7/2/2000 Monika's Prelude:
We're on the road! Finally! It did take quite a bit to get this trip off the ground (or out of the driveway). First and foremost there was Bob's book to be mailed off. Bob spent all of Friday getting the last pages printed, getting the bibliography completed with last references, and making the final corrections. But at 715 p.m. everything was ready and we hurried to the FedEx drop-off point that was open until 730. We watched with relief as we gave the book into the care of the FedEx man.

We stopped for dinner at Jerry's and started to think about the trip. We both were too tired to think through all the preparations and leave the next morning. Instead, we opted for a low-key Saturday. And what could be lower key then starting Saturday with a nice a Volksmarch in Columbia, Maryland. The weather was in the low '80s with low humidity and nice sun and lots of shade which was perfect for a Volksmarch. Afterwards we had lunch at our favorite Roy Rogers. The cashier had our order rung-up before we opened our mouth (regular customers or Stamm Kunden, in German).

During lunch we made a little list for the things we needed for the trip. We then made a great circle trip to Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Costco and finally got home for a much-needed nap. Afterwards, we mowed the lawn, wrote letters that had been waiting to be written, and packed the car. Finally we went upstairs to pack our clothes and were surprised that it was already 9 p.m.-our usual bedtime. But even after we went to bed, Bob kept jumping up to pack one more last item.

7/2/2000 Sunday
Free at last! Monika is driving the Delaware stretch of I 95, so it's my turn to write. We were off in good time this morning, leaving about 7 a.m. after a quick breakfast of cereal and milk. I tried to drink a lot of skim milk because that is so difficult to find on the road. One of the interesting parts of going camping is finding out all things that you of left behind. We haven't even unpacked, and I know one thing we forgot -- the frozen water bottles are still sitting safely in our freezer. I remembered them as I was driving past Baltimore and it was getting hot, so I was looking forward to a nice drink of ice-cold water. But this will not happen unless I can cage some ice during a rest stop; we shall see.

The funny thing is, no matter how often we go camping and then make a list of the things we have forgotten, we always forget new things on the next trip. This may be one of those curious facts of life like E = mc2 , but I doubt it. Our goal for this trip is to relax -- no fax machines, phone, email, voicemail, snail mail, Internet, intranet, hair net, meetings, or serious discussions. The itinerary is similarly loosey-goosey. We first want to stop in Boston to see Judson and Sarah, and drop off their China. After that, we just have a general goal of doing Volksmarches in an all the state capitals of the Northeast.

If you notice an improvement in my writing at this point, it's because I'm sitting in a comfortable chair in a hotel room rather than writing in a moving automobile. That's one thing I found out yesterday -- it is easier to type in a moving car than it is to write long hand. If you don't notice any improvement, just skip this paragraph.

We usually avoid driving through New York City in favor of New Jersey and then crossing the Hudson by the Tappan Zee bridge. But while Monika was driving I was looking at the map and the route through New York City seemed so much shorter. The traffic was also very light with no trucks, so I suggested that we try the more direct route through the city. Unfortunately, Monika agreed. We changed course to cross the George Washington Bridge into upper Manhattan.

What a mistake! There was one backup after another. We kept hoping that each one would be the last, but they didn't really end until we hit Connecticut. I think three things play a role. First there were simply too many cars out on the road. That was true even though we were in the middle of a holiday weekend when folk should have been out-of-town, plus almost no trucks on the road. Can you imagine what it is like a weekday? No wonder New Yorkers take the subway!

The second thing was the state's penchant for toll bridges and toll roads. Every toll caused multiple miles of stop and go back-ups. There are no toll bridges or toll roads in Washington, D.C. area, so this took me by surprise. The toll road around Chicago causes similar backups, so it shouldn't really have been a surprise. The net result was that we decided to never, ever drive through New York City again. Sigh. Live and learn.

On a positive note, the day's drive was remarkable because I saw 2 hawks, one that almost flew into our windshield as he flew across the road. We got a good close-up of his feathers (off-white with mottled brown spots) as he flashed by. Very pretty bird. Even more unusual was seeing 2 blimps in one drive. We saw a Goodyear blimp as we were in the first backup crossing into New York City. It was a silvery color with a broad blue band on the sides. The second blimp we saw in Boston as Judson and Sarah drove us to dinner. The pressure envelope was red with black accents and it was called the "monster.com" blimp. The brand was a Light Ship blimp, which is currently the only U. S. manufacturer of blimps as Goodyear got out of the blimp business around 1990.

After dropping off the dishes at Judson and Sarah's house, we all went out to dinner at the cheesecake factory at the Galleria mall near MIT. Good food and very large portions. Afterwards we played the home version game of "who wants to be a millionaire" at their place. The game makers had gone to great lengths to have the same type of question sequence as in the TV program (100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8,000, 16,000, 32,000, 64,000, 125,000, 250,000, 500 thousand, one million), and to keep the easy questions first and the distracters as silly as on the TV program. But the questions got harder for higher denominations -- Judson managed to answer a 125,000-dollar question whereas the rest of us did not get past 64 thousand dollars. The game also had the same three lifelines as the TV program. You could get a 50-50 reduction of the four choices, ask the "audience" of all the other game players, or call one person directly for help on a question. We kept threatening to call Gary and Robyn when we got stuck.

Judson had reserved a room in a new motel, the "Tage Inn". It was only 10 minutes from their apartment and had a continental breakfast-what more could you want! It also turned out to be very quiet despite being near Interstate 93, so we could get a good night's sleep.

7/3/2000 Monday
After grazing extensively at the continental breakfast -- where I found out they had skim milk on request -- we met Judson and Sarah for the day. Our first stop was a Kitchen, Etc. store to see if we could get a hanging pot rack like Sarah's. They had quite a selection, but we finally settled on exactly the same semi-circular version to fit our space at home. We plan to mount it in the entryway to the garage that is just next to the kitchen stove. While we were there, I couldn't resist picking up a two-burner griddle to replace my old one. The new one is thick enough to not warp and has handles that I can use to keep it from sliding over the top of the stove, which were the two major problems with the old one.

We continued on our shopping spree with a drive to Natick Mall, where I found a new swimsuit that was sufficiently modest to satisfy the kids. I like the fact that it had to normal side pockets and could double as an exercise or walking pair of shorts. Also, it was on sale for 25 percent off! But we found an even better sale of 40-60 percent off at the Great Train Store, so we decided to come back after the movie and check it out.

The high point of the day was seeing "Chicken Run" at a nearby theater with Greg, Cindy, Heather, and Felicia. It was a claymation flick patterned after "The Great Escape" movie and was very well done. Ginger, the hen heroine, organized a mass escape of the inmates of a chicken farm. They flew the coop, both literally and figuratively, and all lived happily ever after. Since it was a bargain matinee, the price was almost chicken-feed, and because it was a G-rated movie, the language was only fowl-mouthed (the chickens had teeth!). Despite thorough coverage of the topic in the movie, I'm still not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg.

After the movie we returned to the mall so that Sarah could return some things and we could check out the train store. We bought a set of Canadian National H. O. scale cars that reminded us of the cars we had lived on during our train trip across Canada. That trip has a lot of fond and vivid memories for us. We also bought a more expensive type of H. O. track that has a plastic road bed that underlies the nickel-silver rails, making it stiffer and easier to connect.

