11,526 miles in aMERica (and a little Canada) Our 61 day road trip

The top 10

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:31:47 -0400

Alright, here it is, the official 404010 Top 10. (The orange text links to the blog entries.)

Thanks for coming along for the ride...

National Park Glacier

Lodging Finlen, Butte, MT

Meal Nick’s Wedding

Surprise Upper Peninsula, MI

Midwest Triple-header to Niagara Falls

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:55:43 -0400

Our big road trip ended with visits to 3 great mid-western cities and a big finale in Niagara Falls. Not sure what I was thinking there, as we ended up leaving a day early...

Visiting Melissa’s friend Amanda and husband Ryan in Minneapolis

At my brother Tom and wife Jackie’s house in Schaumburg, Il, with niece Tahnde (her daughter Kailyn
and son Ricky) and nephew Stephen

Playing with the bean (also above) in Chicago’s Millennium Park

More cool Millennium Park art

Rock and roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland

Cleveland public art

Horseshoe Falls

The power and volume of the falls is amazing

Behind the falls with the masses

The road trip comes to an end

Site of our free hotel room (you do get what you pay for)

Beartooth to Badlands

Tue, 9 Sep 2008 11:41:22 -0400

When we left Grand Teton, I think we kinda hit a scenery overload. Looking back, this may have been time for a radical detour. But then again, there aren’t too many ways to drive back to NYC from Wyoming... (Devil’s Tower, above)

The supposedly-scenic Beartooth Highway (we were in a complete 28-degree whiteout on Sept 4!)

Bonus visit to Bighorn National Forest

Groovin’ at the historic Occidental Hotel in Buffalo, WY

Requisite stop at Mt Rushmore

The enormous work-in-progress Crazy Horse memorial (Mt Rushmore is the size of CH’s ear)

Near Badlands NP at the former ‘secret’ Minutemen missile silos

There were a dozen nuclear missiles like these ready to strike Russia within 30 minutes, crazy huh

Badlands strata

Due to a very wet summer, there were sunflowers in September, which is unheard of in these parts

Hiking was a little unsettling...

...with all these warning signs

Grand Teton NP, simply stunning

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 21:13:00 -0400

After gigantic Yellowstone, it was nice to get to the much more compact Grand Teton NP with its obvious and stunning scenery. The mountain range dominates the park and has to be one of the most beautiful places in America. There’s also abundant wildlife and great recreation.

Our top highlight was 9.5 mile Canyon Creek hike, which started with a boat ride across Jenny Lake and provided many amazing sights. Melissa even spotted a grizzly in the distance, earning her the new nickname ‘griz eye’. The suddenly-cool weather prevented our planned river trip and bike riding (we drove through light snow on Labor Day?!?).

The sunrises and sunsets at Grand Teton can be, if the weather behaves, some of the best available anywhere. Seriously. The changing light on the craggy peaks is endlessly beautiful. Melissa says they’re the best anywhere ‘they just keep giving’ she says...

Nice drive, huh

The tourist town of Jackson with its famous elk arches

The beginning of the Canyon Creek trail

Feeling energetic, maybe 2 miles in

Clouds start rolling in

Getting to the halfway point (footbridge on right)

The spectacular trail continues...

Typical and wonderful lake vista

Sunset is an amazing time at Grand Teton

The scene changes by the second

Pre-sunrise at Oxbow Bend

Even cloudy mornings can be beautiful

Jackson Lake

Farewell sunset

Grand Teton itself (center peak) and Mt Owen (right)

The $115 Colter Bay cabin (right side only)

Massive and kaleidoscopic Yellowstone NP

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:12:12 -0400

The first thing you learn about Yellowstone is that it’s big, we’re talking Delaware and Rhode Island combined big. The size makes planning a visit a bit of challenge, but offers an extraordinarily diverse terrain filled with the most complete wildlife assortment in the US. Oh, and then there’s largest concentration of active geothermal features in world. You do a lot of driving in Yellowstone, but if you walk 1/2 mile off the road you have the park to yourself.

We stayed in a historic Roosevelt cabin in the north of the park, an area that receives the least visitors which works for us. The cabin was charming except that it wasn’t heated, the nighttime temp was below freezing and the wood stove wouldn’t stay lit for more than 2 hours. The cabin was close to the Lamar Valley, where gray wolves were re-introduced in the 1990s. We spent a few dawns and dusks on unsuccessful wolf watches, but loved the scenery nonetheless.

