Day 15 - Friday, August 18, 2006

In Effingham, at the Country Inn and Suites, we skipped the continental breakfast and got on the road by 11:00 a.m. We stopped in Greenville, Illinois for an amazing brunch at the Red Apple Restaurant. They served mass quantities of biscuits and gravy, eggs, hash browns and juice for less than $4.00 each! We drove on to Columbia, and got to Doug and Mary's about 5:00 p.m. We had a nice dinner, and watched a movie with them, before getting to bed by midnight. In the morning, Andy came over and then Doug fixed us all a nice breakfast. We used the pure maple syrup we had brought from Massachusetts, and it was tasty. We snapped a group photo and headed for home about noon.

Day 14 - Thursday, August 17, 2006

We had a room right next to the front desk. When we went out to the continental breakfast, it seemed like we were just walking into our own dining room. We ate lightly and started driving west. We decided to stop in Columbus and visit the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens . We enjoyed the tropical rain forest and the butterfly garden, and we took more pictures. Notice the picture of Bill with the butterfly on his hat. There was a display of bonsai trees and also some glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly, whose work we are familiar with.

The rest of the day was filled with driving and stopping for snacks. The sunset was spectacular. Too bad it wasn’t over Cape Cod Bay, where the sunset was not very pretty.

We got as far as Effingham, Ill, where we had stayed our first night out. We were careful not to stay in the same hotel, though. This time we picked a Country Inn and Suites. We really enjoyed our stay at the one close to Rochester, NY.

Day 13 - Wednesday, August 16, 2006

We ate the continental breakfast at the motel. This is the first time I had ever seen perfectly circular frozen egg patties. You put them in the microwave. They were tasty! Bill had cereal and a bagel. We packed up and decided to go to the zoo in Rochester. The people at the front desk said it was small but very good. Bill and I like small zoos, so we decided to check it out. It was not the greatest zoo, but the weather was perfect, and we had a good time. We took pictures of a bald eagle, elephants, and even monarch butterflies! We were back on the road in about two hours.
Several of Bill’s ham friends had asked him if he had seen Tim Duffy’s (K3LR)ham radio antenna towers on the way up to the Northeast from Kansas. They said you could see them easily from the highway, just on the Pennsylvania side of the border with Ohio. We had come from Ohio to Pennsylvania at night on our way east, and did not see the antennas. Bill wanted to be sure and see them this time. We weren’t sure exactly where they were, so we called Jimmy, who was at a computer, to tell us where to look. He looked up Tim’s address on the Internet, and we found out that they were on a totally different highway – I-80 instead of I-90. I-80 was about an hour and a half south of I-90, in a different part of the state than we had thought. We decided we could go that way, since it was also on our way home, so we headed off in that direction hoping we could make it there before sunset. We found his house and the towers, although Tim wasn’t home at the time. Bill took lots of pictures just before the sun went down. He said it was the most incredible antenna system he had seen in all his 49 years as a ham.

There was a McDonalds close-by and we had a small dinner there. Behind that McDonalds was a brand new hotel, a Best Western. We decided to stop there for the night.

Day 12 - Tuesday, August 15, 2006

We got up early and ate a nice breakfast of cereal with blueberries, and some blueberry bread that Natalie had made the day before. The Schusters took us to the Coast Guard pier and some other beaches around the area. I took lots and lots of pictures. Bill was in the car with Jack, while I was in a car with Natalie. She also showed me some beautiful houses with gardens of lovely flowers around the area. It is amazing how different it is to have as a guide someone who knows just where to go to see the most interesting places.

After we said good bye to the Schusters, Bill and I went into some shops on the south part of Cape Cod looking for some souvenirs, and presents.

We didn’t have time to see the sights in Boston, this time, so we headed on west.

We drove all afternoon, and just at sunset, found ourselves close to a huge lake NE of Syracuse, NY, called Lake Oneida. We decided to stop and take a sunset picture there. It was in Verona State Park. We walked around as we waited for the sun to set, and we both took pictures.

We drove until 11:00. We found a very nice hotel just south of Rochester, NY - the Country Inn and Suites.