After a stop to pick up ingredients, we returned to Sarah and Judson's apartment to have a wonderful pizza dinner. She used a cuisinart to make the dough and a "pizza stone" to cook the pizzas, and the result was a much more crisp and evenly-cooked pizza. Monika and I agreed that these pizzas were better than what we've eaten at pizza parlors. What with salad and fresh corn on the cob, we had a feast. We had Judson drive us back to the hotel soon after dinner and watching a little bit of "The Iron Chef", a curious TV show from Japan where professional chefs compete in a timed cooking competition. The tremendous enthusiasm of the announcers and participants made the show fun. But we were tired and needed our sleep; we seemed to be slowly catching up on a very large sleep deficit during much of this trip.

7/4/2000 Tuesday
We got up at our normal "sleep-in" time (7 a.m.) and after breakfast put together the train track. We found we could make a nice track layout, but not a great one -- so we planned to go back to get more track at the bargain price. Bob was also thinking about buying some of the really big G gauge cars to start a large train set.

First, though, we went with Judson to the Boston Science Museum while Sarah cooked for the pool party that afternoon. Our first stop at the museum was the Omnivision show of "The Magic of Flight". In this special theater, the film is projected on a dome and completely fills the peripheral vision while you lay back on the reclining seats -- something like a planetarium presentation. The movie focused on the Blue Angels aerobatics team and had a great footage of their flying from the pilot's seats and from the camera attached to various positions of the fuselage. I enjoyed it very much and got so involved that I had to stop myself from making stick control movements during the aerobatics sequences (I didn't want to bother the people sitting around me).

Afterwards we spent about an hour each in an exhibit on a Tyrannosaurus Rex named Sue and an exhibit on aging. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was not as big as I had imagined from the movie "Jurassic Park", but it was unusual in that it was a very complete skeleton. This museum has a great knack for displays that interact with the visitor. One was the mock up of the Tyrannosaurus Rex which can put your arm in a device that mimics the arm movement of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. What this made crystal clear was how very limited the motion of a Tyrannosaurus Rex arm was compared to the human arm with its ball-joint socket. In the book, "The Time Before History", Tuckman (?) makes the argument that this ball socket joint was one of our species critical evolutionary advantages, allowing us to throw stones, make tools, and generally get involved in all other kinds of evolutionary mischief.

In the aging exhibit we competed on some of the tests. Judson and I were better on the tactile test, but Judson was the best on the jigsaw puzzle task and I was clearly the slowest. Monika and I also took the big five-factor personality test that was provided online. Monika scored 44 for neuroticism, 33 on extraversion, 38 on conscientiousness, 61 on agreeableness, and 70 on openness to new experiences (where the scale midpoint is 50 and the standard deviation 10, I think). I ended up more extroverted and more conscientious than Monika but otherwise we're very similar.

We left the museum around 2 to pick up Sarah and drive out to her Aunt Laurie's where the Bockweg clan was gathering for a Fourth of July pool party and birthday party for Sarah's sister Lisa. We were there the rest of the afternoon and evening. Judson and Greg spent a lot of time in the pool with the children. It was nice to see that Judson has an extended family there, which was in stark contrast to his first two years at MIT.

Lisa had a nice birthday party in betwixt and between all the other celebration. Gary and Robyn called to wish her a happy birthday and they, along with Judson and Sarah, had given her a nice set of flatware. She also liked the light blue hurricane lamp that Greg and Cindy gave her. Folks started to trickle off to see the fireworks a little later, but we were too tired and asked Judson and Sarah to just drive us back to the hotel, where we reluctantly said farewell. We did catch some of the concert on the mall in Washington D.C. as we got ready for bed and a bit of the fireworks before turning in for the night.

7/5/2000 Wednesday
Today was the day we would shift from living in the lap of luxury in a beautiful hotel room to roughing it in our tent. Some folks may not understand the attraction -- Judson sees only the bugs and dirt, for instance -- but it has a subtle charm that I'll explain later. First, though, we enjoyed our last bit of luxury by again grazing at the hotel's breakfast bar. I drank two glasses of skim milk, not knowing when I would get any more. After breakfast we checked out and drove over to the Wellington T-stop to take the train downtown for our walk in Boston.

Our Volksmarch covered most of the Boston "Freedom Trail" walking tour, but added in some unique loops. The Freedom Trail hits the high points of the Revolutionary War in Boston. The Boston massacre, Paul Revere's ride, Bunker Hill, Old North Church, and so forth are all on the walking tour. The main added loop went along the shore of Boston Bay. The route lead past the Coast Guard station and along all the wharves and bayside hotels back to the start finish point.

Along this part of the walk we passed the Boston tea party ship, the brig "Beaver", which was a checkpoint. We remembered our children tossing the fake boxes of tea over the side with when we visited a long time ago, and kids were still having fun running all over the ship as we walked by. As we walked on the bridge to the Beaver, I saw a small barge loaded with steel reinforcing mesh for concrete coming down the river. The captain was in a small wheel house at the stern of the barge and first mate was on the deck. As the barge neared the bridge, the captain steered for the center of the arch and the first mate peered along the top of the role of mesh and yelled back to the captain, "It's okay. You've got a good two inches to spare!". That caught my interest and I watched with fascination as the barge slowly slid under the arch of the bridge. It was a close fit but apparently the two inches of clearance was good enough because I didn't hear any scraping sounds. The final surprise was a sudden "whirring" noise as the wheel house approached the arch of the bridge. I was utterly surprised to see the wheel house smoothly descend into the body of the barge so that the stern would also fit under the bridge. What a neat design!

This Volksmarch turned out to be a very slow 11 km walk -- over three hours. Partly we were slow due to stopping to read things or take pictures or purchase things, but another delay of at least 15 minutes occurred when we walked across a set of three locks between the Charles River and Boston Bay on our way back from Bunker Hill. We had to wait for the locks to fill up with boats before they closed the gates and let us walk across. Some of the skippers of these private boats were pretty inept, and it was funny watching them trying to edge their boats into a slot and grab the mooring ropes on the side of the lock. I also bought a "U.S. Constitution" hat at the shop on the wharf besides the U.S. Constitution -- this hat would be my Volksmarching hat for the rest of the trip since I had forgotten my red one in Virginia. Monika was enamored of a sailor teddy bear named "Scuttlebutt" which we bought as well as a piece of the original hull of USS Constitution that had been replaced during repairs. Now I have another piece of history to go along with the piece of the Berlin Wall. I also managed to find the Boston Stone, which was embedded in the wall of a store. All in all this was one of the most interesting Volksmarches we have done for different historical sites and interesting city neighborhoods like the Italian neighborhood with many Italian bakeries and restaurants.

After the walk we detoured west to Natick to get back to the train store. I wanted to buy some more cheap pieces of railroad track, but it turned out rather more expensive because I bought two of the "G" gauge cars, which may someday go into a super-sized train set. They are very large and quite expensive, but I think I like them. Monika got three H. O. scale buildings and a German windmill for the H. O. train set, so we both splurged, but it was fun.

