This blog is a journal of our trip across the United States as full time RVers! We started out from Jacksonville, FL on February 5, 2016 with a general idea of where we were heading but no real agenda! Seeing every state was a bucket list item of Jim’s. Fortunately he has an adventurous wife that supports his crazy ideas. When I first proposed the idea to Jamie she said 2 years seems like a long time but said she’d give…
We left Cape Hatteras for Jacksonville, our final stop, with a short stop in Myrtle Beach to clean out our storage unit. We made it to Jacksonville staying at Pecan Park, our favorite campground in Jacksonville for the lengthy job of cleaning out our coach to put her up for sale. Along with a trip to Hawaii for 10 days it took us until almost the end of September to get her emptied out and cleaned up. During that time…
Saturday we visited the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. It was built in 1802 and at 210′, is the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States and 2nd tallest in the world. For what it’s worth, the tallest in the world is in Poland and is only 3′ taller. Over the years the beach began to recede and the lighthouse had to be moved in 1999. It took 23 days for them to move it 2,900′ inland and is considered one of…
On to our final state. We’ve been to North Carolina before but never the outer banks. So we left Virginia for what will essentially be the last state on our journey. We chose the outer banks because there were things we wanted to see there and it seemed fitting to end our journey at the beach, our favorite place to be and a prelude of our future. The first day we simply relaxed and enjoyed a beautiful day on the…
We left Maryland for our second to last stop on our journey, Virginia. We found a very nice campground about 20 minutes north of Richmond that was a somewhat central location in Virginia to allow us to venture out in the jeep to see other parts of the state. We stayed there for a week and as it turns out we really only spent one day sightseeing. I think it was a combination of wearing ourselves out the last couple…
Tuesday we decided to go to Arlington National Cemetery. Surprisingly, neither of us had ever been there so a visit was long overdue. We got kind of a late start to the day so we didn’t leave until after lunch but it was only about 20 minutes away. We got there and started at the visitor’s center which takes a good hour in itself if you read through all the plaques inside, which we did. We pretty much knew what…
The next day we played golf at the course on Andrews AFB. Although we didn’t think it was anything special, many presidents have played there. The last one to play there was Obama. That was short and sweet so I’ll combine 2 posts here. The day after golf we went to the International Spy Museum. Jamie found this place and it sounded very intriguing. The museum opened in 2002 and has the largest display of espionage artifacts in the world….
From Philadelphia we moved on to Delaware. We were there for a week and had a campsite right near the beach and decided to spend this state recuperating rather than sightseeing. Along with hanging out on the beach Jim played a couple rounds of golf and some pickleball and we spent some time with Jim’s brother and sister in law. Since we didn’t do anything special we have no pictures of this state. Sorry, Delaware! But we did enjoy our…
Our time with the kids came to an end but not without some hitches. The plan was for Jamie and Cadence to fly from Atlantic City to Detroit and the next day Jim and Eric would drop the rv off so we could get a valve replaced on one of our jacks that wasn’t working properly. After dropping the rv off Jim would drop Eric off at the Philadelphia airport at the same time Jamie was flying back to Philadelphia…
We left Connecticut for Cape May, New Jersey and a week with our kids and grandkids. The crazies in us decided to have Brian, Winnie, Gigi, Eric and Cadence in a motorhome built for 2 all together. It actually worked out very well and since Brian and Winnie only stayed for 4 nights the last few were even less tight quarters. Jamie flew from Atlantic City on Thursday to pick up Cadence and bring her down on Friday, Jim went…
From Rhode Island we moved on to Connecticut. We’ve both been here before and Jim’s family used to vacation here so again, this was just a stop to accomplish the goal of staying in every state with the rv. We chose Mystic for our overnight to see the well known seaport. Jim had been there as a child and Jamie had never been there so it seemed like a good choice. There was also another historic restaurant that we wanted…
We had one day of rest before it was time to move on. Since we lost a year due to Covid we are quickly making our way through the rest of the trip so we can complete it by September of 2021. The thinking is we will have completed our mission of seeing all 49 states in the rv but if needed, we can return to any states we felt we needed to see more of. Next stop, Rhode Island….
On Saturday we set out for Plymouth, Massachusetts, home of the first pilgrim settlement. Although the Mayflower originally landed in Provincetown, they decided on Plymouth for their settlement. Of course, there is the famous Plymouth Rock to see but many other interesting things, as well. Our first stop was the Pilgrim Museum. They have many artifacts dating back to the initial landing of the Mayflower and their lives in Plymouth. After the museum we went aboard the Mayflower II. This…
We arrived in Nantucket around 5pm. Our first impression was the boats at the marina. There were allot of massive private yachts scattered throughout the marina. A quick history of Nantucket. It was also settled in the early 1600’s by Europeans and inhabited before that by Native American’s thousands of years before that. The island really took off in the late 1700’s when it became the whaling capital of the world and one of the richest communities in America. It…
The next day we headed out for a two day adventure to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. We decided to be really adventurous and leave our car and just take our bikes and backpacks. There is a ferry to both islands that will take cars but no ferry between the islands that takes cars so if we wanted out car we would have had to take the ferry to one island then back to Cape Cod then to the other island…
We left Maine for Middleboro, Massachusetts, which just outside of Cape Cod. We’ve both been through much of Massachusetts so we planned on focusing this week on Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. The next day we set off for a ride along 6A, a local road along the north shore of Cape Cod, planning to ride out to Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. It was about a 90 mile ride so we packed an overnight bag in…
Not giving us any time to recover from our trips the next day we met Jim’s sister, Sue, and her friend Sara in Portsmouth, NH for a whale watching trip. We met at noon for lunch at a waterfront café then on to the boat for a 2:00 trip. The weather was beautiful and it was about an hour ride to where the whales tend to hang out. On the way we passed a group of islands called the Isle…
From Lubec we headed back down the coast for an overnight in Bar Harbor. We arrived at our hotel mid afternoon, checked in and headed downtown. It was very busy there but we finally found a parking spot and decided to just walk around and get a lay of the land. It was a typical beachside town with lots of shopping and eating. We went in a couple of shots and Jamie could see it wasn’t doing anything for me…
The 24th we drove to New Hampshire to stay with Jim’s mom while Sue and Dan went on vacation for a couple weeks. We stayed there till July 11 and finally hit the road again heading for Maine. We chose a campground in Portland with plans to take a side trip up the coast during our stay. We spent two whole days there before we hit the road in the jeep for a ride up the coast for three days….
Wednesday we took a trip down memory lane for Jim. He worked in Lake Placid during the 1980 Olympics and so we drove almost 2 hours including a ferry ride across Lake Champlain to Lake Placid. Our first stop was the location of the bobsled events. That track had to be completely redone because bobsledding speeds have increased significantly since 1980 and sleds wouldn’t stay on the track. They also added a new lodge there for athletes and visitors. Next…
If you saw the pictures from Gigi’s dance recital in the previous post you may have seen her new teddy bear. As it turns out the Vermont Teddy Bear factory was right in Burlington. We were going to get Gigi some flowers for her recital but as we were driving we saw the factory and decided that would be a fun gift for her. While there we found out they give tours so Jamie wanted to take a tour, which…