Gettysburg

We arrived at Gettysburg fairly late in the day on a Friday and decided to start by getting the lay of the land and stop by the visitor center.  That left Saturday for exploring. However, the visitor center at Gettysburg is less robust than other visitor centers.  It is considered a "museum" and is behind a pay wall. The park doesn't have an entrance fee, so that probably evens out for most people. Unfortunately for us they don't allow the use of national park passes to get into the museum. 

There was plenty to do around the park without paying to get into the visitor center museum. We don't know what we missed, but there definitely was plenty to explore. 

There are several ways to explore the park including paying for a bus tour or hiring an official guide to come in your car and give you a tour. As always, we elected for the free version. We started the day with a ranger walk that left from the visitor center and gave an overview of the whole battle. It was called Three Days in 90 Minutes. It was well done and gave a good overview. 

Next we followed signs for the "Auto Tour." There is a tour throughout the park with stops and information at key points. It is a chronological tour and meanders around a bit. It ended up taking us most of the day to do these two tours. By the end, we'd had enough of the civil war for the day.

 

 

It is amazing, however, the extent to which the civil war defines the state of Virginia. Everywhere we drove over the following two days there were signs for battle memorials and historic sites. Not to mention the astounding number of confederate flags people were flying. We need to do more reading about this area and the mind set, but we have a hard time understanding the confederate flag flying. Many people are flying their confederate flags proudly next to their American ones which we find incredibly ironic. 

Travel Update 7

One the things we wanted to see while driving through Connecticut was UConn. Located in Stores, it's a small college town with virtually nothing but the university.  Our plan was to put on our Duck stuff and walk around campus, but like most college campuses parking is not easy to find. It was also super rainy and gross. So we settled for driving through campus and taking pictures of the basketball arena. We're super ready for basketball season.

That night is Hartford, we mixed it up and instead of staying at a Walmart we stayed at our first Cabela's. We had been a Cabela's before but this one was something else entirely. We probably spent about two hours exploring the store. They have an aquarium! 

We also swung back through Pennsylvania to try to find the stickers that we lost in Travel Update 6. Unfortunately, even though we found our spot we couldn't find the stickers. Either they stayed on the bike rack longer than we thought or someone picked them up thinking they were trash. We're still bummed about their disappearance but we put the new ones up. 

For those of you keeping track of our RV maintenance we also had to replace the car battery. For some reason it kept popping open and leaked a bit of acid. It wasn't fixable, so it needed to be replaced.

In case you missed it, this time period also includes our trips to Salem, Plymouth, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, and Gettysburg but we decided that those all warranted their own posts. 

Expense Report: October

Overall October was cheaper than September. We drove a bunch, but spent about the same on gas (cheaper gas in the U.S. than Canada) and we didn't have the big expenses of a boat trip or ferry rides. We're still a little over what we'd like to be spending due in large part to more car issues and going out a bit too much for sporting events.

Maintenance: We had an issue with our steering that needed fixing in West Virginia, which caused us to need another alignment. We also needed a new fuel pump in Delaware.

Steering issue: $270.69
Fuel Pump: $452.75
RV running total: $19019.44

Service: $80.28 on an oil change in Kansas City

Fuel - We've updated our Fuel log! We ended up driving more in October than we did in either of the prior months due to having to make it across country for a wedding in a very short timeframe. That barely cost us more than the month before through. We purchased an extra 60 gallons or so of gas and only spent about $8 more.

This month, we drove 5081 miles on 393 gallons of gas, averaging 12.9 MPG (about the same as last month)

Gas: $1148

Propane: $28 - We needed to get propane twice this month.

Food: $724 - We did just as poorly avoiding restaurants. We spent time with friends in cities again, which leads to eating out. Football season is also still going strong and we've gone out during every game to be able to watch the Ducks play.

Lodging: $14 - We stayed at 2 campsites run by USFS ($5 each) and payed for showers near Acadia National Park.

Phone and Internet: $73. On top of our base rate of $35/month we pay per $10/GB for data through Google Fi. We didn't do a stellar job doing all the internet-ing we needed to while on public WiFi networks (Walmart, libraries, etc).

Public Transit: $20 - We spent $10 each on a transit card and money to get us in and out of the center of Washington D.C.

Total Travel Expenses for October: ~$2810

Rhode Island

While driving through Rhode Island we stopped at a historic house marked by signs on the side of the road. In large part we stopped to put the sticker on the map before we drove all the way through the state.

We also stopped because the sign called the house a castle and we were intrigued. It was not interesting. However, we did run into a local man in the parking lot and he started up a conversation. We asked him his favorite place in the state to hang out and he told us about Beavertail State Park just down the road. That recommendation made the stop worth it.

The park is located on a peninsula with great views. There is also interesting information on the history of the light house. We didn't stay long but did walk around a bit and enjoy the views while eating lunch.

 

Bonus picture: Aiden is starting to enjoy the passenger seat while we're not in the car. 

Cape Cod

For the second half of the day we spent time exploring Cape Cod. Had it been warmer and had better camping options we definitely could have spent more time here. Who doesn't love some quality time walking on the beach.

 

There are several impressive lighthouses along the cape but we only looked at two (sets) of them. The first is the famous lighthouse on the Cape Cod potato chips bag.

The second was the three light houses that preceded the famous lighthouse at its current location. There were three buildings in order to create a distinct pattern and help let sailors know where they were.

 

All the lighthouses in the original location have been moved back several times. The entire cape is slowly eroding and washing out to sea.

Someone made this artistic rock sculpture on the beach and Kathleen decided to practice taking "Instagram pics" of it. We're trying really hard to embody "travel bloggers" but are clearly not succeeding.

 

Plymouth

After stopping by Salem we decided we'd hit one more historic landmark in Massachusetts. We spent the first half of the day exploring the Plymouth water front. Next year marks 400 years since the landing of the Mayflower. Several things were off exhibit in anticipation of their celebration but it was still fun to see.

The original Plymouth rock has been cut down in size multiple times over the years, and there is of course doubt that it actually had anything to do with the landing. But it is an interesting symbol none the less.

A super intense structure was built to house the rock as part of the 300 year celebration.

It was also nice to see that there was some acknowledgement of the impact that this landing had on native populations that had been living in the "New World."

Overall, interesting stop. Not really a must see though. Maybe that will be different next year as they amp up for the celebration.

Salem

We were passing close to Salem and decided we wanted to drop in, hoping to find a small-ish monument to the witch trials. What we did find was so much more.

Everywhere we have been so far has been either "shoulder season" or off season. Things have been either closed, or closing with in a few days. While this means that we haven't been able to get in places, it has also been nice. We haven't had to fight the crowds that are often found in some of the parks that we visited, and several places have even had cheaper "shoulder" rates.

The one exception so far has been Salem. October is definitively peak season. It was both fun to see the city in its tourist prime, and a little disturbing.

Next to the city's old cemetery there is a memorial dedicated to the 14 women and 5 men who were executed in 1692 after being accused of being witches.

   

Today, however, Salem seems to attract the occult. There are places all over town heavily advertising that they are "witch owned and operated" as they sell fortune tellings and potion ingredients. They also have an annual Haunted Happenings running the whole month of October, full of live music, plays and special tours. There was a line around the block for the Witches Museum.

 
  

We still haven't decided how we feel about the whole spectacle. Kathleen likes witches as much as the next person, and we have no problem with Halloween fun. However we couldn't quite shake the feeling that capitalizing on the murder of innocent people was a little insensitive.