Hopping back in the car, we rolled down Interstate 95 through heavy but fast traffic to Massassoit state campground, where they had a very nice campsite for us. Putting up the tent for the first time was interesting because we could not find the instructions. After puzzling out how everything went together and getting it up, I found the instructions sewn to a seam on the inside of the tent! Can you imagine that?

Dinner was a simple one-pot soup with a lot of crackers. The fire afterwards was quite relaxing and after it burned out we went to bed. The reason that camping is so great despite bugs, dirt, and rain, is that it is deeply and totally relaxing (unless you have a noisy campground). I think this is for two reasons, everything is simplified and everything occurs in a natural rhythm.

In a hotel, for example, if you want to eat you have to get in the car, drive to a restaurant, talk to people, eat, pay money, and drive back to the hotel. Each of the steps causes a minor amount of stress, enough so that you never really relax. In contrast to eat dinner while camping you pump up the Coleman stove, light it, open cans or boxes, and cook dinner. Although when I light the stove it can get pretty exciting, most of the steps are completely under my control (I think). Therefore it is almost zero stress.

The evening entertainment of watching a campfire is similarly much less stress than the typical watching TV in hotel. The TV gives stimulation of some kind and make some kind of demand for your attention, at least if the programs are any good, and if not why are you watching them? If you make a mistake like watching the news, you get a big dose of negative, stressful information right there. At the very least, the typical TV programs involve people, problems, or other attention-grabbing stimuli.

In contrast, a fire makes no demands. If you wanted to keep going you must feed it, but you can always let it go out. If you feed it, the wood gathering, sawing or chopping, and putting it on the fire are all entirely under your control and so again there is zero stress. Honesty compels me to admit the chopping part can also get exciting, especially if you miss, but so far I haven't shortened any of my fingers yet. Watching the fire is also very relaxing. It has enough variety in movement, flames, sparks, and embers to keep your attention, but there is no real content or other meaning to it, so there is no decoding demands or further thinking required. And when the fire goes out, it's time to sleep -- as simple as that. This is why I think camping is so relaxing.

That evening we drove to the Taunton commercial strip to buy milk, ice, and a cooler to put them in. This illustrates Holt's most important rule for camping -- take plenty of money! (or at least the credit card).

7/6/2000 Thursday
Since we forgot to bring syrup for pancakes or jam for toast, or breakfast was of necessity cereal and milk. Our new cooler had worked well, the milk was cold and there was still some ice in the morning. We filled our water bottles with ice water for our walk and drove southwest on Route 44 to Providence, Rhode Island.

Although we got lost in Providence, we followed our nose and hit the starting point in Roger Williams Park without a detour. We left the visitor center (the start finish point) to cross a bridge over to the state house and loop around the center of the city. This loop included two malls, a very new one directly beside the state house, and a very old one in the center of town (1800s). The nicest part of the walk was following the riverwalk in the downtown area, which was artistically pleasing. Beside the usual canoes for rent, I think I saw 2 Venetian-style gondolas under wraps.

The second half of the walk was a loop to the south and traversing an artistic, somewhat bohemian neighborhood, and then a return through Brown University. Our checkpoint was a small Portuguese grocery store, but it was the only grocery store I've ever seen with 4 ft. high statues of Virgin Mary for sale, among various other miscellaneous goods. Brown University was pretty with a typical Ivy League campus and student body, to judge by the young people we met there. After stamping our Volksmarch books (separate stamps for events, distance, 50 states, 51 capitals, 13 original states -- whoopee!), we drove over to the new mall to have lunch in their food court and then proceeded to the New England Wireless and Steam Museum in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

The doors of the exhibit halls at this Museum were open when we arrived, but no one was there to take our entrance fees, so we walked right in. we found in elderly guy in the second shed among the Corliss steam engines. He seemed surprised to see us and asked us how we had found a place -- which was in fact rather difficult due to the extremely small sign out front. He took our entrance fee but explained that the Museum was usually opened by appointment only. We just happened to visit on a Thursday which is the day that all of the staff gather to work on, and play with, all the steam engines. There were in fact about 10 older men around, somewhat with train engineer hats and all of them crazy about steam engines.

The guy who guided us around and explained things to us was a World War II Army veteran who was having fun volunteering at the Museum during his retirement. He told us most of these engines were manufactured in Rhode Island when it was an industrial center in late 1800s. In particular, Corliss steam engines were built in Providence. Some were used in the cotton mills and others to generate electricity for lighting. The first commercial electric power plant only powered about 25 light bulbs and charged 70 cents per night to light one bulb from sundown to sunrise -- in 1880 this was a lot of money! He credited Edison with designing the insulation and conductors for the entire electrical distribution system as well as the electric light bulb. Our guide also explained that "steam oil" was a very thick oil that was added to the steam in high-pressure steam engines to lubricate cylinder walls and prevent wear. We bought a couple of T-shirts at the end of our tour and took the scenic drive out to point Judith, Rhode Island, and then west along the coast to the town of Watch Hill.

Point Judith had very nice view of Rhode Island sound and we had a snack their while watching sailboats, see gulls, and the Fuji blimp. The Fuji blimp made this a three-blimp trip! Unfortunately, the Point Judith light house had scaffolding around it and was either being dismantled or repaired. In either case, it wasn't very scenic but the views across the water were great.

The Watch Hill Carousel was old, as advertised, but wasn't nearly as nice as the one down at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.. The horses were suspended from rotating beams rather than attached to a floor -- a much more Spartan design than the one at the Smithsonian. However, this Carousel did have a ringing contraption and we watched the kids "reaching for the brass ring" during the ride, which was fun. Many of the older kids with longer arms successfully grabbed a ring from the contraption.

We took turns on the drive back to the campsite, which was mostly flat with woods on both sides and had an occasional glimpse of the ocean or an inlet, but nothing to write home about. Monika cooked dinner, which was angel hair pasta mixed with our homemade applesauce. We also stopped at a grocery store to buy syrup, jam, bread, ice, milk, and eggs to vary our breakfast diet.

7/7/2000 Friday

The tent and accouterments did not, of course, fit back into the bag it came in -- they never do! We did finally get the tent in the bag and just packed the rain fly, poles, and stakes separately in the rear of the wagon. The Nissan is a "tall wagon" which is really the height of a minivan, and packing the aft cargo space high up is quite feasible while still being able to look out the rear window. Monika drove north around Boston on I-95 and we branched off on Route 3 to drive to Concord, New Hampshire for our next Volksmarch.

The folks at the Holiday Inn gave us the start box and we signed in to take the Concord walk. This walk was a very different route than then it was when we had taken it in 1995. I clearly recall the 1995 route going mostly north and south through the city while I was looking in vain for signs of a minute man and instead finding signs about Mary Baker Eddy -- the founder of Christian science. For other geographically challenged walkers, the "minute man" Concord of Paul Revere's ride is quite near Boston and also has a nice Volksmarch, but it is not the capital of New Hampshire.

