March 7, 2016 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 17.1: Around The Big Bend

We talked in our last blog post about our week in Marfa, a cool desert art town in the middle of nowhere, but our day trip from Marfa to Big Bend National Park deserved its own post.  Big Bend is a remote desert wonderland, a giant wilderness preserve chock full of crazy mountains, beautiful vistas, and incredible surprises.

It’s so spectacular, it nearly made us sick.

Location, Location, Location

Let’s start with location: to say Big Bend is “remote” does not do it justice.  The park is about 100 miles south of Marfa, which we have already established is in the middle of nowhere, so it is fair to say that Big Bend is 100 miles south of the middle of nowhere.  You might call it the edge of nowhere.

The edge of the edge of nowhere is the Rio Grande, which is also the U.S.-Mexico border.  The other edges are desert.  There are few roads that lead to Big Bend, and the closest airport of any size is in El Paso.  The closest “city” is Alpine, Texas, population 6,000, about an hour away.  As you will see, the only nearby town, Terlingua, is part ghost.

Suffice it to say, getting to Big Bend is not an easy task, and we saw few other people when we visited (probably less than 100 total).  Adding to the feeling of isolation is the park’s huge size:  about 800,000 acres, slightly larger than Rhode Island.  Unlike Rhode Island, of course, there are no cool hippy markets or walks along fabulous oceanside mansions, but on the plus side, there are a lot of bears.

Wait.  Is that really a plus?

Ye Olde Ghost Towne

Our first stop on the way to Big Bend was at Terlingua, a ghost town with a twist.  Terlingua was once a mining community, before it went bust, and the ruins of the town still remain, slowly decaying in the desert.  Spooky ghost town graveyard?  Sign us up.

Terlingua’s twist is that some flesh-and-blood humans still live there, right alongside the ruins.  These hardy folk provide services to park entrants and visitors to the edge of nowhere, running a few restaurants, a cafe, and a gift shop.  We might have thought they were ghosts too, but no ghost would have the gumption to charge $4.50 for a large iced coffee.  (We would have been mad except that the coffee was delicious, and also, there were no alternatives within 60 miles.)

One of the few shops in town is an art gallery, and surprisingly (?), they had some cool sculptures on display outside.  Our favorite was a piece called “Blow Out Survivor,” which the accompanying text explained was created from the melted remains of a natural gas well that caught fire.  It burned for three days, and at the end, portions of the crankshaft, engine, and gearing were fused together.

We don’t have a gas well, but we were reliant on modern engineering, in the form of our poor Honda Fit.  The question of whether it would be “blowout” or “survivor” was yet to come.

Bear Patrol

After we had finished being gouged by the local merchants, we headed into the park itself.  On the way in, we got to live the dream of anyone who has ever visited a National Park:  we bought a National Parks Pass!  $80 for one years’ free access to every federal park and national monument.  Access fees are normally $10-$25, so it’s a decent deal if you plan to visit 4 or more parks in a year.  It’s an extraordinarily great deal if you do something crazy like, say, quitting your job to travel around in an RV for a year.

And so, pass in hand, we were ready to Big Bend it like Beckham.  As we mentioned before, the park is massive, but there are essentially three distinct regions:  mountain, desert, and river.  Part of the charm lies in how they all pile up on top of each other, particularly the mountains and the desert.

The remainder of the charm is how stinking beautiful it all is.

Our first stop was at the visitor center, located in the mountains.  We had planned our trip to Big Bend the way we usually plan things – which is to say, not at all – so we asked about the hikes and the best places to see.  While there, we noticed a map on the wall with lots of yellow sticky notes:

The sticky notes turned out to be recent bear sightings.  We ended up doing the Lost Mine hike, which is relatively short but offers an amazing view of the nearby valleys.  As you can see, the hike also was smack dab in the middle of a field of bear-related post-it notes, but we trusted to blind luck and nobody got mauled, not even a little.  There was a tense moment where we heard leaves rustling right next to us on the trail – a moment in which we considered whether cacti could be used as a weapon – but it just turned out to be a family of deer.

After catching our breath and cursing Bambi, we continued up the trail and were treated to some spectacular views.

However, the Lost Mine hike is where we discovered one of the iron laws of hiking:  if you ever start to feel like a badass, for example by hiking up a mountain full of bears 100 miles south of the middle of nowhere, you will immediately be disabused of that notion.  In this case, it was via the couple that passed us, with an infant strapped to their back, hardly breaking a sweat.

We really wanted to ask why you would ever bring a baby to Big Bend, but they seemed like they knew what they were doing.  Instead we just had them take a picture of us, shortly before before they continued on the trail and we wussed out and headed back.  Thanks guys!

Just Deserts

After a picnic lunch, we headed down out of the mountains and began exploring the rest of the park.  Or, at least, the small slice of it we could see in one day.  For two people raised in the temperate Northeast, the desert sights were fascinating.