Day 11 - Monday, August 14, 2006

We ate at the buffet breakfast at the Holiday Inn. Today was our day to drive out to Cape Cod. Our original plan was to spend the day on the cape, spend the night between the cape and Boston, go to Boston on Tuesday, and back to Cape Cod to spend the night at Jack and Natalie Schuster’s house which is in the middle of Cape Cod, in Brewster. They had their grandchildren there, and didn’t think they had room until Tuesday night.
Jack is a ham radio friend of Bill’s. They had known each other for years, and always got together at the Dayton ham radio convention (Hamvention). When Jack found out we were going to go back and forth from the Cape, he invited us to spend tonight with him instead.

First, we went to the Cape Code visitor’s center and watched a movie about the flora and fauna of the cape.
Bill wanted to visit the Sandwich, MA glass museum, as he had an ancestor who used to work there. We enjoyed a nice movie about the history of the glass factory, and a young woman who did a demonstration of glass blowing.
We drove out to the Schuster’s house. They took us to an outside restaurant overlooking Sesuit Harbor. I wanted to take a sunset picture on the cape, so they drove us to an interesting beach which has a view to the West. It was pretty cloudy, so the pictures aren’t very dramatic, but we enjoyed taking a walk on the sand beach. On this beach, at low tide, the water recedes so that you can walk out two miles into the wet sand.
We went back to the Schuster’s and talked before going to bed.

Day 10 - Sunday, August 13, 2006

We got early this morning, and I got Carol to the convention hotel by 7:55 a.m. I came back to the hotel and blogged and napped for a while. I had lunch at a nearby Wendy’s, and then drove up to Concord to revisit the National Minuteman Historical Park. It was a beautiful afternoon, and there was a volunteer dressed up in a Revolutionary War uniform. He was giving a talk to any of the visitors who chose to listen, and he was incredibly interesting. I could have listened for hours, but he finished up and I walked on across the bridge up to the visitor center, and then to my car for the drive back to Marlborough.

Carol was finished with the convention and had taken the shuttle back to our hotel before I arrived. We went out for dinner at a Friendly’s restaurant a few miles away, and then we drove into Boston for a quick driving tour. Fortunately, the traffic was light since it was Sunday evening, and we drove all around the city. The skyline was beautiful after dark, and we saw many people out walking throughout the downtown area. We got back to the hotel, ran a wash, and made reservations for tomorrow night in Middleboro, Massachusetts.

Day 9 - Saturday, August 12, 2006

We were up early again this morning, and we got Carol to the convention by 9:00 a.m. I headed over to the nearby town of Sudbury, where I visited Jim Idelson, K1IR, his wife, Sue, and his son Sander, KB1FPU. Jim has a great contest station setup, with numerous transceivers, amplifiers, and other gear. He has quite a tower in his backyard, which holds up at least 7 beam antennas. Many wire antennas are in the nearby trees, and they all can be switched at will to any of the several operating positions. I also met Lars, KE1J, one of Jim’s friends and a regular operator in the contests, who had also come over to Jim’s to operate the station.

After spending an enjoyable morning of conversation with the Idelson family, Jim invited me to operate his station in the radio contest of the weekend – Worked All Europe, CW. It made for an excellent day - I really appreciated their company and hospitality.

I got back to the hotel in time to take Carol, and Mike, a conventioneer staying at our hotel, back to the convention center for the awards banquet. The dinner was OK – salad, baked chicken, potatoes and vegetables. I thought the dessert, chocolate cake, was great. After the awards ceremony, the three of us headed back to our hotel to chat for a while over a drink in the bar. Then, back to the room so we could be up early to get Carol to her convention by 8:00!

Day 8 - August 11, 2006

We got up early this morning, and I drove Carol over to the convention hotel, which is about 1 mile west of the Holiday Inn where we are staying. She has signed up for a day full of lectures and presentations which start at 9:00 a.m. I went back to our room and made arrangements to drive down to Newington, Connecticut to visit the headquarters of the American Radio Relay League.