This Concord walk went west after looping around the state house and the downtown area. The long leg west was quite boring, but the campus of the private high school (St. Paul's Episcopal preparatory school, I think) at the end of loop was very posh, more like a small university than a high school. The even have their own observatory! It was well after one o'clock when we came back through the center of the downtown area, which is a nice, vibrant small town type of city center. By this time we were hungry, so we stopped in at the "Brown Bag Deli" for lunch. As the proprietor said, "good bread and good meat make great sandwiches". Monika had marble bread and I had a kaiser roll with roast beef, and the sandwiches were in fact quite good.

From Concord we drove north through the lake district of New Hampshire to the foothills of the White Mountains. Who knew that New Hampshire even had a lake district? The route we chose lead us around the shores of several of these lakes and it was a very pretty drive. This wandering route took us longer than the distance would indicate, so we were quite happy to get a site at the private campground we had picked out beside the Sacco River.

We picked out the campground using the Woodall's tent camping guide to find places that had special sites for tents only. When we arrived we liked the fact that all the sites were shaded by tall trees, which gives shade during the entire day and keeps the tent from heating up too much. The sites had very little underbrush, which was a con for giving us less privacy but a pro for having no poison ivy and less chance of ticks. The entire campground adjoins a small river, which had a nice sandy bottom and was shallow enough for wading. It cost significantly more than the state parks we stayed at (25 dollars vs. ten dollars per night), but was nice enough that we stayed three nights.

7/8/2000 Saturday
Our strategy for this trip involves picking good attractions to visit, taking Volksmarches in state capitals, and doing scenic drives in between. We have our "Starting Point" book to find all the Volksmarches, a book called "Off the Beaten Path" to find odd museums and other places of interest, and a book called "The Best Scenic Drives in America" to find the scenic routes among these destinations. Arranging all this is a day-by-day task. For this day we planned to take the Volksmarch in Augusta, Maine (a state capital but not one of the original 13 counties, darn it!). We found the Jones glass and ceramics museum near our route to Augusta and included that as an afternoon activity.

The drive to Augusta on the back roads of Maine was slow and not that scenic. The lake district of Southern Maine looked like the lake district of New Hampshire, but a little less developed and poorer. We arrived in Augusta about 1130 and started the Volksmarch at the state Arboretum on the east side of the river. From the garage beside the visitor center, the route lead us across the river on a high bridge to the state capital, and then wound downhill through the small downtown area. The downtown district was quite deserted considering the time of day and had several shuttered stores. We found a bakery that was kind of open (it may have technically been closed) -- they let us in but had no other customers and almost nothing on the shelves except one loaf of fresh baked bread, which is very strange for a Saturday morning. We bought that loaf and ate it during the rest of our walk, and it tasted very good.

Munching our bread, we crossed a low bridge back across the river to the east side. Just across the river was a reconstructed 1700s style fort which looked interesting. However, the people writing the directions were minimalists and did not provide any commentary or explanation of the sights, so we still don't know exactly what that fort represented. We continued downstream to the south on a path right beside the river and the riverside views were very pretty. We watched several blue herons out on a sandbank in the middle of the river.

When we came to a large gray-stone building (possibly an old mental hospital) we branched up the hill past many other hospital buildings, some of which were still currently in use. Unfortunately, the instructions were also silent on this point, so we don't know exactly what kind of hospital this was either. The patients were only allowed out in a garden area with very high fenced walls and with a guardian, which seem a little peculiar to me at the time, and we later found a sign that implied this was the state mental hospital.

We walked back past the starting point at the Arboretum and did a final three km loop through the wooded area behind the Arboretum visitor center. The instructions at this point were ambiguous and we got turned around so that we walked a loop the wrong way around. But Monika still found the checkpoint, which was a plaque on a stone in the grass and not very obvious, so it all turned out okay. All in all we thought this was a very nice walk with varied terrain and scenery, but could have had better instructions with a little more description of the sights.

Despite eating the bread during our walk, we were ready for a lunch at Arby's on the edge of Augusta before we continued on our journey. On our way to the Jones Gallery Of Glass and Ceramic, we decided to skip the scenic part and take the interstate as far as we could to save some time, figuring that the museum would close at 5 p.m.. The directions in our book said only "Douglas Hill Road" for the address of the museum, which was not very specific. Luckily, we found a tiny dot called "Douglas Hill" on the map and hoped that the road leading to the town was the road with the museum. So we aimed for the direction of the town of Douglas Hill. Luckily there was a sign on the state highway that directed us to the museum. It is doubtful that we would have found it otherwise as it was really off on a back road.

The museum was in a green two-story house and it was quite remarkable. Besides their normal exhibits of glass and ceramics, they had a special exhibit on Bohemian glass and its influences on British and American glass making in the late 19th century. We were looking at this exhibit when a distinguished-looking woman started explaining about the pieces, how they influenced each other, who made what, etc. to us. She gave us a pretty complete lecture. Monica looked at her name tag and saw "Jones" twice. Looking closer she saw "Jones Gallery" and the name "Dorothy Lee Jones" at the bottom of the tag. We were in fact talking to (or being lectured by) the owner of the establishment. Her knowledge was truly thorough, especially pointing out how the different artists influenced each other.

After showing us the complete bohemian glass exhibit, she left us to our own devices in the upstairs section of permanent exhibits. A very interesting part of this was a section where they had an original object from the 19th century and a modern reproduction or imitation of it right beside it. A green dot indicated the original and without that dot it would have been very hard to tell the difference. Unfortunately, closing time was indeed 5 p.m. and we didn't get there until 330. So we had to hurry since we still had to peruse the gift shop. Monica found a beautiful dark blue vase from Czechoslovakia and a necklace from Venice made of glass beads that suited her to a "T". Bob toyed with the idea of buying a delicate, light blue vase but decided not to get it, partly because it would had to survive another week of camping. We did pick up a few postcards showing interesting pieces of the collection before completing our journey back to camp. Dinner was simple (canned chicken and peas over mashed potatoes), as usual while camping, and we turned in early since it was threatening to rain.

7/9/2000 Sunday
Although we're not religious, we decided this Sunday would be a day of rest. Breaking camp and driving all-day just seemed to be too much for both of us, so we decided on a "down" day. We had found on our camping trips years ago that occasional rest days were absolutely necessary; I recall we used to do this every three to five days. We paid for another night and decided to investigate the scenic railroad in North Conway, New Hampshire. The traffic between Conway and North Conway was as bad as the guidebook suggested. On any summer afternoon they have high school kids with orange vests and white gloves directing traffic outside high-volume areas on the road between these two towns, and it really gets bad on weekends.

Nevertheless, we arrived at the railroad station in North Conway shortly after 9 a.m.. We found they had a one our round-trip to Conway with a steam locomotive and a two-hour trip to Bartlett which is North along the Sacco River. Since we had already seen the stretch between Conway and North Conway from the road, we bought tickets for the two-hour trip to Bartlett which left at 1130. We spent the intervening time browsing through the town stores.

