10, 000 miles later

Sunday, August 24

So, we’re signing off here. For those that enjoy the stats…here they are. If you are more visual, we’ve included a highlighted USA map, too!

June 25 Madison, New Jersey – Luray, Virginia 320 miles

June 26 Luray, VA

June 27 Luray, VA

June 28, Luray, VA
June 29 Luray, VA
June 30 Luray, VA – Middlesboro, Kentucky 400 miles
July 1 Middlesboro, KY – Jackson, Tennessee 310 miles
July 2 Jackson, TN – Oxford, Mississippi 190 miles
July 3 Oxford, MS – Natchez, MS 287 miles
July 4 Natchez, MS – New Orleans, Louisiana 181 miles
July 5 New Orleans, LA- Lafayette, LA 172 miles
July 6 Lafayette, LA – Schulenburg, Texas 405 miles
July 7 Schulenburg, TX – Fort Stockton, TX 418 miles
July 8 Fort Stockton, TX – El Paso, TX 249 miles
July 9 El Paso, TX – Silver City, New Mexico 198 miles
July 10 Silver City, NM – Tombstone, Arizona 177 miles
July 11 Tombstone, AZ – Tucson, AZ 123 miles
July 12 Tucson, AZ
July 13 Tucson, AZ – Gila Bend, AZ 130 miles
July 14 Gila Bend, AZ – Palm Springs, California 327 miles
July 15 Palm Springs, CA – Prismo Beach, CA 328 miles
July 16 Prismo Beach, CA – Big Sur, CA 135 miles
July 17 Big Sur, CA – San Francisco, CA 150 miles
July 18 San Francisco, CA
July 19 San Francisco, CA
July 20 San Francisco, CA – Oakland, CA 55 miles
July 21 Oakland, CA – Yosemite, CA 204 miles
July 22 Yosemite, CA – Bishop, CA 125 miles
July 23 Bishop, CA – Las Vegas, Nevada 284 miles
July 24 Las Vegas, NV – Zion, Utah 234 miles
July 25 Zion, UT
July 26 Zion, UT – Tuba City, Arizona 314 miles
July 27 Tuba City, AZ – Canyon de Chelly, AZ 218 miles
July 28 Canyon de Chelly, AZ
July 29 Canyon de Chelly, AZ – Mesa Verde, Colorado 216 miles
July 30 Mesa Verde, CO – Taos, New Mexico 252 miles
July 31 Taos, NM – La Veta, Colorado 128 miles
August 1 La Veta, CO
August 2 La Veta, CO
August 3 La Veta, CO
August 4 La Veta, CO – Dodge City, Kansas 301 miles
August 5 Dodge City, KS – Council Grove, Kansas 334 miles
August 6 Council Grove, Kansas – St. Charles, Missouri 443 miles
August 7 St. Charles, MO – Bloomington, Illinois 212 miles
August 8 Bloomington, IL – Chicago, IL 120 miles
August 9 Chicago, IL – Ann Arbor, MI 280 miles
August 10 Ann Arbor, MI – Niagara Falls, Ontario 297 miles
August 11 Niagara Falls, ON – Tyson, Vermont 420 miles
August 12 Tyson, VT – Farmington, Maine 378 miles
August 13 Farmington, ME
August 14 Farmington, ME
August 15 Farmington, ME
August 16 Farmington, ME
August 17 Farmington, ME
August 18 Farmington, ME
August 19 Farmington, ME – Amherst, New Hampshire 191 miles
August 20 Amherst, NH – East Greenwich, Rhode Island 123 miles
August 21 East Greenwich, RI
August 22 East Greenwich, RI
August 23 East Greenwich, RI – Morristown, New Jersey 212 miles
August 24 Morristown, NJ – Madison, New Jersey 6 miles

My father highlighted our route as we traversed the country. When I saw this map I immediately cried, “we missed half of it!” And, indeed we did. But my dad was quick to point out that we actually covered quite a bit of land. Yes, you’re right. And, especially given our travel partners and gas prices, we overcame some obstacles and had had fun nonetheless…

Personally, I overcame the hurdle of sharing so much of our lives and thoughts. I am looking forward to retiring from the blog and getting out of the public eye. I inhabited this persona (thanks again, Lillesol!) rather unwillingly, but learned that the medium of blogging can be useful if you are willing to accept rough, unpolished writing.

I’m thankful for this opportunity and appreciative of all we’ve learned, seen, done, and experienced.

I’m thankful for so many peoples’ messages and open arms along the way.