The Canyon area in the center of the park features the spectacular Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, with its immense river canyon, multi-colored rocks and two waterfalls. In the surrounding Hayden Valley we searched unsuccessfully for grizzly bears, but again were treated to beautiful sights. As you can tell, I got a little obsessed with seeing grizzlies and wolves (we saw neither), and my mania added a little disappointment to the week.

The Mammoth Hot Springs in the northwest offers beautiful terraced springs, but we liked other geothermal areas better. We found the hidden Boiling River (not on any maps), where steaming water flows into a very cold river and creates a hot spring like no other and took a dip. It was wonderful. Of all the geothermal features, we were awe-struck by the Porcelain Basin and Mid Geyser Basin. As you’ll see below (and above), the surreal multi-colored hot springs are just sensational on a sunny day.

And then there’s Old Faithful. It was a bizarre experience to say the least. The crowds grew by a factor of 100, and many seemed like they were on the Las Vegas – Disneyland circuit. These folks cluster in front of Old Faithful and await the eruption (which was cool but a little underwhelming to me) and then race back to their cars before it’s even complete. Weird. We did stay in the historic Old Faithful Inn for a night, which had its charms, and made friends in the bar with Ken and Betty from near Gettyburg, PA as the mayhem at the restaurant cost us our dinner reservation (which we made 6 months in advance)...

The vast Lamar Valley

Fly fishing amid bison herds

Singing buffalo

Captivating Lamar Valley scenery

Hiking amid a burnt-out tree in the Roosevelt/Tower area

Lichen, moss and rainbow in the Upper Falls of the Grand Canyon

The wondrous Lower Falls river of the Grand Canyon

Dusk in the Hayden Valley, prime grizzly watching time...

...although we were unsuccessful, the scenery was magnificent

Scary stare-down with an enormous buffalo during an early morning wolf watch - he won!

The Mammoth Hot Springs terraces

The surreal Porcelain Basin

The aptly named Fountain Paint Pots in the Lower Geyser Basin

The Earth letting off a little steam

The super blue Midway Geyser Basin

The seemingly supernatural Grand Prismatic Spring (also pictured on top)

Crazy boiling runoff at Midway Geyser Basin

Mooooooooooose in the morning

The masses dutifully lineup for the Old Faithful show

Hiding from the crowds at the Old Faithful Inn (the original "park-itecture")

Mangia, mangia in Vancouver

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:16:18 -0400

It’s a small world after all...

Alright, here’s the story. In June 2006 we visited Montazzoli, Italy, the ancestral birthplace of my dad’s parents. We found a local genealogist and were fortunate to meet many relatives during this amazing journey. Fast forward to January 2008 and we’re planning our road trip, literally talking about Vancouver when the phone rings and curiously the caller-id reads Surrey, BC. The caller was Silvano Del Roio (seated in photo above) who had just visited Montazzoli that Christmas, and saw a photo we sent to his parents from our visit (our dads were first cousins). He wanted to meet us, so he tracked me down and inquired about visiting NYC that spring. I explained that we would be in Asia, but mentioned we were planning to visit Vancouver in August. He impassionately invited us to his son Nick’s wedding, to join a dozen or so relatives from Montazzoli at this grand celebration. When destiny calls it’s always best to answer, so of course we went, and now we have a whole new extended family in Canada.

The experience was absolutely wonderful. At the church, the relatives from Montazzoli immediately recognized us and greeted us with ciao’s, hugs and double kisses. The day was a 12-hour marathon of eating and drinking and trying our best to communicate with the Italians (luckily 14 yr old Ricardo was a big help as translator). We also met many other relatives I never knew I had, but who all knew my dad and his cousins and friends from Scotch Plains, NJ. And we learned that Silvano’s wife Pina (whose family is also from Montazzoli) has relatives in Buenos Aires, named, you guessed it, Perrucci, so we will try to meet them while in Buenos Aires this fall!