Our first stop was an aviation art store were most of the prints were World War II scenes signed by the pilots. But they also had a nice print of a Cessna 172, which we decided in the end not to buy, instead purchasing a Cessna hat pin which even has a green stripe like my Cessna 172 (N 5642 Romeo). The next stop was a store that carried lace curtains and tablecloths. Ever since we had bought a lace curtains in Germany in 1985, we had been looking for more. The store had a wide variety of patterns -- the one that appealed to us both was a pattern with lighthouses and sailboats -- just right for "Holt's Hafen". We decided to redo the living and dining room curtains in this pattern, and bought the necessary pieces including a lace runner for the dining room table.

We also visited a five and dime store where I found a book on orphan trains, which is one aspect of the history of orphans that I was not aware of. The basic idea was to take the unwanted or abandoned children from the large eastern cities and ship them to cities out west to be distributed like cattle to families wanting help. It was considered an improvement over the orphanages of the day, but had either very good or very bad outcomes for the children, depending on the families who chose them. It reminded me a little bit of my father's sister who was put out to work with another family after their mother died and her father was committed to an asylum. My father, being 14, was big enough to start working a man's job in the oil fields, but that is why he only had seven years of schooling. Since he was largely self educated after that point, there were curious gaps in his skills. My mother, for example, joked about his mispronunciation of the word "spatula" when they were buying house wares (he pronounced it "spat too' lah" until she corrected him).

Our final stop was a boutique type of food store where I bought raspberry cocoa, an adventure in drinking which turned out to be quite good. Monica bought licorice stalks and whips for both of us to eat on the train. The stores in North Conway, although catering to tourists, had a wide variety of interesting wares. But there were no T-shirt stores or other tacky shops. This is in contrast to places like Niagara Falls or Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where every store seems to have the same assortment of tourist junk.

We put our purchases in the car and took out some bread to eat on the train trip. We traveled in an 1898 parlor car with rattan chairs facing each window. The original stained-glass sidelights were still intact, which was amazing since the car had been used as a bunk house for over 50 years before being restored. The car's cabin frame was wood and I could feel it twisting and shaking while the train was moving -- a very odd feeling. The scenery along our two-hour trip was mainly woods which occasionally opened up to mount vistas or views of the Sacco River along which we traveled. The track was first part of the old route to Boston and then on a part of the Portsmouth railroad. The guide said that the time to Boston by rail in those days was three and a half hours, which would compare favorably to the time required to drive that route today.

After the train trip we had a nice lunch of roast beef sandwiches with coleslaw on toasted rye bread -- this was the daily special at Hooligan's, a sports bar cafe in North Conway. Our last stop in North Conway was the knife shop where Monika bought a combination corkscrew, can opener, and knife. I learned how to correctly sharpen my knife from the proprietor, and was surprised to find that I had been doing it wrong all my life. Well, better late than never. On our way back to camp we did the necessary shopping for milk and ice, but otherwise just stayed at camp and vegetated the rest of the day. It finally began to rain in earnest just as we finished dinner, and so far as I write this our tent is turning out to be completely waterproof. Hooray!

Our new tent is a large octagonal dome in an oval shape, with the sides having a very sloping roof. The design is quite unusual in having 4 window-door combinations, one each in front and back and one each on the sides. We arranged our two beds in an "L." configuration, and this leaves plenty of room near the center of the tent for our two chairs and a possible future table. This is a comfortable way to wait out a rain.

This is our first "big" tent since the old canvas cabin tents that we used in the '70s and early '80s. This tent has as much floor space as those old tents, but not as much head room at the edges since this is a dome tent with sloped sides and those tents had peaked cabin roofs and almost vertical sides. The main advantage, besides being much lighter and smaller to pack, is that this tent is really waterproof whereas all of the canvas tents leaked when it rained hard. I clearly remember how a mist would fall from the ceiling during a driving rain from the water droplets seeping between the canvas fibers. So much for the good old days -- this tent is much better.

I have many fond and not-so-fond memories of our old cabin tents. Pitching them correctly was an art because the canvas would swell up and shrink when wet. If you staked the tent out too tight, the rain would cause it to tighten up further and pull the zippers apart. If you staked it out too lose, the roof would sag and collect water in a pocket and then leak through. Getting the stakes to hold was difficult in different types of sites. Sandy soil required a broad stake, but these would not penetrate rocky soils as well as a large steel spike. For clay, aluminum wire rods were good enough and lighter, but they would bend easily. So far on this trip we have had sandy soil and the broad plastic stakes that came with our new tent have been good enough.

Wet canvas tents were also difficult to fold, heavy, and so much more bulky that I had to pack less in the trunk if we were packing a wet tent. Monica remembers a tent that had a center pole inside the tent. That required one of us, usually her because she is smaller, to crawl into a collapsed tent with the poles, put the poles together in the dark, and then cooperate with me on the outside to erect the tent. That was especially difficult if the canvas was wet and stiff. Also, that doggoned center pole would always be a focal point for condensation in damp weather and drip down on us. In contrast, our new tent did not leak or have condensation problems at all during a night of moderate to heavy rains!

7/10/2000 Monday
It was still raining lightly when we got up and we decided breakfast out would be a good idea. We cruised Main Street Conway around 6 o'clock in the morning and finally found Bea's Cafe in a little strip mall that seemed to have cars parked in front. It was indeed open -- hooray! -- and we had a nice leisurely (that is, big) breakfast. It had stopped raining when we left the cafe, and we decided to look at two covered bridges which are featured attractions of Conway. One was still in use and we drove through it (of course we stopped to take pictures) and drove over to the second. This one was restricted to pedestrian traffic, which gave us a chance to walk slowly across it and look at the construction in detail. The main support on each side was a long arch constructed out of many layers of wood. Quite impressive what folks in the 1800s could do without metal!

We drove back to the campground and packed the wet tent; it would no longer fit into the bag because of all the dirt adhering to it, but we just rolled it up and put it into the back of the car. We drove the scenic drive through the White Mountains on Route 302, and stopped at the Silver Cascades, a very pretty small cascade right beside the road. We also turned in at the sign for the base station of the cog railway up to the peak of Mount Washington. The weather had looked as if it was clearing, but started raining again at the base station. We couldn't wait for a better day and wanted to ride on the cog railroad as much as see the scenery, so we decided to do it. For once we thought our timing was imperfect, since the nine o'clock train was just pulling out and we would have to wait for the 10:00 train. But this gave us a chance to really look at the museum, which gave a very good overview of the construction of the cog railroad.

The railroad and steam engines are a wonderful example of 19th-century engineering still perfectly functional and having run without interruptions since its start in 1869. A part of the exhibit showed a "slider" car, a kind of single-person luge sled that was used by the workers to come down the mountain along the cog and rails after a day's work. What a ride! The fastest time was two minutes and 50 seconds for the three mile ride! (That would make it a little over 60 miles an hour!) In contrast, our trip being pushed by a steam locomotive up the three mile grade to the peaked took us an hour and 10 minutes and the trip down was equally long. I thought the slider cars would've been very exciting, especially if you are averaging over 60 mph on a 25 percent grade. I later found out that at least one person had died in a slider car accident.

The uphill trip required one ton of coal (shoveled one-handed by a single fireman) and 1000 gallons of water. The track is extremely steep. Standing up in the car and walking was a very unusual experience. You had to lean way over and it looked like you would fall over on your nose. All of the buildings like the water towers beside the trackball looked crooked even though they were really perfectly level. Since the tender only held six hundred gallons of water, they had to refill at a water tower about midway up the mountain. Although the railway is single track, 2 sidings allow the up-and-down trains to pass each other. The switches are quite complex since there are three rails including the central column for the cog gear.