I’m thankful for the gift of patience (which we all practiced – some better than others).

I’m thankful that despite the fact that neither Neil nor I enjoy driving, we managed to drive 10,000 miles without a glitch.

I’m thankful to my neighbors Amy and Susan, cousin Mallory, and Scott Johnson who helped me with my camera search in June.

I’m thankful for my children who managed to maneuver the transition from place to place with ease (most of the time!), who forgave us all of our faults, and who still seem to love their parents in spite of it all!

I’m thankful for Neil’s innate map skills and his patience along the way (especially when I wanted to see “just one more historical marker”). I am thankful that I am even more appreciative of my travel partner than when we started out in June!

I’m thankful for the Beatles CD, Queen CD, and the Princess CD (things you never thought you would say).

I’m thankful for back roads and I’m thankful for Interstates. Each had its appropriate time.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to challenge myself and overcome fears of writing publicly.

I’m thankful for all of the people who served us coffee and chocolate milk with a smile, and those who helped us understand and appreciate our surroundings better.

I am thankful that I could easily get back in the car and do it all again and I am equally elated to be at home!

I’m thankful that I had moments like those in the wilds of Death Valley where I could truly appreciate and understand history.

I’m thankful for sassafras candies, Fruitstripes gum, and gummy bears.

I’m thankful for life in all of its splendid variations. In two short months we’ve heard about engagements, pregnancies, new homes, marriages, births and deaths. Time marches on and I am thankful for the many who included us in their joys and sorrows…

I’m thankful for living in this vast and beautiful land filled with so much rich and varied history.

And, lastly...here is a photo of the woman behind the camera.

We're home and all is well. 

Friends and limes...

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Trying to take one last family photo

Right...

We left Rhode Island around 10AM (trying to miss the beach traffic) and headed south on Interstate 95. By the way, a heads up for anyone who travels north from New Jersey, RI is planning on adding some tollbooths on 95 (remember the road works in Providence?). We passed through Connecticut, which went on forever (but now I have Texas and Kansas to compare it to!), but the traffic was moving on our side unlike the poor souls heading north on 95 who were in a continual traffic jam from New York to Rhode Island.

95

Matthew, I thought of you in Rye!

The Tappan Zee  Bridge!

Yeah!

You know you are home when...

The Morristown Green 

There was a festival going on...and Eleni became a cat!

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band carried us in our final 20 minutes on 287 South and we arrived in New Jersey at 3PM. We’re staying in Morristown tonight. Our friends generously invited us to stay with them because we can’t get into our house yet (it’s rented out until 4 PM on Sunday!).

So, thankful to be with friends and almost home…

...one more post to go.

Roger Williams is the man!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Alex and Eleni playing with my brothers' old Star Wars stuff

Our Cinderella hopeful!

Neil, Alex, and Eleni walked around East Greenwich this morning and I visited Providence in the afternoon.

Heading into Providence!

The Foundry

Providence hills

What kind of tree is this? Help me...

My mother and I visited the Roger Williams National Memorial; I thought this would be a fitting end to this “Search for Freedom,” as Roger Williams is the epitome of someone who made a stand for an individuals’ right to believe in any or no religion. His belief in these “liberties of conscience” and the Natives’ right to sell the land, not the King's, were seen as rebellious and he was banished from the “frontier settlement” of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. He left Salem before he was deported to England in February of 1636 and, after 14 weeks of walking, lived among the Wampanoag Indians (whom he knew as trading partners), and then purchased some land from the Narragansett Indians. His Rhode Island became a haven for those who were not fitting into the more conservative Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north. It was the home of the first Jewish Synagogue in the colonies, the first Baptist Church, and the first Quaker Meeting House.

New frontiers exist everywhere. So many towns out west advertised their frontier status and encouraged visitation to their frontier museums. However, let’s not forget that some of the first frontiers for Europeans were here in the east – in space and mind.

The Park Ranger agreed with my sentiments from our Great Swamp visit: many native Rhode Islanders visit this site without having much knowledge of Roger Williams. Somehow the school systems in RI did not incorporate much RI history, but she said this was changing. One of the upswings of “No Child Left Behind” is the curriculum that is being developed to ensure knowledge of local history.

So, I see Rhode Island with new eyes. The smallest state in the Union with the longest name (The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations) has always been a place that gets a significant nod in my American history classes, but my adoration has increased considerably. But after this road trip, this feeling holds true for all of American history.