Silvano and Pina were extraordinary hosts- from the 50 people at their beautiful house after the wedding - to the 275-person reception with views of downtown Vancouver - and the Sunday afternoon day-after party at their house - it was all wonderful. The reception included a delicious 7-course dinner and even a midnight buffet!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but we were so busy trying to talk to the Italians, meet the Canadians, and make connections with people who had all seemingly been to Scotch Plains - while constantly being urged to eat (mangia!) and drink - that we never seemed to have a moment with the camera. Trust me, it’s a lot easier to take pictures of glaciers than Italians!

Thanks Silvano and Pina for so welcoming us into your family, to Nick and Kim for having us at your wedding, and to Bruno (Pina’s brother) for buying us lunch and showing us around Vancouver. It was an experience we’ll never forget, and hope to see you all again soon (maybe Vancouver Olympics 2010?!).

The Del Roio’s stylin’ house

At the reception with Pina and Silvano

With my cousins Nica and Laurence from Montazzoli

The spectacular midnight buffet

Introducing Bruno to Dim Sum on Sunday

Melissa showing our blog at the Sunday after party

Me and Nick (the groom)

Orca-rama off San Juan Island, WA

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:26:44 -0400

Alright, I’m sure most of you have been whale watching in New England. It’s great, the humpbacks and minkes are fascinating, glimpsed from big tourist-filled boats. Well we’re here to report that seeing killer Orca whales is a whole different experience. Watching an 8 ton mammal leap completely out of the water kind of changes your perspective. Once you go Orca you don’t go back...

Our Orca experience was made possible by Captain Jim, who is super knowledgeable about all things Orca. We had his boat completely to ourselves, except for another young couple. There are two resident Orca pods that reside near San Juan Island in the Puget Sound, and a third that summer there. One of the most fascinating things we learned is that one of the Orcas was born in 1911, and some are known to live for 200 years! In a little over two hours, we must have seen close to 50 Orcas, it was spectacular. And when the Orcas were elusive, the Puget Sound scenery was just beautiful.

We spent the night camping at the San Juan County Park, which is right on the water. We even saw a few Orcas as we drove in. Just crazy. Maybe we had some good wildlife karma that day, but man, San Juan Island is a wonderful place. Where else can you easily watch Orcas playing in the sea?

Member of the J pod

Orca family hunting salmon

“Spy hopping” Orca looking for dinner

The rare “pec slap”

Awesome scenery even without the Orcas

More island beauty

Happy Orca lovers

Captain Jim and Melissa hunting for Orcas

Scenic ferry ride back to the mainland, great time to update the blog

Big trees and big rain in Olympic NP

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:28:24 -0400

Olympic National Park is in the very northwestern corner of the US, part of the Olympic peninsula. Our visit introduced us to stereotypical Northwest weather, with lots of rain and grey skies. This put a damper on our camping plans, but we were able to find rooms on the fly and made the most of three damp days...

• Enjoyed a night at the Sol Duc hot springs, with a 100-year history of medicinal benefits
• Experienced Hoh, the only temperate rainforest in the world
• Set foot on Cape Flattery - the Northwestern most point in the US!
• Walked on some beautiful beaches with massive driftwood and crashing waves
• Saw lots and lots of logging, makes you think a lot about about trees vs. wood and paper

Car ferries are a fun way to travel (except for all the waiting)

Hurricane Ridge

Here come the clouds

Soaking in the 100-degree Sol Duc mineral hot springs

Giant tree

Ruby Beach

Serious driftwood - the NPS warns that high waves can turn these logs “into weapons - they kill”!

Sea stack (that’s what those rock clusters are called)

More ominous warnings...

Serious moss, and this was the dry season

La Push beach

Rocky La Push beach

Logging is a way of life here, wonder how those spotted owls are doing?

We saw hundreds of these trucks which I now think about every time I grab a paper towel...

Planning ahead

Note the rainbow - for people in this part of the country, the paper mill equates to a pot of gold

Cape Flattery - the Northwestern tip of the contiguous US
You have to hike almost a mile through the woods to get here - which we did in a downpour!

I guess a lot of rain, not to mention the isolation, does weird things to your head

60 sunny hours in Seattle!

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:51:31 -0400

We were excited for city life after a few weeks of wilderness, and all ready for drizzly Seattle. Ended up with 2 days in the 90s, which is a major Northwest heat wave.

Renee let us stay in her awesome apartment on the top floor of a charming old home in the northern part of the city, with wonderful views of downtown and Mt. Olympus (and a monthly rent that us New Yorkers dream about).

