 Junior Ranger Badges Earned:                                       12
Number of mechanics visited:                                       1 (replace front shocks and bleed brake system)
Number of times pulled over by police:                          0 (I am as shocked as you!)
Number of days on the road:                                         49 (48 nights)
Number of nights camping:                                           26
Number of nights in hotels:                                           20
Number of nights as guests:                                           2

Emma’s height:                                   2ft 6in (about 2in. growth)
Emma’s skills learned:                        Walking, climbing ladders, high-fiving park rangers, drawing                                                                on every page of a junior ranger book, kissing and kissy-face,                                                               hand movements for “If you’re happy and you know it” and                                                                 “Itsy Bitsy Spider”
Emma’s new word:                            “Stuck” pronounced “guck” (we tried to teach her to say “Bus”…                                                          she learned to wiggle her eyebrows and laugh evilly at us…)
 All in all, not a bad summer...
                           
​The World is Ours!

You start thinking about all the eventualities when you are on the road. You wonder what happened here.. or there... You ponder the lives of the kamikaze birds that fly right at your windshield and the lives of the oil workers, ranchers, or kids in these tiny desolate towns. You look at the horses and the scrub brush and wonder if they are being cared for. Then you lose interest and start wondering about you... about how you got here... which insect bite itches more... when and where the next pitstop will be. But the deep thoughts don't always come they way you want them to. On a bike, you are worried about mileage because your legs will eventually tire. You worry about lunch and snacks because that is fueling your trip. Now we are in the bus... gasoline powered, Walmart stocked, and traveling hundreds of miles a day. it is a different type of traveling. Traveling by car. You see more, but talk less. You get to more places, but meet fewer people. I miss the micro flora and fauna you learn about on the bike. Slowly pedaling up hill, you really get aquatinted to the tiniest insects and grasses growing on the verge. You smell the local scents both good and bad. You also cherish small cafes, no matter how run down. Tepid coffee or cool water, sugary snack to refill your tank. By car, you don't need to stop and don't really want to either, because you are so much farther away from where you intend to go. We go sign hunting. Hurtling down roads at 50 miles an hour, rolling down the window, lining up the shoot and SNAP! the shutter closes and the photo is taken. Another state, another gunshot-holed sign captured for the photo book, or Facebook... There are also really good points too. Emma is cool and comfortable while she naps in her 5 point racing harnessed car seat. When we want to go get dinner, we just hop in and find some tasty local grub, no matter if it is 5 miles away from the campground (10 miles round trip). Clean clothes are just in the back seat and so are a few extra toys and board books. We also get to see the WHOLE COUNTRY in a summer. Not every state or every small town, but huge parts of an enormous, varied, beautiful, hideous, ostentatious, amazing, frustrating country. We are traveling out west... as a family, sleeping, eating, living together every day within inches of each other before we go back to work, back home. We are learning about each other, our likes and dislikes, her tantrums, his driving... We sing, laugh, and tell stories of our past adventures to pass the hours, and the miles.

It has been four days since we departed... it feels like we have been on the road forever. As I write this, I am sitting in Shenandoah National Park in the Big Meadows campground smelling the wood smoke of campfires and listening to the breeze through the mountain laurel and our Spaniard neighbor playing Guantanamera on his guitar. Bruce is off with Emma on her 3rd evening perambulation, which now entails her pushing her stroller as far as she can get going downhill and then one of us carrying her back uphill... she doesn't particularly like sitting in her carriage any more... at least not today... We have traveled over 600 miles to get here. We have already visited 8 National Parks/Historic Sites, hiked the Appalachian Trail, dipped our toes in a waterfall, had an evening with friends in their oasis of a back yard, and sang/sung "If you're happy and you know it!..." more times than we can count... already...

As these adventures go, it has been relatively smooth sailing so far. We got to Hudson, NY to spend time with our friends in their weekend home which they have spent countless hours renovating into a luxurious retreat. After a lovely evening of good food and good conversation, we all slept well. We ticked off cherry picking, a petting zoo and our first national park of the trip (The Martin Van Buren National Historic Site) the next morning before saying farewell and heading off! We hit 2 more National Parks (Vanderbilt Mansion NHS and Franklin Delano Roosevelt NHS) finishing in Promised Land State Park in Pennsylvania, our first camp site.

The next morning, we needed some food.. so we found a Kosher deli open early early in Scranton PA where they served Matzo and eggs, potato knishes, and made Bruce eat off of different plates and drink non-dairy creamer because he wanted sausage... lets say the poor Scottish boy was a bit confused... but it was DELISH!!!! Then we headed over to another treat, Steamtown NHS! A whole park dedicated to... TRAINS!!! Bruce was in his glory and Emma kept "ch...ch.."-ing... she hasn't quite got the "oo" sound down yet... but we are trying. After fawning over trains for a while we went to Allegheny Portage NHS, where there was a rail system made to haul canal boats over a mountain. Emma really liked walking the board walk, squeaking at chipmunks and pushing buttons in the demonstration house. We made some park rangers very happy... they didn't want to stop telling us stories.. even when our obviously tired toddler started wailing and thrashing about... it was cute... They day was pristinely perfect. Blue skies, white puffy clouds, cool breeze, bright sun... so we laid about in the grass for a while before finding a campsite down the road. It was also train themed although the theme was more in the way of the owner's obsession with model trains. To cap the night off we found a Primanti Brothers Restaurant. The one with the huge sandwiches with fries, coleslaw, and tomato on it! Yes, the one you keep seeing on the food network! So we braved life and limb to cross the street where there are no sidewalks and pedestrians are not allowed (anywhere) to reach our chosen dinner. The food was good... sadly not as amazing as food network would make you think, but it was cheap and tasty and we were hungry, so that makes for a good meal. On top of that, we were treated with a rapid thunderstorm that lasted just minutes, started right after we walking into the restaurant, and left us with a DOUBLE RAINBOW!!! Nice!