After getting directions, I headed out on this adventure. It was supposed to be just an hour and a half’s drive, but a traffic jam getting onto the Massachusetts Turnpike added almost another hour to the trip. I got down there about 2:00 p.m., and a volunteer ham gave me a great tour of the headquarters building, and then took me to the building where the headquarters ham station, W1AW, is located. The chief operator checked my license, and then set me up to operate at one of the visitor operating positions. I operated on 40 meter CW, and the first station I worked was W8DAT, Al, in Ashtabula, Ohio. Al is 93 years old, and is in a nursing home. He told me that he had sent his aide out to find some gin! Whatever keeps you going, I guess... After making another contact or two, I went back over to the main headquarters building and had a nice visit with Dave Patton, NN1N. Dave is the manager of ARRL Field and Educational Services, and is an excellent contest operator. This was the first time I was able to meet him face to face for a chat.

I drove back to Marlborough, and met Carol at our hotel. She said that the day full of lectures and meetings was really interesting, and that she had been having a good time. We had a nice dinner at the Olive Garden near the Solomon Pond Mall, and then went back to the hotel for the night.

Day 7 - August 10, 2006

Nice small hotel, this Viking Inn, very plain but comfortable. We got up at 8:30 and had another quick continental breakfast. Carol had a bagel with cream cheese and peanut butter, and I had a home-made waffle. Very good. We checked out and headed south to Freeport, Maine, the home of L. L. Bean, Inc. What a major complex. It’s really huge! We wandered all through the place. I certainly never saw as much hunting, camping, and outdoor stuff anywhere in one place in my life. However, there was nothing we couldn’t live without, and we got out of there without spending anything!
Our next stop was in Portland, Maine, to see the lighthouses there. We found the Portland Head Light without too much trouble. It is in the old Fort Williams complex, which guarded Portland, the closest U. S. port to Europe in the old days. Very interesting. The lighthouse was operating, and we got some good photos. Then, after stopping for a few minutes in the gift shop, we headed for the other two lighthouses, which were a few miles south, and close to each other. However, when we got close, we found no good spot for photos, so Carol snapped a couple shots of one of them and we headed out of town. We got back on I-95 South, the Maine Turnpike, and stopped about 3:00 p.m. for gas and some food. We got into Marlborough, Massachusetts around 5:45 p.m., and got checked into the Holiday Inn, which will be our home for the next several days while Carol is at her National Guild of Hypnotists convention. After a quick drive by the convention hotel, about a mile away, and a stop at Quizno’s, we headed back to our room.

Day 6 - Wednesday, August 9

I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and noticed a red glow on the ocean horizon. Carol got up and started taking pictures out our picture window, while I went back to sleep. She got a lot of great shots of another ocean sunrise. After snoozing until 9:30 a.m., we checked out and tried to eat lunch in nearby Rockport. The quaint, touristy village looked like a lot of fun, but it was jam-packed with tourists and we couldn’t find a parking place anywhere. We headed back into Peabody, and ate lunch at the Sylvan Street Grille. Carol had the soup and salad, and I had a ½ tuna salad sandwich on marble rye, and a salad and Pepsi. Then we got gas and headed for Maine again.

This time we took I-95 directly up to Brunswick, avoiding all the traffic in the coastal towns this time, and then drove all the way down a long, narrow peninsula to land’s end at Bailey Island. We took a few pictures and bought some gifts in a gift shop there. Then we drove all the way back up that peninsula, about 25 miles or so, to Bath. We drove down the next peninsula looking for a ‘typical Maine coastline view’, which we never really found. As it was getting toward sunset, we decided to try to find a place to shoot some ‘sunset over the ocean’ pictures. On the east coast, its very hard to find a spot for this type of photo, since the beaches and coastline almost always face east, as you might imagine.

After driving south to the end of this peninsula and finding it all privately owned, we decided to give it up and drive back up to Bath. But we saw two ladies walking along the road, and we asked them if there might be a spot to take a sunset picture. They suggested a nearby campground called Hermit’s Island. This campground was privately owned, and off-limits to everyone but campers. Never a quitter, Carol asked the gatekeeper about taking some pictures. He hinted that we might sneak up a back trail over the beach and dunes and into the campground. He told us he could never authorize such shenanigans, but he gave Carol a campground map and told her how we might get to Sunset Cove. I must say I opposed this idea at first, but we hiked through about 100 yards of dune grass to the beach, walked up the beach a ways and found another trail through the dunes which led us into the camping area. There were about 80 campsites, and they were all full of campers – individuals and families, in camp trailers and in tents. They seemed to be having a great time…most of them were finishing dinner. We just walked by them like we belonged there, and after about another half mile of walking, we came upon Sunset Cove. It was only about 15 minutes until sunset when we arrived….accidental perfect timing. We took lots of sunset pictures and then retraced our steps to the car. Nobody was the wiser, and we had our photos!
After driving back to Brunswick, we found the Viking Motor Inn, a small, privately owned motel which offered free fast Internet service. We checked in and headed to Applebee’s for dinner. Then back to our room where I am writing this post!