Spent Friday afternoon eating seafood on The Puget Sound, visiting Pike Place market and the original Starbucks. Also checked out the Seattle Music Experience, which was more architecture than experience (although the jam rooms were very fun), and lucked into a free outdoor concert (with beer garden) right under the Space Needle. Dinner was at an ale house (the beer here is fantastic!) in the artsy neighborhood of Ballard. BTW, almost all women under 50 have tattoos here.

Saturday brought a delicious lunch of salmon tacos and more downtown sites before the heat drove us back to Renee’s apt. to catch up on some Olympic highlights. That evening Renee and her boyfriend Jake took us out to dinner in free-spirited Fremont (self-proclaimed center of the universe).

Spent Sunday with our new friends Adam and Renee (who we met in Vietnam) for more Seattle highlights, culminating with a fabulous waterfront salmon dinner.

Seattle is a very groovy place, more like a hilly big town with distinct neighborhoods than an urban city - we’ll be back…

Lots of lavender at Pike Place Market

The original Starbucks

Rocking out at the Seattle Music Experience

The Seattle Music Experience (Frank Gehry’s architecture, Paul Allen’s money)

Concert near the Space Needle

Sunset view from Renee’s apartment

John, Adam and Renee posing with some street art (decorated by the locals each day)

The famous Fremont troll (real VW bug under its hand!)

Hammer man, local icon

Downtown

Delicious wild sockeye salmon at Ivar’s

City view

Reunited with friends Adam + Renee who we met in Vietnam

Picture perfect days in Mount Rainier NP

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:35:52 -0400

The Seattleites say that when “the mountain is out”, referring to massive Mt. Rainier which is 100 miles away yet still visible from the city, that it will be a nice day. There are only 50-60 days per year when the “mountain is out” and we had three of the most glorious.

John’s niece Renee lives in Seattle and met us at Cougar Rock campground near Paradise in the southern part of the park with her friend Andrea. Renee, an experienced hiker, chose the 7-mile Skyline trail starting at around 6,500 ft. elevation with an additional 1,500 ft. gain, which turned out to be pretty challenging for us. Meanwhile, Andrea was 6 months pregnant and barely broke a sweat – you go girl!

After hiking through “carpets” of wildflowers of a dozen varieties and across several remaining snowfields (after Glacier NP, we are old pros at hiking over snow in August!), we were rewarded with up close views of the stunning mountain. Although it seemed as if the summit was so close that we could reach out and touch it, we knew it was an illusion when we identified tiny dots of climbers making their way up the icy slopes.
BTW, Mt. Rainier was named for a friend of British Admiral Vancouver who never even set his eyes on this wonder. His loss…

Starting up the Skyline Trail

Mt Rainier is getting closer

Spectacular wildflowers, you could smell the lupine in the air

Carpets of wildflowers -the pink is Indian Paintbrush, Beargrass is white

Avalanche lily

Renee our fearless hiking guide

Craggy peaks

Renee and Melissa contemplate the peak...

...while John dreams of climbing to the top

Mountains, mountains everywhere

One last wildflower shot

On our way down

This snowfield was steep and slippery

Camping at Cougar Rock - woodsy privacy

Feats of strength

Oh these crazy warning signs

Grizzlies, goats and grandeur at Glacier NP

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:04:43 -0400

Wow, wow, wow. That’s the only way to describe Glacier NP. Of all
the National Parks we’ve visited, Glacier is our new favorite. The
combination of the wildlife and the scenery is just unbeatable.
This is the Montana we were waiting for, with breath-taking mountain peaks in all directions. We encountered more mountain goats than we can remember, got up-close-and-personal with bighorn sheep, saw a few moose, hoary marmots, even grizzly bears (from a distance). The ‘griz’ to those in the know.
The other great thing about Glacier is the Going to the Sun Road, which was built in the late 1920s and an extraordinary drive up and through the mountains.
Karen and Marcia joined us for a few days, for whitewater rafting and the best hike we’ve ever taken to the Grinnell Glacier.
We’d suggest planning your trip to Glacier NP now, as the latest science says the glaciers will be gone by 2020. This is a spectacular place...

Bring on the glaciers

Going to the Sun Road - a great place to get stuck in construction traffic

Groovin’ with the glaciers

Immense scenery

St. Mary Lake

We fell in love with the mountain goats

Avalanche Creek

Avalanche Lake (four waterfalls!)