One of the plates in the National Park

Me and Roger

Roger Williams (his remains are under this statue) overlooks Providence and the State Capital here. The Statehouse has the 2nd largest unsupported dome in the world and on the top you can just see the silhouette of the “Independent Man.” Despite not learning about Roger Williams in schools, Rhode Islanders cling to their “Rouge Island” independent ways.

 

Roger Williams overlooking Providence...ummm...the pose?

The State Building

Lots in construction in Providence (good old Buddy Cianci!)

The bug!

We were going to meet up with some of Alex and Eleni’s buddies tonight, but some unfortunate events got in the way. One of our “huddled masses yearning to be free” road trip team members decided to stage her own mini revolution. I’m surprised that the proletariat did not rise up earlier with half of her summer stuck in a 14x6x5 ft. space, but perhaps she was stupefied by gum incentives and Princess songs.

As we explore the word freedom on this trip, it is important to remember some of the different perspectives this word encompasses: the freedoms that are given and freedoms that are taken away. In this way, our car was a microcosm of freedom…

Sigh.

Secret places in Rhode Island

Thursday, August 21, 2008

East Greenwich, Rhode Island

We spent the greater part of today watching the kids play in the “secret place” in the neighbor’s yard.

The "secret place" is a clump of boxwood that Alex and Eleni adore. I keep wondering at what age they will no longer revel in it...in a Puff the Magic Dragon sort of sad way.

After dinner, we piled the kids into the car and headed south on Route 1 to Narragansett. We stopped at Smith’s Castle, which has a fascinating history that I was never taught in school in Rhode Island. I find this mildly irritating as this and the topics that are covered in the book The Mayflower (by Nathanial Philbrick) are crucial to our nation’s beginnings, and yet, they were (at least circa 1970s-1980s) not even discussed. I never even knew about King Philip’s War until college in Virginia…

But of course, I had my fill of the mythological. Here we are – we’re just a few miles (relatively speaking) away from the Freedom Trail and Plymouth Rock and I suppose that diving into the question of ‘What is Freedom?” would be more complete with a visit to Boston or Plymouth Plantation, but you’ll have to forgive me. Anyone who grew up in New England might sympathize with the inundation of Pilgrims and Revolutionary War heroes and associated field trips that I grew up with here.

And then here is Smith’s Castle – just 10 minutes down the road and it’s not even discussed in Rhode Island history classes (or at least the ones I attended). Never mind the fact that the Narragansett Indians are ignored. Sigh. I’ll get off my soapbox…

The site of the so-called Smith’s Castle was originally home to many Narragansett families. In the 1630s, the chief sachem of the Narragansett granted Roger Williams and Richard Smith use of the land for trading posts. Roger Williams sells his part to Smith and sails to England to acquire a charter for Rhode Island. The trading post prospers and Richard Smith Jr inherits his father’s estate. However, things go drastically downhill during King Philip’s War in 1675. Militias from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth gathered near this site and attacked the Great Swamp village of the Narragansett. Forty colonial soldiers are killed, but that is nothing compared to the Narragansett’s losses. In the next year, the Narragansett retaliate by burning the trading post down.

In 1678, Smith builds what is now known as Smith’s Castle…a secret place for me...and so the story continues.

 

Smith's Castle in Wickford, RI

The mass grave of 40 colonials

This one is for you, Ted! Colonial War - 1607-1775

I would not have enjoyed this detour half as much if I had not read Mayflower, so I hope any AMEX students out there appreciate the importance of a good history book (it’s their summer reading) and the value of actually visiting a historical site.

Which, of course, has been the point on much of this trip.

We got back in the car and headed for Point Judith in Narragansett. We saw this new sign and wondered if we would be able to visit the site.

A landmark and a secret place...Neil and I got married here ten years and six days ago!

The closest I could get to a family portrait!

Point Judith from Scarborough Beach

Here's the game - you throw your flip flop as far as you can into the waves and then watch the waves retrieve it for you!

We were going to stop at Newport Creamery on the way home, but Eleni fell asleep...despite our singing!

Neil's last posting

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Neil, signing off

Amherst, NH, around Boston, to Mapleville, RI to visit with Kirsti’s father again, then to her mother in East Greenwich.