Colorful mountains and cacti!

Endless wilderness!

Road runners! (!!!)

It’s nearly impossible to capture the grandeur and the magic of Big Bend; whatever you’re picturing, it’s much cooler than that.

Unfortunately, we ran into a small, slightly murderous issue.  A day that started off comfortably warm, around 70 degrees, continued to grow hotter as the sun progressed across the sky.  By mid-afternoon it was approximately 90 degrees, and even though the park is mostly traversed by car, we had spent a deceptively long amount of time walking around at each of the different stops.

Dehydration is always a special concern in the desert, because of the heat and the sun, but it can sneak up on you.  Your sweat evaporates so quickly in the intensely dry air that you don’t realize you’re sweating.  We had brought two Nalgene bottles full of water, but they were draining at an alarming rate, and the extreme size of the park meant that we were miles away from refilling stations.

Oh, and remember how we mentioned we don’t always super-plan ahead?  Yeah, well, it’s normally fine, but every once in a while, it really bites us in the ass.  This was one of those times, because we stupidly split a bottle of wine the night before we went to Big Bend.  There was probably a good reason for it, like being a Monday, but we were definitely a bit dehydrated before we ever arrived.  Combine with the sun and the heat and that oh-so-dry air, and you’re gonna have a bad time.

Well, one of us, anyway.  We both have our strengths and weaknesses:  Jake doesn’t get blisters or sunburns, and he can open jars, but he’s bad with heights, or anything requiring “stamina” or “dexterity.”  Heather is pale like a ghost and can’t reach the top of our cabinets, but she’s graceful and a trooper, and, as it turns out, immune to dehydration.  So she continued driving and taking photos of the beautiful landscape, as Jake slowly curled into a ball in the passenger seat.

We did eventually get more water, at one of the park’s campgrounds – after first refilling a bottle from a bathroom faucet with water so awful-tasting, it must not have been potable – but it was a little too late, and things were progressing from bad to worse.  Our final stop of the day was the beautiful Santa Elena Canyon, split by the Rio Grande and therefore standing in both the United States and Mexico.  Heather wanted to ford the river for more photos, but the shadows were growing long, so we decided to head back.

A Bump In The Night

Just one problem:  actually getting back.

You see, the Big Bend scenic drive is about 45 miles long, and although it looks like a loop, the paved part ends at Santa Elena.  The final leg of the loop is actually a dirt road, recommended for four-wheel drive cars only, although a ranger had told us regular cars (like our Fit) drive on it all the time.  There’s no other exit there, so the only options were to drive an hour back the way we came to the park entrance, or take a short, 12-mile drive over Old Maverick Road, which is unpaved.  (lower left on this map)

With Jake feeling really awful, we picked the dirt road.  Let us advise you if you ever visit Big Bend and face a similar scenario:  do not pick the dirt road.  Why, you ask?  Well, it’s more like a “loose fist-sized rocks” road, and every single one of the twelve million bumps will (1) cause you to think your tires are going to explode, just like that gas well in Terlingua, leaving you stranded in the desert emptiness; and (2) make your sick passenger’s stomach do flipflops, to the point where you both begin to wonder whether throwing up in a National Park is a violation of federal littering laws.

Oh, and because the road is in such horrible condition, your max speed will be something like 10 miles per hour, meaning that the route is actually slower than just driving back on the well-maintained, non-tire-exploding scenic drive.  Except you’re also racing the setting sun, because the only thing more difficult than driving on that spin cycle of a road is doing it in the all-encompassing darkness of night in a desert National Park located 100 miles south of the middle of nowhere.

via GIPHY

Not to spoil the ending, but we did eventually make it out alive, thanks to Heather’s skillful driving, a Honda Fit that didn’t quit, and our old friend, blind luck.  Plus, Jake avoided littering in a National Park!  Once we made it back to Terlingua, some general store aspirin and Pepto Bismol set him right as rain, and the drive back was smooth sailing (emphasis on smooth).

We finished off a looooong day with food from the Sonic Burger in the big city of Alpine, tired but happy.  Big Bend is an extraordinary place, but it will likely be a long time before we go back – which is just fine with Jake.

RECENT NEWS

What’s now:  We are leaving Morro Bay to visit Pinnacles National Park.  Another notch for the National Parks Pass!

What’s next:  We’ve got a few short stays planned, because everything in California is brutally expensive.  Monterey (and Big Sur), San Francisco, and then YOSEMITE!

Obligatory social media self-promotion:  If you want to follow along and you haven’t yet, please Like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter (@NothingMundane) and/or Instagram (NothingMundane) to make sure you get all the updates.  We promise, no Big Bend sink water.

Shamefully missed a prior post?  We made a list of the most recent ones, just for you.  To see every road trip blog post, click here.