Bowman Lake

Reflections on Bowman Lake

Glaciers in the morning

Hiking on snow fields on the Hidden Lake trail

Snow in August?

One of our many mountain goat friends

Amazing Hidden Lake

Goat, glaciers and Hidden Lake

Mountain goats everywhere!

Wildflowers in bloom

St Mary Lake from boat

Hidden spot atop St Mary falls

St Mary falls

Hiking along St Mary lake

Grizzlies, goats and grandeur at Glacier NP part 2

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:54:03 -0400

Karen and Melissa rafting the Middle Fork river

Sunset glaciers

Half moon

You lookin’ at me

Moose in the morning

Hiking to Grinnell Glacier

Surreal Grinnell Lake (also main picture above)
-the water’s color is caused by glaciers grinding the mountains and creating ‘glacial flour’ which flows into the lake

Halfway there

The scenery keeps getting better

On the trail with the Asians (note the umbrella)

Made it to Grinnell Glacier

The coldest water we have ever felt (although it did feel good on our tired feet)

Wild flowers and 3 lakes!

Double rainbow

Farewell rainy hike (note the green hose as safety handrail - it was very steep!)

The $55 Swiftcurrent Cabin (no bathroom)

Enough warnings to make you a little paranoid...

Checking out Missoula

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 12:41:51 -0400

Visited Missoula, a cool college town that seems like a great place
to live. Enjoyed seeing the city and eating burgers at the famous
Missoula Club which was covered with pictures of sports legends.

Went hiking in the Bitterroot Wilderness Area which involved driving
up a mountain on an unpaved road, then climbing for an hour
or so through a fire-ravaged area to an isolated mountain-top lake.
Not something you do everyday...

The wilderness

No one told us about the fire

But it was pretty cool

Made it to the top

Of course Melissa swam in the ice-cold water

Advanced kayaking right in town

The $43/night KOA Kamping Kabin (bathroom not included)

Mining the past in Butte, Montana

Sat, 2 Aug 2008 12:05:46 -0400

Spent a wonderful night in Butte, a blue collar mining town in Montana. Butte used to be a major mining area, and although the mining operations are much smaller today, they are having some flush times with copper hitting $3.40/pound.

We choose the famous Finlen Hotel in the historic uptown district, which was almost abandoned but hanging on with a few restaurants and bars. The $59 room was huge and offered a great view. Bought some cool copper mugs after having drinks in a bar that used to be a bank with a enormous vault for valuable metals from the mines.

The drink we had was just excellent, but requires 2 keys ingredients.

The Moscow Mule
- 1 copper mug
- fill with ice and add Cock+Bull ginger beer
- add vodka (or gin) and plenty of lime
The cooper makes this the coldest drink you’ve ever had and the ginger beer is really spicy, fantastic.

From Butte we drove through Philipsburg, a preserved Old West town on our way to Missoula.

Walking into the 1920s at the Hotel Finlen

The vault at the Metals Bar and my new magic copper mug

Uptown Butte

The Berkeley Pit with mining runoff (yes it is red)

The Old West lives in Philipsburg

Remnants of a ghost town

Buffalo traffic jam in North Dakota

Fri, 1 Aug 2008 11:33:49 -0400

We left Michigan and drove about 1,000 miles in 2 days, stopping in
Staples, MN and Belfield, ND en route to Montana, where we would spend a week. The Cowboy Inn where we chose to stay in Belfield was coincidentally close to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. After a fly-infested dinner in Medora, a remake of an wild west town near the park entrance, we checked out the park.

The park offers a scenic loop road with badlands vistas. The cool thing for us was the wildlife - buffalo, wild horse and prairie dogs. Got pretty close to some giant buffalo and even got stuck in a buffalo traffic jam, which was not only amazing but also the first time we hit any traffic on this trip...

Badlands scenery (we kept singing Bruce’s Badlands as we drove)

The buffalo are really gigantic up close

Many buffalo grazing away

The prairie dogs are very cute and funny (if you’re not a Western rancher)

Wild horses, couldn't drag me away...