So, I’m in Dunkin Donuts, freezing with the insane A/C when it’s beautiful outside, trying to fight fires at school remotely on email. Definitely feels like summer is over, and school is back at the forefront of our lives. Strange mix of anticipation, dread, and resentment that the leisure and exploration is over, but mostly I feel rested and ready to work hard again. Kirsti still wants to see a few more sights/sites, but the kids are in a holding pattern revolving around PBS cartoons, so we will concentrate mainly on visiting with Kirsti’s Mother and Stepfather (they always get the short straw of being our last stop of the summer), and getting back in one piece to NJ. We get our house back on Sunday, then go in for meetings on Monday. Anyway, I’m sure all colleagues and students share this strange spread of emotions in these last few days- definitely a reduction in individual “freedom”, but a return to a caring community with two months of cool stories to catch up on (except now all of our stories are old news!).

We’ve seen too much to single out highlights, but I do have one confession to make, and one resolution to keep to. I actually feel more rooted in, and excited about, this country after this trip. NJ is a fine place to bring up children, and a convenient place to live and work, but it’s hard to be passionate about it (sorry, NJ natives). In contrast, in the small villages of New England, and in the endlessness of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, it is easy to feel connected to the landscape, and to the legacy of the generations that have struggled to endure in those harsher conditions. So when the kids go off to college we can move… but meantime, I feel better knowing that two months of exploration have only opened up more places we have to explore (we missed the whole North West, for goodness sakes!), so to folks back in Europe, enough of the platitude that the USA is all the same. The wild and infinite possibility that drew earlier immigrants here is still alive; you just have to look a bit harder. As for the resolution, it’s been (mostly) good getting by living with one small car, one small motel room, one trunkful of possessions. Maybe when we get back we can get by with less stuff, and cut out some of the more inane activities. Perhaps the coming recession will purge all our lives of excess…

Photos from the day...

Ashburnham blueberry muffins! We loved these...and got some to take on the road,even!

Rejoicing at the sight of 95 (how odd!)

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

We headed south on Route 4 in Maine and passed trucks carrying logs, paper mill towns (rather smelly), hundred-year-old cemeteries right on the side of the road, gypsy moths set up in autumn trees on the side of the road, a new snowmobile museum , Dunkin Donuts (three in the span of a five-minute drive!), old barns barely standing, and a rusted boat motor for sale next to a stand selling cukes.

The kids’ patience is disintegrating, and we can’t blame them. Ours is too. Alex is singing along to the music of the car, “I’m going off the rails on this crazy train!” We all are…

But, the leaves are changing color, signs are advertising, “Going back to school sales” and soon, Alex and Eleni, normalcy will return to your lives. The rhythm of packing and unpacking, getting apple juices, bathroom stops, and taking turns with music choices will be replaced with the routine of school and sleep schedules. I wonder if they will miss the road trip then.

We’ve got the rest of our trip mapped out and I’m finding that I’m already missing the road trip: the random wanderings, the wondering where we will sleep and eat, the challenges of newness, and the excitement of historical discoveries. And yet, who doesn’t fantasize about the ease of being at home? And certainly, I will appreciate my surroundings more (especially a washer and dryer!). But truly, one of the great joys of this trip is realizing how grateful I am for my home, my job, my friends and family.

You can pick up any national or local paper and read about the economic problems across the United States. From the falling housing market to the rising gas prices, people are buckling down. I don’t think we’ve witnessed what my Grandparents surely saw during the 1930s depression, but there are images that remain in my mind: a cup on the counter at a shop in Maine labeled “please help with fuel costs,” the ease of getting hotel rooms without booking ahead (except for when there was a Plumber and Pipe fitter convention in Detroit), very few American travelers and more foreign tourists smugly visiting this country claiming that they do not understand why Americans are bothered by the gas prices, the man outside the grocery store in asking us if we needed yard work done, empty stores with forgotten “Sale - Going out of Business” signs on them, abandoned condos in Las Vegas, homeless people in cities in Tennessee and California, and people in Mississippi selling what looked like all they had outside their homes in make shift yard sales.

And yet, we’ve seen the other extreme, too.

But I digress…

It's 95 South and we're on our way!

Tonight we visited my friends in Amherst, New Hampshire. Usually, we meet them at their camp in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, but we changed our plans based on the rain. It’s unfortunate as my annual pilgrimage to their camp near the lake is deeply seeded in my soul, but seeing this family anywhere is rewarding. My father’s family had a camp in Ashburnham long ago and they were neighbors with the Maguire family. When I visited my father’s parents in Massachusetts each year, I spent time with my friend Terry Maguire, who was just twelve days older than me. Since the age of seven, we’ve been life-long pen pals, and though we still rarely see each other (this time, she’s teaching in Zimbabwe!), my connections with New England remain tightly tangled up with her and her family.