We had a tail wind going up, so the coal smoke from the engine behind us mixed with the clouds and fog and went racing by us. The wind velocity increased as we went up and was roaring at 50 plus mph when we arrived at the summit. This was quite unusual since ordinarily there is little or no wind in a fog. The fog (or cloud) was so heavy that we could only see about 20 feet, so wandering around the summit did not seem wise -- it was in the '40s so wind chill was fierce and if you got lost hypothermia could have been a real problem. They had a list of people who had died on the summit posted prominently on a wall with the causes of death. Exposure, cardiac arrest, falling off a slider car, and falling off ledges were the common reasons.

After a short stay at the top (not enough time to see the museum in the visitor center), we boarded the car for the return trip down at the appointed time and waited for our conductor. He was late and then proceeded to scold us for boarding without permission. I don't think standing in a howling wind in the cold fog was really an option. Shortly thereafter, the same young man had the effrontery to broadly hint that tips would be greatly appreciated at the end of the ride! I don't like that kind of persuasion and certainly did not like his style, so we did not tip after the ride down.

The ride down was really more exciting than the ride up. On the trip up you figured if anything went wrong we could simply stop, climb down, and walk down the mountain. But coming down the problem is stopping the tendency of the train to runaway down the 25 to 37 percent grade. They used compression breaking on the engine and wheel brakes on the carriage car, and sometimes it didn't seem like enough. The car shuddered and we could see the engine shaking and hear the pinion gears grinding into the track below. Since the old car had a chassis of wood, it flexed, swayed, and bent as we ratchet down the track. Quite impressive. Monika remembers the "Jacobs Ladder" section of 37 percent grades and curves as being particularly exciting.

After disembarking and finishing up the museum at the base station, we continued driving on Route 302 to Littleton, New Hampshire, where our "Off the Beaten Track" book had listed tours of the Northern Pike sharpening stone factory. We wanted to take the tour, but when we arrived the receptionist told us they had stopped giving tours several years ago and had asked the book to de-list them. Sure enough, I checked our book and found it was a 1987 copyright in its ninth printing! As a consolation prize, however, the receptionist gave us two nice sharpening stones to keep and a brochure about grindstones. Mollified, we drove on to Montpelier, Vermont, via a scenic route.

We decided to do our Volksmarch in Montpelier and then drive on to Burlington Vermont to stay overnight. The walk was rated a three and deserved it. We started at a hotel near the state capital and after a short loop in the small downtown area we started a long, steep, steady uphill grade to a park at the top of a bluff overlooking the city (town?). We had to stop several times to catch our breath, but it leveled out at the end and we had enough energy left to walk up the 65 steps of an old stone observation tower in the middle of the park. The nice views in all directions from the top were worth the climb. We could see the White Mountains to the East and Green Mountains (I think) to the South and West.

The one tricky part of this Volksmarch was that the directions said to "continue on the path downhill" after descending the tower, but there were 2 such paths. We took the wrong one, but were fortunately corrected by a local resident who was also climbing the tower at that time. If you take this walk, make sure you start straight down the hill on the main (center) path, not the right-hand branch. Two rivers go through Montpelier and we crossed both of them during the walk. After crossing the smaller river, we again had to climb a long hill, but the slope was much more gradual so we didn't feel that this was a problem.

After a turn through Vermont College, we descended again to the downtown area getting another good view of the state capital building. The route cut through the downtown area and crossed the main river for a short distance before re-crossing back to the starting point, with nice views from the bridges on both crossings. All in all, the walk was a moderately challenging walk through a very small, quiet, and pretty state capital.

After the Volksmarch we drove on to find a motel in Burlington, skipping some sleazy-looking ones and settling on the "Ho-hum Hotel", which was a little old but nicely refurbished, which at 60 dollars a night it should be. Neither of us felt like a heavy dinner so we had salads at a nearby Friendly's restaurant before spending a couple of hours planning our next few days and then turning in for the night.

7/11/2000 Tuesday
We started off doing the Volksmarch in Burlington, Vermont, right after breakfast and it turned out to be a very nice walk indeed. From the starting point in the Radisson hotel, the route immediately entered Battery Park on a bluff overlooking Lake Champlain. From there we descended to a lakefront hiker-biker trail to walk north for little over a mile up to North Beach. This out and back section of the trail gave very nice views of the Lake and the Adirondack Mountains in the distance at frequent intervals.

Returning from that loop, the trail continued South past a skate boarding practice rink where we watched 2 teenagers practicing tricks. We also passed a ferry dock and a science museum, and walked through a marina on the south side of the city. The views of the lake along this part of the route were enhanced with the passing sailboats, ferries, and kids learning how to paddle kayaks. At a water treatment plant, we found our next checkpoint and turnaround to into the city. The loop through the city took us through a nice pedestrian mall area where we stopped at a food wagon to have chicken fajitas made to order for lunch. Munching on these, we followed a small loop around and back through an enclosed commercial mall. While the pedestrian mall was interesting because of street musicians and nice boutiques, the commercial mall had the usual assortment of mall stores and was boring. We returned to the car, feeling that overall this was a top-notch Volksmarch and it was a shame that we're only numbers 10 and 11 for the season.

We shortened our drive around Lake Champlain by taking the ferry from Grand Island over to New York, where we turned South on Route 9 to take the scenic but slow lake shore route. We stopped at Ausable Chasm, one of the tourist attractions along the way. We felt that the 13 dollars apiece just to walk down the chasm was a rip-off, so we took the free route over the bridge upstream from the falls and then circled around to the Route 9 bridge just downstream from the falls. In this way we saw the falls area and beginning of the chasm itself, although we didn't walk through it.

One of the reasons I like driving the byways is the curious things you see put up or displayed by eccentric Americans. During this drive we saw homes with concrete sculptures out front, one of an astronaut (I think) painted a dull brown, and one of a long haired woman with a water jug. Another home had a large, white, pointed church steeple sticking up out of the front yard, but no other signs of a church. But the weirdest thing we saw that day was "Stone Henge", a sculpture garden onto three acres of farmland right beside the highway. All of the sculptures were modern, but some were more abstract than others. Almost all were made of welded pieces of metal, and many were humorous designs or themes. One large but serious piece was of the hanging of John Brown in 1859 which included a scaffold, a hangman's noose, John Brown, and two of his followers. In his comments on the piece, the artist made the point that it was about 1000 days from the time John Brown was hung to the day that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which was thought-provoking.

Late in the afternoon we arrived at the campground at Putnam Pond, which is six miles west of the town of Ticonderoga, New York, and they had spaces for us. We liked our campsite so much the we decided to stay for three nights. Putnam Pond campground is a state park with widely spaced wooded sites. There was a large rock right next to our campsite that Martin would have been climbing immediately, and a nice fireplace and picnic table as well as a large area to pitch the tent. Monika could gather firewood easily by walking around the woods within 25 yards of our campsite. It was also very quiet. The squawking that we initially thought was due to a bunch of skylarking Boy Scouts at the other end of the campground turned out to be a flock of crows cawing! The nearest campers to us were in a trailer about 40 yards away, but they never seemed to leave their lawn chairs beside the fireplace.

