Our New England States Trip

The New England States have been on my travel bucket list for quite awhile. There was this cluster of 6 states in the northeast corner of the USA that I had never set foot on and I really wanted to remedy that. (It seems so ironic to me that I grew up just hours from these states yet never visited them; now that I live in the midwest I had to drive cross country to see them.) I started planning a trip for fall of 2019. Not at the peak of the leaf season -because large crowds drive me nuts- but hopefully close enough to the peak to see some of that calendar-worthy color. As seems to be our modus operandi, I did copious amounts of research to compile the itinerary while my family remained largely uninvolved. This works out quite well for them because when things go wrong, "mom" has to take all the blame. The upside for me is that I tend to get a larger vote than everyone else about where we go and what we see.

We hit the trail Saturday morning, September 28, after fueling up at a local fundraiser breakfast. We drove all day -across numerous state lines- to get to Connecticut.

George Washington Bridge is about the closest our kids have been to NYC yet.

We checked into our first hotel, which was a bit of a dud. You would think the Yale neighborhood would have high speed internet, but we couldn't connect in our room -or even in the lobby next to the front desk. We went searching for pizza and found a great little hole-in-the-wall shop that made hand tossed crusts, but they were super busy and we hadn't taken into account the sun setting earlier on the east coast than we're accustomed to, so we pretty much missed sunset at the beach.   

The next morning we drove over to Essex CT and took a ride on the steam train and riverboat. 

We ended up in a train car with a group of Asians; let me tell you- if my family thinks I take too many pictures... goodness, they totally put me to shame! It was a constant click, click, click. We were not trying to photo-bomb but we are in an awful lot of their photos. 🙁

The conductor came around to punch our tickets... 

From both the train and riverboat we could see the Gillette castle. 

We rode the train for about an hour, then got on the Becky Thatcher riverboat (which I did not get a picture of) for an hour long cruise up & down the Connecticut River, before getting back on the train to return to the Essex station.

Next we drove to Rhode Island and went to the Cliff Walk in Newport. The Cliff Walk is a 3.5 mile walkway that borders the shore line- on one side are the cliffs and on the other are mansions, "summer homes" of the wealthy. I had read that parking can be a nightmare but we took a chance on finding a spot nearby; we nabbed a spot without a problem at Easton's Beach (below) at the beginning of the hike, and there was even a 30 min left on the meter. 

 A good portion of the Walk is paved and easy walking

The Vanderbilt mansion

  

 

Richard turned around and went back to put more time on the parking meter while the kids continued on with me a ways farther. We had to hustle back because we knew the parking meter was probably running out again, but I loved the views and the exercise. 

So when I started researching for this trip, we were told that the sunrise from Cape Cod is legendary. But I also read negative reviews about the traffic on Cape Cod. If you know Richard at all, you probably know that the words 'Richard' and 'traffic jam' do not belong in the same sentence! Thus I was not planning to go out on Cape Cod. But just days before we embarked I was looking up something else and discovered how close we actually were going to be to Cape Cod... and I reconsidered. I stumbled upon this motel with a family suite for a good price -that sealed the deal. Folks, this place would be the Amish paradise! They have everything from shuffleboard to sand volleyball, just to name a few. 

Now here is the thing- this little oasis is way out in Provincetown, on the tip of the cape. We were 2.5 hours away and it gets dark so early in the east... so it felt like we were driving "forever" to get there. Once you get to the cape it's still another hour+ of driving to get to P-town. In the dark. Couldn't see anything along the way. Constant steam of oncoming headlights. But we made it and the suite did not disappoint. We were sorry we couldn't pack up these rooms and take them with us for the rest of our trip; we only found one other multi-room family suite anywhere else. Highly recommend Cape Colony Inn.     

-to be continued-