Day 5 - Tuesday, August 8

We got up at 5:20 a.m. and took a lot of sunrise over the ocean pictures, then went back to bed until 10:30 a.m. As we were getting ready to go downstairs for breakfast, I saw that the adjacent room was vacant and open. It was on the front side, and had a big picture window with a great ocean view. I went downstairs to the front desk, and arranged for us to move over to that room. It was similar, but larger, and we really liked it a lot better. We had breakfast in the beautiful old dining room with great views of the ocean. We had eggs and bacon, potatoes, toast and juice. Then we were off to see coastal New Hampshire and Maine.

We took I-95 up to Portsmouth, NH, and got off at a beach area nearby. It was incredibly crowded, like Ocean City, Maryland had been, with thousands of people on the beach and the adjacent boardwalk and shops. After taking some pictures, and driving north a little ways, we stopped in the southernmost part of Maine and got directions to some nearby cliffs. There was a neat cliff trail, and we walked on it for about a half an hour, taking pictures along the way. We found that we couldn’t get back on I-95 for many miles. Traveling along the coastal road was incredibly slow and congested, and we were finally able to get back on the highway at Kennebunk. We decided to head back to Gloucester and try Maine again tomorrow. We stopped at a mall in Peabody, MA, and bought pillowcases, camcorder tape, memory card reader, etc. Then we finally got back to our hotel, and requested a 5:30 wake-up call. This time, we could shoot pictures from our room….

Day 4 - Monday, August 7

We ate a small continental breakfast at the hotel, got gas at a Hess station, then got on the I-90 Thruway heading east. We stopped at a visitor information/service center on the thruway near Mohawk, NY for info and a snack and we picked up a flyer about a nice inexpensive resort hotel in Gloucester. We split a hot dog and nachos with cheese. I had a coke. Carol found a neat NY tee shirt at the gift shop for $10.00. Got into Massachussets and spent the rest of the day driving to Gloucester to the Ocean View Inn. Since we had forgotten to bring a tripod for the camera, we stopped in town and bought one at a little camera shop. The hotel was right on the Atlantic Ocean, and was built as a summer home for the Campbells of the Campbell Soup company. It became an inn in 1954. Our room was on the third floor, and you either went up three flights of steps or you could ride a tiny (I mean tiny) elevator. To use this elevator, you had to look through a small window in the door and press and hold a button to bring the elevator to your floor. When a red square on the metal elevator screen lined up with the little window, the door would open and you could get in. It was only about 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep – room for 2 people, or 1 person and a suitcase. It was quite a job unloading and getting to our room that way. The room had one king bed and old-fashioned furnishings. You could peek out a window and see the ocean. After settling in, we went down and took some pictures of the rocky shore. Then we drove around to the bay side of Gloucester and ate dinner at a small restaurant called “Passports”. Carol had a chicken cobb salad, and I had a chicken quesadilla. Tasty popovers came with our meals. We bought gas and water and ice and went back to the hotel. We went out for a ½ hour walk along the shore, and then asked for a 5:20 wake-up call so that we could be up and ready for sunrise pictures.

Day 3 - Sunday, August 6

We made it down to the simple free continental breakfast before 10:00 a.m. The food at breakfast was just bagels, juice and coffee, but it was tasty.

I asked at the desk about visiting the lakefront (Lake Erie) and the manager gave us directions to Presque Isle State Park, a peninsula jutting into the lake. Of course we had to get to Kmart, so we stopped on the way, and picked up some more vacation supplies, including bandaids, sunblock and a mesh laundry bag. We tried to find a geocache at the park, but after a hot, tiring hike through the marsh area, we gave up. The coordinates were either off, or maybe I entered them incorrectly. Plus, there was a big sign warning us of ticks and tickborne diseases. Whew! Plus, lots of poison ivy, mosquitos and flies. We got a little lost, but finally found our way back to the car.

