1) DO bring a GPS. You'll get to see some really cool backroads. But don't trust your GPS completely. This is the first turn it told us to take:
2) DO make your driver stop from time to time to take pictures, otherwise they will all look like this:
3) Unfortunately, even if you do stop, the picture never quite does justice to the scene. This was the most charming view with the church steeple sticking up from the trees. SO New England. :) Now it just looks like trees and a mountain. *sigh*
4) If you visit Fort Ticonderoga, DO go during the fall. The fort is slightly boring, but the scenery makes up for it. And also go to the gardens while there. The butterflies certainly seem to enjoy them.
5) DO go to Vermont, you won't regret it. It is so fun to drive through, and we fell in love with Burlington. It's like Ithaca, only the way it was intended to be. Their downtown shopping area is WAY better than the Commons, and people actually hang out there (not just to smoke). We think it's because they're not so afraid of capitalism that they have a better variety of stores. Buy some maple fudge while you're at it. And don't forget to take the ferry over Lake Champlain. At dusk.
6) DON'T bother going to North Pole, NY unless you have kids. Even if you think you just want to go buy nice Christmas ornaments, you will be very wrong and disappointed. We almost paid the $18 a piece (for adults, mind you) to get into Santa's Workshop, but were convinced by the lady at the window not to do it. She let us into the gift shop for free. We bought the least tacky ornament we could find--most of them were probably made by children and I would never hang them on MY Christmas tree. Even if my own child made them.
9) DO try things on. You'll never ever find a reason to wear a conductor's cap or a racoon-skin hat again, but it doesn't hurt to have a picture with one on.
10) DO climb a mountain. They're everywhere, and they're not very tall. Or if you don't have time for that, take a gondola ride to the top of one and stand next to the sign that says how high you are so your relatives in Wyoming can make fun of New Yorkers for thinking they have mountains. (The tallest mountain in NY is Mount Marcy, located in the Adirondacks and measuring in at 5,344 feet. Fremont Peak--the mountain Mark wanted to climb in Wyoming last summer--is the third tallest mountain in the state at 13,809 feet.)
11) DON'T spend tons of money eating in restaurants. We hauled peanut butter and jelly to the top of the mountain and used our camping spoons to make sandwiches. They weren't too bad, though you may want to remember to bring a knife so you don't have to fight over who has to lick the peanut butter off of the spoon (I lost).
12) DO try camping. We seriously did this trip as inexpensively as possible, which made it possible to spend a little more money on some of our activities. And I'm sure that hotels are even more overpriced than food up there.
13) DON'T assume that because your campground has showers that they will be nice showers. They will possibly have spiders in them, will probably suffer from water pressure and temperature issues, and might even cost you a quarter. And if you're really unlucky, the only outlets in the campground will be in the men's room so you will have to drive to the nearest rest area to dry your freshly-washed hair. Every morning. And the same creepy rest-area construction man will walk into the women's room because he, ". . . wondered what that noise was. . ." every single day.
14) DO take advantage of the opportunity to eat Dutch Oven Chicken, Dutch Oven Cobbler, Dutch Oven Breakfast, etc. as much as possible. Seriously some of the best food EVER.
15) And DON'T forget the cook.
16) DO take lots of pictures. (We filled two memory cards.) DON'T forget to take some of yourselves. (We're getting good at finding ledges so we can set the timer.) DON'T assume that a stranger will do a better job than you. (Our worst photos were taken by friendly people who didn't know how to use my camera.)
2 comments:
That sounded like so much fun. Well everything but the camping part. For some reason I am totally scared that a bear is going to eat me. You guys have done so many fun things, sometimes I wish Jeff and I could just take off whenever we felt like it.
Please always write this sort of post for every cool trip you go on so that I may follow in your footsteps eventually:)
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