7/12/2000 Wednesday
We decided to take the scenic drive into the Adirondacks to Lake Placid, which was the home of the 1980 winter Olympic games that we had watched on TV. The drive was truly scenic with a high peaks dominating both sides of the roads. The high ski jump towers, visible from way back, signaled our approach to Lake Placid. We stopped there, of course, and found out that for ten dollars we could go up to the top of the hundred twenty meters ski jump, but for only 16 dollars we could also take the gondola ride up white face mountain, see the Olympic museum and ice rink, and also visit the bobsled and luge venues. What a deal (only three dollars more than walking along the Ausable chasm).

The 90 m and 40 m jumps were set up for summer jumping -- sliding down and landing on plastic sprayed with water. We saw one guy actually jumping on the 40 m hill. A chair left took us up to the base of the towers for the 90 and hundred twenty m jumps, and up close the structures were enormous. The height of the jumps and the steepness of the slope of the landing area were much greater than they appear to be on TV. An elevator took us to the top of the hundred twenty meter tower and we could stand next to the actual start points -- it was a very long way down! We decided to walk back down the stairs that were next to the landing slope of the 90 m jump. This appeared to be legal even though the stairs were so overgrown with bushes that not that many people do it. It gave us some interesting angles for some more pictures and an even better appreciation of the steepness of the landing area -- according to the plaque this was 37 degrees but it seemed more like a 45 degree slope to us.

By now it was lunchtime and we drove into town and stopped at a small restaurant with a black bear motif. Monika finally had a large hamburger. Bob tried to stick to fish -- but the tuna he ordered had been made into tuna salad -- which was quite good, just not low-fat. Our next stop was the gondola ride up to Little White Face Mountain. Big White Face Mountain right next to it was the site of the alpine ski events in the 1980 Olympics. The gondola ride was lots of fun, and gave great views of the mountains. It went from 1200 feet to 3700 feet and was quite steep in places.

We walked to the top of Little White Face and looked out over Lake Placid to one side and all the way over to Lake Champlain to the east. There was a trail of sorts -- a ski run in the winter -- over to the peak of Big White Face Mountain another 1200 feet up. We started along the trail, a very rocky, slippery, and steep trail, but we soon decided we didn't really have the time (or energy) to go all the way -- the last gondola left at 5 and we probably would not have made it back in time.

As it turned out, we got down to our car shortly before 4 p.m.. The bob sled venue closed at 4, so we decided to go back into town to look at the ice rink and the Olympic museum. The museum was small and had memorabilia from the 1932 and the 1980 Olympic Games, both hosted by Lake Placid. It had examples of bob sleds, luge, and skeleton, which I had never heard of. The skeleton sled is slightly larger than a luge sled and you make the ride had first. It was Olympic sport in 1924 in 1948 when the games were in Switzerland, but not in the intervening games. A short film clip showed the exciting moments of the USA-Russia hockey game in 1980 -- which we both remember very well. Bob still remembers vividly the announcer screaming, "Erruzione scores!!" In the late minutes of the game as the U.S. struggled to win it.

Among the memorabilia were examples of gold, silver, and bronze medals, an Olympic torch, and the special clothes worn for the opening ceremonies, plus a special exhibit on Sonya Henning. After the museum we went to the new ice rink, were hockey practice was in full swing, and then to the old ice rink where the pixies were practicing for future glory. In front of the Olympic Center were the flags of all nations that had participated in 1980. Monika noticed the flag of the old East German region (the basic German colors with a hammer and sickle in the middle), a flag we won't see again, thank goodness. We stopped at the IGA grocery store for milk, ice, and bread, and also found cheap Bing cherries. We drove back to our campsite for a quick evening meal where desert was eating the cherries and spitting the seeds into the fire -- it doesn't take much to keep us entertained!

7/13/2000 Thursday
We managed to get an earlier start and drove over to Fort Ticonderoga by about 10:00. We signed up at the Volksmarching box and paid our entry fees since we knew we wanted to see the Fort as well as take the walk. It turns out that this Volksmarch has two extensions on it, 1 km to take a detour to the boat dock and 1 km to take a tour of the reconstructed Fort. As we paid our entry fee we heard the sound of fife and drums, so we asked what was happening and were informed that the flag raising ceremony was about to begin. So we hustled inside to watch the pageantry -- the tunes they played sounded familiar but we did not recognize the flags. One of the flags being raised had 13 stripes like the U.S. flag, but a union Jack pattern where the stars on a blue field usually are in the U.S. flag. We found out later that this was called a "Grand Union flag" and was an early Revolutionary War flag signifying an co-equal coexistence of Great Britain and the American colonies. This flag was given up after the Declaration of Independence, which effectively ended the possibility of a peaceful coexistence. Naturally we took some pictures before returning to the shop to start our walk.

The Volksmarch started by taking a back road from the visitor center out of the historic area that I had never noticed on previous visits. This gravel road went down a shady lane beside cultivated fields, which was a very pleasant beginning for the walk. We turned right at the gate onto a highway that went past an Amtrak station and down to the "Fort Ti" ferry across Lake Champlain. The route then doubled back along the highway to the town of Ticonderoga about two miles away. The first mile was shady, but the second mile lacked shade and became a hot trudge.

The trail became much more interesting in the town of Ticonderoga. The first part of the town loop was a small park with a covered bridge spanning the river. Since it was named the "Kissing Bridge", we smooched away before crossing to the other side where we turned left to walk upstream. The brochure for the historical trail was interesting and I read it to Monika as we walked upstream for about a quarter of a mile. The brochure detailed the history of the discovery and industrial use of the river during the town's past. As we circled in from the Riverside we joined a main street for the return hike. Several storefronts were vacant but most other businesses seem to be doing all right.

One of these was the "Luncheonette" where we decided to have lunch. Both the food and the decor of the Luncheonette were straight out of the 1950s. We had a substantial lunch and I was tempted to have one of the old-fashioned malted milk shakes. We found out that the luncheonette had been remodeled into the stainless-steel and green Formica lunch counter and stools in 1954. The local folks were friendly to us, answered our questions, and let us join in their jokes.

The return route lead past the small cascade, called "La Chute" by the French. They are a small but pretty set of falls -- the water is flowing from Lake George in the South into Lake Champlain and thence North to the St. Lawrence River. In contrast, the rivers just south of Lake George flow South into the Hudson River, so the watershed is sharply divided by these mountains.

The stretch from the falls back to Fort Ticonderoga was another hot slog, but the avenue just inside the Fort entrance was shaded by large trees, which was a relief. We read all the commemorative markers along the avenue, which detailed the ebb and flow of war over this strategic area. We opted to take both the 1 km extension down to the boat dock and the 1 km tour of the Fort. We missed the boat at the dock -- it had just sailed -- but we really didn't have the time to take a lake cruise on this visit anyhow. We felt the tour of the Fort was well worth the price of admission. I read most of the information in three floors of the museum, and an hour or so later we finished up the walk. We felt that this walk had 2 very interesting end points, but they were tied together by a boring (and hot!) highway walk.

