Anatomy of a Road Trip: New England Edition

Our trips in the past have tended to take us down the usual corridors of I-79 and I-76 in the past with all of our trips to New York City and Western New York. This trip, I like to say that I had a chance to explore the rest of the state. Almost half of our trip was simply crossing Pennsylvania. Seeing the outlooks as we drove along, throught he Appelechians, the Poconos, past Scranton, and just north of New York City crossing the Hudson. Crossing into Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, all new states to us!

For such a damn long trip at over 11 hours, we didn’t strike up the iPod as much as we did on even our 3 hour trip to Newville last year. Maybe it’s because there were only the two of us. Maybe because we were just enthralled with all of the new sights. Only when we sort of faded from eachother, surfing on our phones and such, did things get sort of tense. Turns missed, sour times. Thankfully, these were few.

Yes it was a long trip, and typically, I would allow for enough time to just stop and NOT be in the damn car for a good amount of time. Unfortunately, fitting the trip into Memorial weekend between our jobs proved problematic, given the long drive. This is a battle I wage all of the time.

Tom Tom. Garmin. Mike Mike. Whatever you have. For us, I was juggling Missy’s new iPhone and mine to cross reference as we went. Helped when we got lost in Boston as well. Having a local tour guide helped as well.

Something to Share.

Thanks to our give of a small Randy Orton to Ashley, thanks to her declaration of him being “Yummy”, the weekend was an adventure for lil’ Orton. And he didn’t poop in one gym bag.

Declare a Challenge.
On our first trip this year, out to New York City, Will declared to get something peculiar from each rest stop. In Boston, I was determined to conquer the Norm Burger at Cheers. On our way back, we realized we should have grabbed a lottery ticket from each of the 5 states we visited. Something to accomplish, and maybe a story about how it went.

Go Where Someone Knows your Name.

And I’m not talking about Cheers again. I’ve had the fortune to visit our friend in New York City three times in the last two years, and this time visited our friend of New England. It was great to have a friend who’d allow us to pull up some floor or a couch. It cuts the cost of your trip in half, sometimes, and you have someone to show you around that is familiar with the area. And meeting Ashley’s parents was a blast!

So that’s my amendments. I’m still not sure where the rest of the year will take me, but I’m open to some new possibilities…

Check out pictures from the trip on my Flicker page!