Northeast Family Trip - Prologue

photo credit

We take a vacation pretty much every year.  Usually we stay close-by.  The mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee tend to be our favorite spots. 

We hardly ever go to the same exact place twice.  We like to discover new things.

Gregg and I have been married for 15 years, and it seems that every 5 years, we do something BIG. 

During our 5th year of marriage, we moved our family of 4 to a new home, in a new town, where we knew NO ONE.  It was a pretty big deal.  I don't remember a vacation that year.  We literally had no money for one.

For our 10th anniversary, we decided to plan a BIG trip.  Gregg had always said he wanted to go to Montana.  So...while waiting in traffic to attend a Clemson/USC game, I took out a folded map of the USA, and we pretty much planned the trip we'd take.  We ended up taking a 17 day, 7000+ mile trip "out west" and back.  2 adults, 5 kids, and a minivan packed to the brim.  We made some unbelievable memories.  But that's a story for another day...

For our 15th anniversary, we decided to go NORTH.  We spent several months planning a trip to tour the Northeast portion of our country - an area none of us had ever been. 

It takes a little more planning, diligence in saving, and preparation in packing when you now have a family of 10. 

Friends and coworkers gave us some really great tips and suggestions of places to visit, so we mapped out a plan that would be both fun and educational.  The trip would take 13 days, and we would travel approx. 5000 miles in our 15 passenger van.

I took a spiral-bound notebook and tried to make notes along the way.  I confess that riding made me really sleepy, so I was pretty lazy with some of my journaling.  And there were some great photos that I missed taking, b/c...well, I'm a mom...and I was busy being one! 

But, along with some snapshots from our trip, I hope I will be able to paint a pretty good picture of each day. 

The overview is this...

We left on Saturday morning, September 22nd...

We spent 4 days in Lancaster County, PA...

We then traveled to New York where we visited Niagra Falls, Lake Ontario, the Finger Lakes region, and the Adirondack Mts...

From there we traveled to the coast of Maine near Portland, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and Washington, DC.

(We had planned to visit Boston, but the weather was so rainy that it was not conducive to walking the city with 8 children in tow.  We were disappointed, but getting to the hotel early that night was probably good for us all.)

We arrived home on Friday morning, October 4th, at approximately 1:00am.

If you'd like, follow along as I journal about our trip day by day...

A few of our suitcases, training pants, diapers, child seat,
and coats and jackets ready to go into the van.



Our kitchen counter full of boxes of food, pots, pans,
dishtowels/dishcloths/potholders, etc. waiting to be placed in the van.



(Sorry for the lame pictures of before the trip...things were a little crazy trying to get things ready!!  I was busy going through everyone's winter clothes for ones that fit, b/c we were still wearing shorts, but knew it would be colder where we were going.  I had literally mounds of clothes in my den. Little piles for each of the kids stacked around.  I did think of taking a photo of those, but I was too busy and didn't think about it again until they were already in the suitcases!  Such is life...)