From the Fort we drove down to Lake Champlain to cross over into Vermont on the aforementioned ferry (six dollars). The ferry is cable guided, and the trip is quite short. In Vermont we curled around to the southeast to visit the remains of Fort Independence. Much to our surprise we found a visitor center with a new museum in the state park, where I happily spent another hour. The museum has a quite unusual shape in that it mimics the shape of a French bateaux or small ship. So the museum's walls are like a huge concrete hull for a super sized row boat. These walls come together in the "bow" where we watched a short but informative video on the history of the Fort.

The museum also had static displays and two statues that came to life and talked a blue streak if you came anywhere close to them (motion sensors). One gave the rebel's point of view and another gave the view of a British soldier. The faces were projected on the inside of these hollow plastic heads on the statues, and effect was quite startling at first. We found both of the stories quite engrossing. Monica bought a nice fife and I bought a historical book on Indians during the Revolutionary war before we drove on. We drove the scenic loop back up North to the Lake Champlain Bridge and crossed back into New York. Joining the lakeside route again, we returned to our campsite after stopping at a grocery store for victuals.

7/14/2000 Friday
In the early morning hours we heard the pitter patter of little rain drops on the tent. But to our great relief, they had stopped by the time we got up, and even the tent had almost dried out. So we had a last pancake breakfast and a last twig fire, packed up the car (the tent was dry so we could brush off the dirt and fit it back into its bag), and started South. We finished the scenic drive, going along the West shoreline of Lake George for about 30 miles. The farther south we got the more touristy it became, until we finally even saw a "House of Frankenstein" and a wax museum in the town of Lake George at the southern end of the lake. It was curious how development gradually changed from relatively unspoiled areas around Lake Champlain to the tacky tourist things in Lake George.

We hopped on the interstate and drove further South to Albany for the capital walk for New York state. We followed directions until we thought we were close to the starting point, then parked the car and asked a parking lot attendant where the visitor center was. He did not feel it was worth his while to explain and just pointed vaguely in the direction we had just come from, telling us we could "ask somebody over there". We did manage to find it on our own (it was simply around the corner on our right). The gentleman in the visitor center was, however, extremely friendly and helpful in getting us the Volksmarch box. Unfortunately, he was the only friendly and welcoming person we met in Albany. Otherwise, the people we met were guarded, suspicious, or had a thinly veiled hostility in their reactions to us. During our walk, we encountered one couple having a fight in public and two other older men arguing heatedly over a parking space, as far as I could figure. I was also not impressed with the guy who was throwing empty beer cans out onto the sidewalk from an upper floor, because one nearly hit me.

The walk itself wound past the obligatory state house and a large central square, but otherwise traversed older residential neighborhoods. The row houses were fairly large but most had been converted to multiple apartments. Some had been restored beautifully, but others were neglected. Bob thought the neglected ones looked like slums. On one seedy looking street there were prominent signs that prohibited cars from even stopping in the middle of the street and I could not help but wonder if this was to prevent illegal activities of some type. The architecture of the capital area was grandiose, but lacked any coherent or consistent theme. A 40 story high-rise stood next to a modernistic egg-shaped exhibition hall, which was across from the 19th-century neo-baroque style capital building.

Since it was lunchtime, the downtown area was filled with folks. One amusing aspect of the area was sculptures of real people placed along the sidewalks. These were so realistic that they made us repeatedly do a double-take. We had a cone from an ice cream vendor, who served us brusquely. Overall, I felt that Albany combined people with the legendary grace and charm of New York City residents and an architecture that reminded me of Baltimore on steroids. We both decided we would not do this Volksmarch again.

From Albany we drove south along the Hudson River following the scenic drives. I found a reference to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in the Volksmarch information and recalled that there was supposed to be an antique airplane air show there. Serendipitously, this town was just across the Hudson River and we could easily reach it by crossing the Hudson at Kingston. We weren't sure exactly where the airport was, but fortunately they had signs up to guide visitors.

When we arrived, we were extremely happy to find that there are was also an antique airplane museum associated with the air show. We spent an hour or two looking at the airplanes, reading the signs, and checking over stuff in the gift shop. I bought a book of photographs of antique airplanes and Monika bought a teddy bear in an aviator's outfit which she calls "Bob Bear" (not to be confused with Bobbie bear, which is our English policeman Teddy bear). Leaving the museum, we continued down the the scenic drive on the East bank of the Hudson for a while.

We crossed back to the west bank of the Hudson at Poughkeepsie and drove South toward West Point hoping to find a nice motel for the night. But we were too choosy. We saw a couple of motels with vacancies, but there were no restaurants nearby and we were also thinking about dinner, so we continued on. Then we simply didn't see any motels for the rest of the drive from West Point down to the Tappan Zee Bridge. Getting a trifle desperate, we turned west on the interstate and exited at Nanuet, New York, where we found a Days Inn next to an International House of Pancakes. By then it was pretty late and we were much less choosy, so we settled on dinner at the IHOP -- my baked cod was fine, but Monika's spaghetti was poor, consisting of just noodles and tomato paste. Dinner is not a strong suite for an IHOP. It rained intermittently during the night, so we were glad to be in a hotel room.

7/15/2000 Saturday
It was raining hard with a gusty wind as we walked across the parking lot to try IHOP for breakfast. I had a waffle and Monika had an omelet, and these turned out to be a lot better than their dinners! We called Tammy in Bound Brook, New Jersey, and she invited us down so we took I 287 around to get there. The hard rains and gusty winds made driving difficult at times, but the road looked like it would be quite scenic under better circumstances.

Bill was off on a Mackinac sailing race, but Tammy and Sean and Phoebe were there to greet us. We really enjoyed seeing Bill and Tammy's neat home on the back part of the property and their three-story rental house on the front part. It looked like a great set up, and they were really maintaining the classic old house well, which is a lot of work. We went through some sets of family pictures with Tammy and the kids, which was a lot of fun, and then took the grand tour of the properties. Tammy mentioned my Mom's visit when the dogwoods were blooming and how she had enjoyed seeing that. And of course, Tammy mentioned how Grandma had enjoyed taking everyone out to eat! Anyone who knows my Mom, knows how much she like to eat out. It was good to hear someone speak of my Mom again -- she seems to be alive again at times like these.

The kids are very engaged at the Waldorf school they attend, and Tammy told us a bit about it. I really liked some of their toys and had to stop myself from sitting down and play with them. Monika did in fact play with their wooden xylophone, and it had a great tone. Sean was more quiet and reserved than Phoebe, but they were both warming up to us by the time we had to leave, which made it hard to go. But at least we got some nice goodbye hugs from the kids and Tammy before we left, which definitely brightened an otherwise gloomy day.

We joined the New Jersey Turnpike and drove southwest through Delaware, Baltimore, and around the Washington Beltway to get home about 530 p.m. or so. I had gotten all the driving in the rain and was a little stressed by that, but all in all it was a wonderfully relaxing vacation. The mix of Volksmarches, museums, scenic drives, and camping on this vacation was hard to beat!