Chris and I decided that it was the perfect time to take that longed for vacation.  We each had a sizeable chunk of time to go a do whatever we wanted. 

But what did we want??

Run with the bulls in Spain?  Scuba off the coast of Australia in the Great Barrier Reef?  Skydive in South America??

NO!!  We wanted to see the East Coast of the good ole US of A.  We dropped the dogs off in the kennel.  Hated doing it but we would be chained to them otherwise.  We hooked up the travel trailer, loaded the kayaks, bikes and hiking equipment and HIT THE ROAD!

Please click on the links below to see some sites we want to share.

We originally were scheduled to start this shindig off the right way by taking a hot air balloon ride in Asheville, NC.  However, the morning of the ride dawned with rain and lightning.  The pilot did not feel it was safe to ascend.  So the hot air balloon ride is being postponed to another time.

 

 

We then made our way up to New York to spend some time in the Adirondacks.  On our way we stopped near Harrisburg, PA and wandered around the Hershey Amusement Park for a couple of hours.

 

 

The Adirondacks were spectacular.  We stayed nearly smack dab in the middle at a campground at Lake Durant.  We were in close proximity to the Adirondack Museum, the Wild Center and miles of great hiking trails.

 

 

After leaving the Adirondacks we made our way to New Hampshire to spend a couple days in the White Mountains.  I still can't boast of having climbed Mount Washington on the AT but I can say that I have been to the top on the Cog Railway, in a form of transportation completed (1866) before the AT was even thought of.

 

 

Once our time was up in the Whites we made our way to the ultimate destination of Baxter State Park (BSP) in Maine.  We stayed in a campground near BSP since the park cannot accommodate travel trailers the length of ours.  We did purchase the season pass to the park and definitely got our money's worth with as many times as we entered it!  :-)  We hiked, kayaked and hunted moose (with a camera....jeez...).

 

Our return home took us through Boston, where we got to meet some great people and see some wonderful sites, including Paul Revere's house, Old North Church, USS Constitution, USS Cassin Young destroyer and more.  We only got to spend a day site seeing in Boston, so our feet were tired!

Astoundingly, the USS Constitution was going to be sailing on Friday for Labor Day celebrations.  We wanted to stay.  That would have been such a sight!!  She won't be sailing again until 2010.  She is having her decking redone.  However, she did sail the previous Friday and we purchased a flag that had been flown on the expedition.  Certified and all.  She is very pretty.  For all those history buffs, she is the oldest floating commissioned ship.  (There is only one older, HMS Victory, and she is in drydock and will never float again.)  She was involved in something like 32 battles and won all of them.

We made one last quick stop on the way home to Lancaster, PA, home of the Amish.  We allowed ourselves 2 hours since we had to check out of the campground by noon. 

We made it home to spring the pups from the kennel on Saturday.  We came home a few days early since it was impossible to reserve a campsite for the holiday weekend...and we didn't know in advance where we planned on being to make those necessary reservations 3 months ago.

I took somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600 photos and countless minutes of video that I haven't even seen!  This is just a small sampling of them to show you some of our exploits.  Hope you enjoy them.  We had a great time doing lots of hiking, kayaking and relaxing.  We can't wait to revisit any and all of these places!!