Road Trip!

So for the past couple of months Adam and I have been debating on what to do for our anniversary this year. Since Adam actually has PAID time off now, we can actually go somewhere without worrying about how to make up his lost paycheck. So we have been debating on what we wanted to do.

About a month ago we were contacted by the people we ate dinner with on our honeymoon. They were a nice couple from Baltimore and we gave them our card on our last day and told them to keep in touch.

Well, they sent us an email saying they were going to go on a Mexican cruise sometime and wanted to know if we would be interested in going. We definitely were, but after looking through the prices of the flights and accounting for some money to actually DO things on the cruise instead of just sitting on the boat like we had to do for the honeymoon, it came out to be quite a bit of money, especially since we were also going to go to New York at the end of September.

Well, it has always been a dream of mine to get to see New England (and I mean REALLY SEE) in the fall- I just love the fall and the colors and have heard such great things about the peak time up there that I have just always wanted to do something like that. Adam has always wanted to see New England as well, so we came up with the idea of sort of "combining" our trip to New York with our anniversary trip- thus saving on having to buy 2 different sets of flights within a few weeks of one another.

At first I was a bit bummed, because I had really wanted to be on our trip ON our actual anniversary. But then I realized that we had a wedding on the 16th, in Omaha, anyway, meaning we would be working and driving back home on our anniversary anyway, so even if we left we couldnt leave until our actual anniversary DAY, and I really didnt want to be traveling on that day!

So we decided to extend our couple day New York trip into a weeklong roadtrip of New England. It involves a lot of driving- something Adam and I have NEVER done is take a full on road trip, I think 3 hours is the most we have ever driven!- but from the way we have it planned, we are going to see so much beautiful scenery and spend a lot of fun time together.

Because Adam turns 25 at the beginning of September, it now becomes incredibly cheap to rent a car, making this entire situation all the more appealing. So we will fly into New York, see the Boston/Yankee game and spend a couple nights there, rent a car, and start our journey.

While most of our trip involves seeing beautiful scenery, we do have a few specific destinations in mind. We'll leave New York and drive up through Vermont, crossing the Canadian boarder, and ending in Montreal. We'll spend a couple of nights in Montreal, before heading back down through beautiful New Hampshire to Portland, Maine. After seeing Maine, we'll drive down the coast to Boston, staying outside of the city in Salem. We will spend a day sightseeing Boston (though not getting to see as much as we'd like) and making a stop at Fenway before driving to through Rhode Island hitting Providence and Newport and making our way along the coast to New Haven, CT. We'll spend the night in CT before making the hour and a half drive back to New York and flying out the next day.

We're avoiding interstates (except in the big cities, of course) and taking the scenic routes up through Vermont and New Hampshire and taking the coastal roads as we trek down from Maine. It adds length to our drive time, but we actually get to SEE things and stop and take pictures along the way. I am incredibly excited, and Adam and I are already planning different cameras and film to take with us (remember that 216 rolls of film we got off Craigslist a couple weeks back? Oh yeah, it will be put to good use here!). Since we will have a car for all but the New York portion of the trip, we can carry everything along with us.

It involves a different hotel every night and will involve a lot of time together in the car (something we still aren't 100% sure is a good idea...ha!) but I think it will be an incredible experience. We have it broken down so the max we are driving in one day is under 5 hours, which still allows us to have time to do things. We will have to get up quite early each day, but I think the things we will get to see will make it worth it.

We also found out that the last week of September/first week of October are the the "peak" fall foliage time up there, which makes me REALLY excited!

We booked our flights and have been working on getting hotels booked. So far we have a hotel booked in Burlington, VT, but we are still planning. I spent a good chunk of time planning our route yesterday, and it looks like so much, but we are really excited!