New England Road Trip

We love to travel. It's in our blood. Not many things get me more excited than packing up and taking out. I love to see new parts of the world- so much so that I was crazy enough to agree to a 2 week road trip with a one year old.

Josh's parents asked us several months ago to join them on a road trip to Vermont where they had some time-share reservations. Riding 18 hours with a one year old sounds fun, right? I thought for about .5 seconds and said no! But apparently I'm easily persuaded and before I knew it I was researching all the cool places we could stop along the way.

Isaiah was a-maz-ing. The car put him right to sleep the majority of the time and we stopped to eat or stretch/play when he woke. He was really content singing and reading during awake time in the car, too. The longest stretch of car time was only 6 hours so it was really a lot less intimidating than I expected. We hardly even pulled out the millions of toys and games that I packed!

We started in Nashville, drove through Kentucky, and spent the first night in Columbus, Ohio.

We stopped at this neat little park in Bedford, Ohio for a picnic and to let Isaiah run around. There was a nature trail and remains from an old grist mill powered by the waterfall pictured below.

We drove through Erie, PA and on to Buffalo, NY where we spent the night and roused around downtown. Buffalo boasts a beautiful city hall and an ancient mosaic floor.

From Buffalo we drove into Canada to view Niagara Falls. The pictures in no way do justice to this masterpiece.

From Niagara we drove through the Adirondack Mountains in upstate NY. The mountain drive was slow, calm, and beautiful. As it got dark we realized we were quite far from the nearest town of any real size. We ended up in the village of Speculator, NY, where all three restaurants were closed for the night and things were quite dark. We found the little motel pictured below and spent the night. Thankfully I was already delirious by the time we arrived and the situation was just funny :)

The next morning we had breakfast at one of the three places, which happened to be run by a Filipino woman. You have no idea how remote this place was; it was amazing to run in to this lady in the middle of the mountains. We also visited the park and the general store which pretty much wrapped up the whole town.

We drove through New York and into Vermont, the most beautiful state I've seen. The mountains are green, roadsides are clean, and everything is local- no chain restaurants, grocery stores, etc. If it weren't for the frigid winters I might move! They have more covered bridges than any other state and pure maple syrup is grown and sold everywhere. Yum! Most of the state was farmland and there are 4 cows for every 1 human.

We camped out in Smuggler's Notch, Vermont for 4 days. We toured Ben & Jerry's, Cabot Cheese, and Green Mountain Coffee. We took Isaiah swimming at the resort and went to a farmers' market. And Josh and I enjoyed a morning out and lunch date while Isaiah played with grandparents :)

The drive from Vermont to Cooperstown, NY was perfectly picturesque. We picnicked along the way and worked hard to convince Randaddy that we really didn't need to stop every 20 minutes :)

We spent a night in Cooperstown, NY, where we visited The Farmer's Museum which housed original restored buildings from the 1840s and The Baseball Hall of Fame.

From Cooperstown we drove through the lush Catskill Mountains to Hyde Park, NY. There we toured FDR's presidential library, museum, and homestead.

Leaving New York and driving through Pennsylvania we stopped at another farmers' market where we bought a bunch of celery that took us straight back to the Philippines. Celery in the Philippines comes with the leaves still on it. The leaves are delicious for soups and stews and we were pumped to find this! And since Randaddy brought along 5 coolers we were able to keep it fresh for 3 days until we got home :) 

We spent a night in Lancaster, PA, home of the oldest standing Amish community.

After spending the morning in Lancaster we drove down to Gettysburg. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I slept through over half of the auto tour so I don't have many facts or photos....woops.

We drove through Maryland and West Virginia and spent a night in Harrisonburg, Virginia. On our way out the next morning we visited White Oak Lavender Farm. It was beautiful and smelled amazing. We watched a demonstration of them extracting oil and toured the drying room and picked a little to take home.

We spent a night in Knoxville, TN and wrapped up the 14 days by driving back to Nashville. It was a super fun trip. Isaiah spent more time with his Grandma than he's ever had the chance to before and it was fun to see them together. I'm sure we'll be telling him about the time we went on a road trip to the northeast for years to come.