Next Post: Weeks 18-21(ish): Docked in El Paso

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February 20, 2016 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 16.5: Down Under at the Caverns of Sonora

After playing around in Austin and visiting friends in San Antonio (twice!), it was time to head west, away from the population centers and into the vast Texas desert. Of course, Texas is huge, and since our next stop was about 500 miles away, we decided to stay overnight  at a spot we read about online – the Caverns of Sonora.  We mostly just needed a place to sleep, and the Caverns have RV parking, so we figured we’d do a little sightseeing and kill two birds with one stone.  However, the Caverns turned out to be more spectacular than we ever imagined.

Now, we have visited quite a few caves, so it takes a fair amount to impress us.  The Longhorn Caverns we visited near Austin were nifty, and their history is cool, but the cavers were mostly bare rock.  There were a handful of cool cave formations – pieces of oddly-shaped rock that look like a fish tail, or a really pretty stalactite, or some cave “popcorn” – but the density wasn’t very high.

At the Caverns of Sonora, on the other hand, all of those cave formations (and many others) were present in extraordinary density.  In places, nearly every square inch was covered with something beautiful.  It was really incredible, a preposterously dense accumulation of wondrous natural decorations in every imaginable shape, size, and color.  There were even thousands of helictites, extremely rare structures in which the rocks grow at crazy and seemingly-impossible angles.

The photo above is from a section dubbed the “Snake Pit,” and there are more helictites in that picture alone than in all but a handful of caves in the entire world.  But as we said, that’s not all you can find in the Caverns of Sonora.  Here’s one of our favorite cave decorations:  cave bacon!

By the way, we had planned to shoehorn this visit into our previous post, but once we started looking through our pictures again, we just couldn’t do it.  The Caverns are a magical place, and it deserves a little extra love.  So, we’re going to eschew our usual format, and just take you along as we show off some of what we saw there.  Unfortunately, the pictures don’t really do it justice, since caves are dark (and we’re amateur photographers at best), but hopefully you’ll enjoy!

Magical Mystery Tour

We stayed overnight at the Caverns, so we were in the first tour group the next morning.  That group turned out to consist of… us, and a tour guide.  We therefore ended up getting our own personal tour of the Caverns, a rare pleasure which we certainly appreciated.  We got to go at our own pace, and as introverts, it was satisfying to walk through the underground beauty mostly in silence.

The Caverns grow grander as you descend.  Near the beginning of our tour, the walls were still visible, with some cave decorations visible.

The most noticeable decoration is cave popcorn, which looks like exactly what it sounds like.  It’s rock, but it’s bright white in comparison to the other decorations, and amazingly fluffy looking.

We continued to descend.  In some places, the walls were lined with cave popcorn.  The air inside the caves was warm – it’s a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit inside – but moist.

The cave decorations became denser as we descended.  Stalagmites and stalactites, covered with what looked from a distance like carpet.  Up close, the bumps revealed themselves to be millions upon millions of tiny formations.

Soon, every step was past a wall bursting with beautiful formations.  Everything in the Caverns is just a different shade of the same off-white, porcelain color, but no less arresting for it.  Candles, pine trees, snowflakes – your brain cannot help but see patterns in the chaotic depths.

This is Nature’s sculpture garden, an infinite gallery of mineralogical wonder, and we were a guest on her tour.

Our tour guide shows us an underground pond, so crystal-clear it is nearly invisible.  In places, this pond is one hundred feet deep.  It takes decades for water to reach it from the surface.

Soda Straws:  long, delicate tendrils, like skinny icicles, hanging down from the ceiling.  It feels like the slightest breeze would destroy them all; but of course, there is no wind this deep underground.

Soda straws soon surrounded us, like a rainstorm frozen in flight.  Mounds of flowstone covered the ground, lumpy like mashed potatoes, or dripping candle wax.  (There’s more in the gallery slideshow.)

Near the bottom of the caverns, we entered the “Hall of the White Giants,” so named for its huge white rock formations.  (We aren’t 100% certain, but believe it was the area below.)  Our tour guide told us that because of the delicacy of the formations in this area, groups are only taken into to see the white giants about once every 4 months.

In fact, because the area is so active and the decorations continue to grow, the opening to the Hall of the White Giants is slowly being closed by nature.  We are lucky and humbled to have seen it before it is gone for good.

Towards the end of our nearly two-hour tour, we became almost numb to the crazy beauty on display all around us.  For the same reason, we will not try to show you all of our favorites, but we put together a slideshow below with a few more you may enjoy.

As we ascended, we passed again through layers of different types of formations.  Near the top, the walls changed to a smooth, white limestone. Like everything else in the Caverns, it was beautiful.

