Our Fall Trip

Hi everyone! Did you miss us??? 😊

We couldn’t leave you hanging without giving you the bonus blog post we promised. We’ve been home for several months and were quickly swept up in all of the fun that comes with being around loved ones again. But for our faithful followers and for our own memories, we wanted to write one final blog post about our time in the New England states.

Our journey east began bright and early on September 21st. We started off strong with a 10 hour drive to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. We arrived late in the evening at our campground near the Saranac Lake/Lake Placid area. We were pleasantly surprised the next morning when we woke up to find that our campground was definitely a winner. Each campsite at this campground was along the edge of a lake so we had beautiful lake views from our site. After work that first day, we drove about 50 minutes to Mount Jo. We learned from the parking attendant that we couldn’t park in the parking lot there because we had a gray water tank mounted on the exterior of our van. We didn’t ask him for the reasoning but we were curious why that would be the case. Since there was no other parking close by we had to pivot our plans (as we have so many times!) and found another hike to do at Mount Van Hoevenburg. Fun fact - the Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid in 1932 and most recently in 1980. It was very fascinating to see the different infrastructure all around that was built for the various olympic events. At Mount Van Hoevenburg, we were able to see the bobsledding track. We did a fairly quick hike to the top of the mountain and then went to downtown Lake Placid to walk through the shops and along the main street before heading back to our campsite. We were quite happy to find hot, free showers at our campground - such a luxury as the nights were starting to get a bit chilly.

We were very happy to find that our timing of this trip worked out really well with the timing of the fall leaves. During our time in New York the leaves weren’t super vibrant, but even in just the few days we were there they were changing quite a bit.

The following few days in this area we climbed to a fire tower with beautiful views in all directions, explored downtown Saranac, and enjoyed a cozy fire thanks to our campsite neighbors who left firewood for us. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that a struggle of this trip was going to be keeping our batteries charged. It was very cloudy and dreary and we weren’t able to get much solar power each day. We learned that we had to be very frugal with our energy - using our Starlink as little as possible, using our gas stove rather than our electric stove, and using the water heater very frugally.

On September 26, we planned to head to our next destination in Stowe, Vermont - about a 3 hour drive. We woke up that morning to our water not working. Our water pump had been making some funny noises since our time in Washington (we had adopted the mindset ‘ignorance is bliss’ when it came to the weird noises), and this was the day it decided to just stop working. Trevor did some testing of different things just to make sure it was the pump, but in the end decided we needed to get a new one. Thankfully, we were able to find a place with RV parts along our drive and picked up a new pump. After picking up the new pump, getting groceries, and eating dinner we arrived at our campsite near Stowe around 11 pm. We knew we needed water, so Trevor started the process of changing out the pump at 11 PM. Thankfully, he was able to get it installed and working within an hour or so and we got to bed not too terribly late. If that’s not van life, I don’t know what is!

We were in the Stowe area for a few days and were able to see several waterfalls and an overlook on Stowe Pinnacle. Smuggler’s Notch State Park is a popular spot for hiking in this area. We made the drive to that area on a Saturday which we quickly learned was a mistake. It’s a very narrow and curvy road which was not very easy to navigate in the van. Any parking for hiking was either full or parking on a narrow strip on the side of the road. We didn’t feel it was worth it to try to find parking so gave up on that idea and opted for a hike in a less busy area.

Sunday, September 29, was Trevor’s birthday. We started the day at a coffee shop, of course! We explored downtown Stowe and enjoyed seeing the different shops. We went to a nearby cider mill and got fresh apple cider, an apple cider donut, and a maple creemee, which is soft serve ice cream with maple syrup mixed in - we both loved it! We got some dinner in town and then headed back to our campsite for a movie night in the van.

Monday we left Vermont and made the drive to White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. By the time we made it to New Hampshire, the leaves were in full vibrance and everywhere we drove we were stunned by the beautiful colors. In the White Mountains we were able to see several popular spots like Big Basin and a beautiful overlook called Artist’s Bluff. One of the highlights of the trip was driving the Kancamagus Highway which is a very scenic highway with various overlooks and hikes along the way. Another hike that we did was Flume Gorge. It’s one of the most popular hikes in the area, but it costs $18 per person to do the 2 mile hike! We debated on whether we wanted to do it and eventually decided we would. It was a beautiful hike, but I’m not sure it was worth $36 😬

On October 4, we left New Hampshire and drove to Portland, Maine. We spent the next day exploring the shops in Old Port, got some yummy seafood, and walked a path along the coast. We really enjoyed seeing the beautiful coastline.

While we were doing some shopping in Old Port, I wanted to find a sweatshirt for a souvenir. Trevor has a little fascination with flags and was trying to convince me to buy a sweatshirt with the Maine flag on it because he really liked their flag. I shot down that idea pretty quickly. After he did a little research on the flag, like the nerd he is, he learned that the flag we were seeing everywhere was not actually the Maine state flag, but instead a flag that was proposed to be the new flag. It was voted on in November and, to Trevor’s great disappointment, it did not pass - so the Maine state flag continues to be quite ugly.

After exploring Portland, we had booked a Harvest Host for the night just outside of town at a putt putt place. It was actually a super fun Harvest Host and we enjoyed playing some putt putt on the Maine themed course.

The next morning we finished out our time in Portland seeing Fort Williams and the Headlight lighthouse. The rugged coast in this area was very beautiful! Later that day we drove north to Acadia National Park.