Badlands near sunset

The buffalo keep getting closer

Buffalo traffic jam (we were actually stuck for about 5 minutes)

The Cowboy Inn, $69 (it was sold-out, glad we had a reservation)

Yoopers and Pasties in Upper Peninsula, MI

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:04:31 -0400

Alright trivia fans, name the largest lake in the world. Don’t count the Caspian Sea, since it’s salt water and may or may not be a lake depending on your geological perspective. Anyway, Lake Superior is king. And let me tell you, it is totally worth a visit if you ever find yourself in the Upper Peninsula in upper Michigan.

We arrived after 15 or so hours of driving from Montreal with an overnight stop in Ontario, via the Sault Saint Marie border crossing. We stayed in Munising, right outside the national park. Actually, it’s the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore but whose counting. The $80/night Sunset Motel we stayed in featured a living room with full kitchenette and an awesome lakefront location. After where we’d slept for the past week-and-a-half it seemed luxurious.

Lake Superior totally lives up to its name with a massiveness that really felt oceanic. The water was supernaturally cold, but we did manage to get our feet in, so we can cross that off the list. The big surprise was the varied color of the water; the deep blue was expected but the areas near the shore with shades of green felt almost Caribbean, it is really stunning.

The Pictured Rocks park itself is maybe 3 wiles wide but 45 or so miles long. The namesake rocks were lovely, but for us the real spectacle was the giant Grand Sable Sand Dunes, pictured above. Maybe 5 miles long and 275 feet tall at the peak, this is an unbelievably unique and surreal sight. The peak also offers magnificent views of the lake. If we had more time we would have slid down to the beach, then climbed back to the top, but that takes several hours. Our other park highlight was a 6 mile hike to the Chapel Beach, with a near-perfect lakefront beach location and scenic Chapel Rock.

The weather was in the mid-70s and the sun didn’t set until around 930pm, with twilight stretching an hour or so after that. BTW, a Yooper is a local from the Upper Peninsula and a pastie (pronounced past-ee) is a calzone-meets-pot pit like concoction that has potential but is filled with too many potatoes to be tasty, IMHO.

This could be the unexpected bonus of our trip, so far...

12 Mile Beach, Pictured Rocks NL

Mineral rocks on the 12 Mile Beach, Pictured Rocks NL

Log Slide (loggers used to shoot logs to the lake, enroute to Chicago via boat), Pictured Rocks NL

Log Slide facing west, Pictured Rocks NL

Grand Sable Dunes, Pictured Rocks NL

Top of Grand Sable Dunes, Pictured Rocks NL

Top of Grand Sable Dunes, Pictured Rocks NL

Miner’s Castle, Pictured Rocks NL

Lake Superior

Chapel Rock at Chapel Beach, Pictured Rocks NL

Chapel Rock, and river reaching the lake, Pictured Rocks NL

Hiking in Pictured Rocks NL

Lakefront yoga at our hotel

Farewell Lake Superior sunset

Montreal est magnifique

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:57:36 -0400

We hit Montreal around 3pm on Saturday after a scenic drive through western Maine, northern New Hampshire and the tip of Vermont. We had no idea that the room we booked ($70 with shared bathroom but a great location) was smack in the middle of "Les Franco Folies de Montreal" one of the city's famous free music festivals! (BTW, the bathroom was right across the hall, very clean and not crowded.) From 5pm - Midnight, we strolled around the several stages sampling a variety of Canadian bands (most reminded us of American bands singing in French) and drank Molson Dry that was sold everywhere with no lines (just like a NYC musical festival, right?). The crowd was a cool multi-ethnic mix, young and old. Love those Canadians.

We were surprised at how truly French Montreal is! Of course we know it is in French Quebec but for some reason we could not image that a city so close to Buffalo could be so reminiscent of Paris.

During the day we walked a huge circle around the city from the cobble-stoned "Old City" by the river, to Crescent Street with cute bars and restaurants, down busy Rue St. Catherine Street, the shopping thoroughfare, up Rue St. Laurent over to Rue St. Denis through more local neighborhoods. The Victorian architecture mixed with modernism is fascinating. We just loved Montreal...