We then walked over to the beach on the Lake Erie side of the park, and Carol got her feet wet in the lake! We took a couple of pictures of the bay side, and headed out for Albany. As I write this, its almost 6:00 p.m. and Carol is driving. We are 34 miles from Niagra Falls, but we plan to just continue on to about Albany, where we plan to spend the night.

OK – Now its almost midnight. We stopped in Corfu, NY at a big truck stop country buffet for dinner, then made it as far as Syracuse and decided to call it a night. We are in a nice Best Western…same price as the Micro hotel but twice as big.

Day 2 - August 5

Got up early (for us!) at 8:30 a.m. and ate the free continental breakfast. Very marginal. It was a beautiful day for driving, and we didn’t stop until we got to Greenfield, Indiana, just west of Indy. After gassing up, we saw an O’Charlie’s Restaurant, and went in and had a very nice lunch. Note: A drunk woman in a nearby booth ranted and raved loudly into her cell phone, no expletives deleted, especially the F word – over and over again! The manager stopped at our table and apologized several different times. Carol said that, in her professional opinion, the woman was very upset! But the lunch was tasty - I had a club sandwich and Carol had a broccoli casserole. We both had loaded baked potatoes, with melted cheese. Really good!

We headed for Cleveland, where we planned to spend the night, but I discovered that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame there stayed open until 9:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Since that was the reason for planning a stop overnight there, we realized that if we could get there with enough time to see the exhibits we wanted to see, we could then drive further east before stopping for the night.

Luck was with us, and we got into Cleveland and to the R&R Hall of Fame by 7:15 p.m. Carol found a great free place to park and we hurried inside. We had visited there once before, and had already seen some of the permanent exhibits, but we saw some great special exhibits – Roy Orbison, Ricky Nelson, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. What a great place! I recommend it to anyone who cares about rock and roll! We bought some souvenirs in the gift shop, which stayed open until 9:30 p.m., and we took a few more pictures in the lobby before leaving. (Sorry to say no photography was allowed anywhere else in the building.)

By 9:45 p.m. we were headed east on I-90 and got all the way to Erie, PA by midnight. Motels were really full by that time, and the only place with a room was a Microtel. A tiny room with one queen bed, a noisy fluorescent light, and a dripping, groaning toilet. The shower didn’t drain well either, but, overall it was nice and clean and was much better than the Howard Johnson’s of the night before. I stayed up late using the wireless Internet, and we slept in a little later than yesterday – until 9:30 a.m.

Day 1 - August 4

We got a late start, as usual! When we went to bed at 2:00 this morning, we thought we were 99% ready to go. But, there always seems to be a lot more stuff to finish up than you realize. Carol’s clients took longer than expected, which always happens. Then, when she got to the bank for a quick deposit of 4 checks, she discovered there were only 3 in her purse. She searched the car, then went back to her office. The missing check was right in the middle of the floor! So, back to the bank to finish up. Then, after some last minute packing, we were finally out the door by 5:00 p.m.

We were going to stop and see Doug, Mary, Susie and the girls in Columbia, but being 3 hours behind schedule, we decided we would try to see them on the way home. We drove across Missouri and stopped for gas in Warrenton, near St. Louis. We saw a little pizza place and went in for a coke, but the pizza looked so good that we ended up splitting a little one! As we went around St. Louis to the north on I-270, I lost the faith and thought perhaps we had gone too far north. We stopped at a QuikTrip and while Carol was getting directions I looked at the GPSr and saw we were on the right path. Thank you, Mr. Geomachine, because the QuikTrip guy had given Carol awful directions, which would have taken us way back and through downtown St. Louis.

We stopped for the night at a Howard Johnson Motor Inn in Effingham, Illinois.It wasn’t our first choice, but it was late (1:30 a.m.) and several other motels we checked were full. I thought the room had a funky smell to it, but Carol said it was because the a.c. wasn’t on. I’m sure that wasn’t the only reason for the odor. One of the blankets (which Carol swears she will complain about) had holes in it and lots of stains. It wasn’t nice!