We had booked a campsite in the park for the week so it was nice to stay near everything in the park. Our first full day in the park was rainy, so we decided to stay in and play some trivia, and I won 😏

Our second day in the park we hiked around Jordan Pond and up to Bubble Rock, a large boulder sitting on the edge of a cliff that looks like a bubble resting on the edge. We really enjoyed this hike and the unique path along the boards through the woods.

The next day we did a loop drive around the park, stopping at a few overlooks, and watching the sun set over the ocean. The following day we did our favorite hike in the park - the Beehive Trail. This trail was pretty much a straight climb up the side of a mountain. There were metal bars built into the mountain to climb and help you pull yourself up. Although the hike was difficult, the climbing kept us entertained enough that we didn’t think much about how difficult it was. The view from the top was beautiful and one of our favorite views of the park. Trevor had his hopes set on hiking the Precipice trail which is known to be a difficult and quite sketchy hike in the park. I told him I wasn’t really interested in this one so the next morning he set out to do it by himself. He said that he really enjoyed the hike, but was kinda glad I decided not to do it as it was quite difficult.

Our final day we hiked Cadillac mountain, the highest mountain on the eastern seaboard. It was about an 8.5 mile hike round trip. It was an enjoyable hike, with beautiful overlooks of the coast along the way. We eventually reached the top and quickly learned it was very cold and windy on the peak. We sat for a bit to enjoy our snacks and the view but quickly got too cold and started our descent. Because this was such a popular hike, we had to park about a quarter mile down the road from the trailhead. When we made it back down to the trailhead and started walking along the road back to the van, we realized that every single vehicle that we walked by along the road had a parking ticket. We realized that we too parked along the road and were almost certainly going to have a parking ticket. We accepted our fate but were so frustrated that our last day in the park we had to get a ticket. As we rounded the curve of the road and saw our van come into sight we couldn’t believe our eyes when we didn’t see a parking ticket on our window. We had parked on just the other side of a gate which I guess made us the closest vehicle that parked legally. We couldn’t believe it and were so happy! After eating some lunch we headed to our next hike that we had planned, but came upon a ranger parked across the road. He gave us no reasoning but told us the road was closed and we needed to turn around. On one side of the road we had a wall of rock and the other side was a steep drop off. It took Trevor a bit to maneuver the van back and forth, back and forth, to eventually get us turned around. We opted for another less popular hike and sat on some rocks along the coast as the sun set. We both ended up really loving Acadia and were impressed by the unique coastal views.

On October 13, we began our long journey home. We left Acadia at 7 AM and made it to our stay in Pennsylvania at 10:30 PM. It was an extremely long day of travel with lots of stop and go and standstill traffic along the way. On the 14th, we finished our 5 hour drive home and once we reached home we hit the road running. With the help of family, we spent that evening packing up our belongings, and the next evening moved into our new apartment. It was quite exciting to have a place again to call our home - and our very own flushing toilet!

Overall, we really enjoyed our 3 week trip through the eastern part of the US. It felt short and sweet, which was just what we needed! It felt very different than our time on the west coast, mostly due to it being a much shorter trip but also due to some other factors. As I mentioned earlier, we had to be much more conscious of our energy consumption. Out west we very rarely had to pull out our gas stove and this time we almost exclusively used it. We would time our water heater so that we knew exactly when the 4 gallon tank had heated and switched it off immediately. This usually took around 9% of our battery which was a significant amount of usage. We tried to use our hotspot as much as possible rather than the Starlink because having the Starlink plugged in for hours also drained the battery quite a bit. Thankfully, the hotspot worked most of the time. The weather was also quite a different experience. In our 6 months of traveling out west, there was maybe 1 or 2 days that it rained the entire time. It rained probably 3x more in the 3 weeks out east than the entire 6 months we were out west. Although it was rainy, we definitely enjoyed the weather much more out east! Rather than having to deal with 90+ degree temperatures, it was usually in the 50s during the day and at night around the 30s. These cooler temperatures did a lot of good for our mental states and our marriage 😁 Something interesting I had read when we were out west was the difference in hiking trails in the west vs the east. I had read that out west, when you hike a trail that is climbing a lot of elevation, there are usually lots of switchbacks, but when you’re climbing elevation in the east, you’re usually just scrambling up rocks. We definitely found this to generally be true of our experience. One more thing that made our experience quite different was the shorter days. During our time out west, we usually would finish up work anytime from 2:30-3:30 and then would have until 9 PM to explore and hike. This time the sun set around 6-6:30 and our time to explore was much more limited. Although it limited what we could see, it gave us more time to spend relaxing, playing games, or sitting around a fire.

Thankfully, by the end of our three weeks, both Trevor and I were ready to close out the van adventure chapter of our life. Being back with family and friends, and having our own place to call home is something we both missed a lot and were ready to have again. The last year of our life has been unforgettable - we will never take for granted the opportunity we had to live and adventure in a van! We will never forget the AMAZING places we’ve been. We will never forget the best days and the worst days. There are many places I would love to go back to someday and many new places I’d love to see. Although writing this blog was a lot of work, I’m so grateful we will have these pictures and memories to look back on and I’m so thankful that we were able to share this season of our life with so many people! Thanks for coming along! We appreciate you all!

P.S. We have listed our beloved van, Gus, for sale. If you have been inspired to take an adventure of your own, we’d love to find a new home for him 😊 Details at thevancamper.com.