We woke up the next morning ready to organize the bus and make breakfast... one of those two things took 2 hours... guess which... We dropped our first bag of stuff off at a Sally Army and away we went to Harper's Ferry NHS, close to the tri-border point of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland. This was a big Civil War site. The area changed hands several times during the war, it was a focal point of the Underground Railroad, and a key point for surrenders for both sides. We parked the bus and took the shuttle to the lower town, which is a cool mix of historic NPS preservation and private businesses that have kept this town looking and feeling like a civil war era town. We hiked a tiny bit of the Appalachian Trail (very steep and worn steps), crossed the Potomac River over an active rail line, walked into Maryland on the C&O canal path, fed the baby strawberry ice cream, chatted with a touring cyclist, and had a picnic. Then we started our day! (We hadn't intended to spend much time here at all, but it was a very nice park and a lovely day.) After that we headed off towards Shenandoah and the Skyline Drive! Emma passed out from our busy morning and we were off!

So we entered Shenandoah National Park and onto Skyline Drive and realized we had 51 miles to Big Meadows Campground (the first campground not under construction in the park). The bus did admirably over mountain ridges and around tight corners. Emma woke at about mile 42 so we sang "If you're happy and you know it!" a few more times to get us in. Hit the campground, got a pull through spot, popped the tent, made mac and cheese and peas with rotisserie chicken for dinner in under 30 min! Met our neighbors... the Danish couple with 3 kids and a 7 month old and the Spanish couple with 3 kids and a guitar. Felt like we were in Europe again! The air got chilly so we bundled off to sleep and take a rest day the next day. No Driving tomorrow! Only hiking the Appalachian Trail a couple of times, splashing in a waterfall, playing ukuleles to the baby, eating scrumptious cinnamon buns from the camp store and repacking the back of the bus... again... this is going to be a thing... Oh yeah... and writing the blog... and making weebly work! So there you go, our second blog. Hope the rest of our trip is just as fun, challenging, exciting, rewarding as this has been so far.

If you want to know how Emma is doing, she is sleeping right now. Naps have been perfect since she only naps in the car anyway, this trip was made for her. Sleeping, on the other hand, has been a bit challenging since she takes up far more room in the tent than a 20lbs person should. So Bruce and I are trying different sleeping configurations to accommodate such a tiny bed tyrant. She is happy and giddy but very clingy when we are out of the car though. Being in new places is scary, but she loves taking walks with her stroller and in the hiking backpack. She waves and blows kisses to everyone... and gets mad if they don't notice or don't wave back. :) She has gotten a bit more picky about food, although she definitely eats when she is hungry, she just isn't usually hungry when we just made delicious food... She is talking A LOT! Making all sorts of new sounds and words. She is kissing and feeding her baby doll, tossing her Curious George doll, playing catch with the blue spiky ball, and throwing tantrums if she hears a word even resembling "No". Her hair is getting redder every day and so is her temper. Pretty much normal toddler stuff, tough but good. We love learning about her from her, even if we realize we don't have much say in it. ;)

The World is Ours!

So far...

As we do every other summer, we are awaiting the start of another adventure. In the past, we have driven from London to Mongolia, gotten married, cycled all over Europe, had a baby, you know... the normal stuff... SO this summer, we have decided to be as normal American as we can... We are taking a road trip across the USA!!! We intend to see many National Parks, camp, and have a great time!

On the other hand, we are Bruce and Andrea... and now Bruce, Andrea, and Emma. So we decided to take make our trip a little more interesting. We are taking The Big Blue Bus... across the country... with a toddler... and a tent on the roof...

I know... I know... but we just had to! It's Emma's FIRST ROAD TRIP!!!

So we enlisted the help of our AMAZING friends, aka The Horde, to help us get the most technically challenging part of our preparation ready. Thus descended our friends, over hill and dale, through Boston evening traffic, through Lynn, all for the love of... Emma! We needed help getting our new home for the next 8 weeks on top of the Bus. We recently purchased a pop-up tent that resides on the roof of your vehicle throughout your trip. This tent has a grand story of its own, having traveled around North America last year for 10 months with a very adventuresome couple in their own right. But I digress...

So back to The HORDE! They huffed and puffed and hauled the monstrous beast of a tent from the bowels of our basement. Up rickety stairs. Through cantilevered doorways. Once out in the cool night air, they circled the tent, pondering their strategy of attack, but with only one brain cell amongst the lot of them, this was quite challenging. With the speed of an elephant and the grace of a giraffe, up they went, with raised arms, thrusting their quarry upon the blue steed. They shoogled, they shimmied, they ratcheted and they eyeballed, the quintessential final placement of the hard shell clad tent. Each member engaged in the task most suited for their temperament. Before the sun had set below the dusky horizon, the tent was in place. They laughed at the ease at which they completed their evening task. With much guffawing and slapping of backs, they climbed aloft to experience the comfort they made possible for our family of three. Then off to sup, pizza and beer were much enjoyed along with good conversation in a circle of friends. When dinner was done, they left, one by one, into the night... weary but proud of a job well done.

Much thanks my friends. We couldn't do it without you!

So this concludes the first of many posts this summer. We hope you follow us on our journey. All our love.

The World is Ours!

B, A, & E