View from our hotel window to one of the festival stages

Melissa in hotel window

Les Franco Folies fun

More Franco Folies

Old Town

Old Port

Habitat 67 (modular housing experiment from 1967)

Old Port

Architecture mix

Groovy green glass building (I think it’s a dorm)

Funky used record + book store (lots of cool artist graffiti all around town)

Paris in Canada

Magical Maine

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:54:46 -0400

The rocky, rocky coastline of Maine. Get off of Route 1 and follow one of the many “fingers” into the sea just to see what is down there. You drive for miles through nothing but fragrant pines and start to think nothing is there, should you turn back? And then... a rusted but still functioning fishing port appears through the mist, a crisp white church steeple on the horizon, and then a row of immaculately kept brown-shingled houses leads you o a “Main Street” that looks like the 1950s. Keep driving and you glimpse huge, freshly painted farm houses overlooking the ocean, and finally, near the end, surrounded by endless views and seagulls, are vacation homes to die for. You wonder how people survive the long winters, but understand that there is something about Maine that just makes you feel good.

From our base on Damariscotta Lake, we drove in and out of the fingers around Booth Bay. We saw historic lighthouses, ate great seafood in cozy restaurants and were entertained by a Joni Mitchell-esqe singer in a local pub. One day we drove to Camden (picture above), a picturesque harbor town near a state park where we hiked for expansive views of some Maine’s many islands. (I had read a biography about the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay who grew up in Camden and wrote about it and was particularly intrigued to go there.)

Perhaps best of all, we had our National Parks Passport book stamped in Acadia National Park (see Intro blog post). Acadia is really beautiful. It doesn’t blow you away like some of the other NPs, but there is just one pretty sight after the other - fascinating coastal views, pristine lakes, marshes and valleys filled with wildflowers, fantastic hiking and biking trails, with Bar Harbor to boot. We expected Bar Harbor to be crowded and touristy and planned to spend little time there, but we must have picked a good week because it was not annoying at all. We had two great dinners at Stewman’s on the water - phenomenal lobster, clams and haddock, delicious!

Unfortunately, our first camping experience in Acadia was marked by an all night thunderstorm (if you heard about the recent tornados in New Hampshire, it was the same storm system)! Our tent, which we discovered the first night was too small for both of us, leaked, and the Subaru also proved too small. But now we are equipped with a larger tent, which hopefully doesn’t leak, and a battery-operated air mattress for our future camping adventures.

Canada, here we come...

Lobsterman in Portland

Pemaquid lighthouse

Pemaquid

Hiking trail overlooking Camden

Great Head, Acadia NP

Otter Cliff Road, Acadia NP

Yoga stretch over Eagle Lake, Acadia NP

Marshy Acadia

Top of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia NP (highest mountain on east coast)

Belted cows!

Our $400/week cabin

Damariscotta Lake

Fisherman’s cove

Typical farmhouse

Older typical farmhouse

And we’re off...

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:06:28 -0400

So here we are in the middle of country (I’m writing this July 31) starting The Great North American Road Trip 2008 Blog. We crossed the Mississippi today in Brainerd, MN and are now about an hour from the ND border. The land has stretched out, gotten drier after thousands of miles of thick, green trees and cargo trains that pull at least a hundred cars are now part of the landscape. While you can’t compare this to the exotica of Asia, it’s looking and feeling very different from home.

So why a road trip when we could be in so many other places? Perhaps some of the inspiration comes from my grandfather, who has been to more places on this earth than anyone I know, who says that you should visit all 50 states before you travel abroad so you can appreciate each place more. A major factor is that John and I started visiting U.S. National Parks several years ago, loved one more than the next, and bought the “Passport” book that the NPS developed to be stamped as you go from park to park. We do not want to wait until we retire to fill up our book with stamps. Plus, the really good hikes are hard enough at 40 - I can’t imagine doing them at 65!

So let the blog begin! John has developed a new "American" bigger is better look for this blog. Also, we are going to try to include prices and pictures of our lodging as I'm sure many of you will be curious about how happy we will be with our $50 per night average for our 60 day trip (so far so good!). Our accommodations range from rustic cabins to roadside motels, a few freebies with friends, some nicer hotel rooms with credit card points, and 9 nights of tent camping in spectacular, bear-free places. We are keeping food costs down and staying healthy by carrying a plug-in car cooler with breakfasts and other meals when kitchen facilities are available. But rest assured... we are still savoring plenty of the local specialties like luscious seafood in Maine and the best trout I have ever eaten fresh from Lake Superior. Hope you enjoy the ride...