After such a magical journey, returning to the regular world was jarring.  We finally re-emerged into the Texas morning sunlight, blinking, and struggling to capture what we had just seen.  We have been lucky enough to see many wondrous things on our trip, but few can compete with the Caverns of Sonora.

We thought that was it for our tour, but as we headed back to the gift shop, there was one final surprise in store for us:  peacocks!

It was an unforgettable experience.  If you’re ever in the area, we strongly suggest you visit!

RECENT NEWS

What’s now:  We are recovering from our hike up to the awesome Potato Chip Rock!

What’s next:  We are leaving San Diego shortly to try to catch the most incongruous of events:  wildflowers blooming in Death Valley.  Then, we’re doubling down in Vegas, baby!

Obligatory social media self-promotion:  If you want to follow along and you haven’t yet, please Like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter (@NothingMundane) and/or Instagram (NothingMundane) to make sure you get all the updates.  We’d do the same for you.

Shamefully missed a prior post?  We made a list of the most recent ones, just for you.  To see every road trip blog post, click here.

Next Post: Week 17: Tumbling In To Marfa

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December 12, 2015 In Road Trip

Intermission: Renovation

We’re taking a break from our irregularly scheduled programming for some exciting news:  we renovated our RV!  Now, this may not be a surprise, since we’ve posted a few pictures on Facebook and Instagram, but we haven’t posted the full set anywhere yet.

The majority of the work was done over the course of about 3 weeks in El Paso, Texas, while staying with Jake’s mom.  We installed everything ourselves.  There will be some more details below, but a short list of the renovations includes:

We also added a throw rug and a new, custom artwork by Heather.  We may end up making some additional renovations, but we’re waiting until after the new year – 957 Home Depot trips in 21 days was enough for now.

Enjoy!

Before & After

Here’s a few pictures showing our RV before and after the renovation.  Our RV is from 2002, and although it was in good shape when we bought it, much of the interior looked very outdated.  Even if it were new, RV furniture and decor tends to look pretty crummy.  While the floor and countertops took a lot of work, many of these fixes were simple and relatively inexpensive.

As you can see in the picture above, we took up the ugly old green carpet and replaced it with vinyl “wood” flooring, along with a colorful and inexpensive rug.  Heather sewed new slipcovers out of fabric for the couch and the dinette cushions, and she also made some artwork to replace the mirror in the upper left of the “before” picture.  She also covered the window valances with new fabric. Oh, and we replaced the broken cupholder!

Another shot of the dinette renovation.  You can see Jake’s gigantic computer in the first picture, which he moved into a slightly less gigantic case. We also have plans to upgrade the table, and maybe replace the carpeting under the table with vinyl planks too.

The kitchen is where we did most of the work, and we’re really happy with how it turned out.  We installed a new laminate countertop, which basically glues onto the existing countertop, as well as a new kitchen faucet.  Laminate sheets are the worst thing ever to work with (all they want to do is chip and slice your hands), but we showed it who was boss. We also added a backsplash, which is really just a bunch of stick-on panels (shh, don’t tell anyone), and changed out the gold hardware with oil-rubbed bronze handles with a more modern profile.   Our favorite part is the new faucet – the old one wasn’t even tall enough for our pots to fit underneath!

A close up of the new countertop, faucet, and backsplash.  The countertop was purchased from Lowe’s, but we got the faucet and backsplash online.

Our tiny bathroom definitely looks a lot better now.  We removed the old sink, which was really small and cheap, and put in a new, copper sink we purchased online.  We also installed a “waterfall”-type faucet and a new countertop.  Because of time limitations, we didn’t extend the new flooring up and around the toilet, but we have some extra planks so we may do that in the future.

Close up of the new sink and faucet.  Amazon links for the interested:  sink, faucet, drain.

An overall shot.  We think it turned out great!  Note, we didn’t have a good overall “before” picture so we used a stock photo from the manual, but it’s extremely close to what it looked like.

DIY Fun

We haven’t tallied up the total cost of all the renovations, but it was probably substantially less than $1,000.  In part, this is because we did the work ourselves – we ripped up carpet, cut and laid flooring, glued countertops, and Heather even hand-sewed the slipcovers.  (It helps that we could only use the lightest, and therefore cheapest, materials.)  It was a ton of work, but we definitely learned a lot.

Here’s a gallery of in-progress pictures for anyone interested.  We included captions, and you can see the whole story by clicking on the first one and using the arrows to move to the next picture in turn.  Mobile users should also be able to swipe to get to the next picture. (Unfortunately, it looks kind of crummy on mobile – that’s something we need to figure out. For now, we recommend looking at it on something with a bigger screen.  We also uploaded the album to Imgur which may look better.)

LAST BITS

What’s next:  Currently, we are in Phoenix, Arizona, enjoying unseasonably warm weather and unreasonably pretty sunsets.  Soon, we’re headed back to the Northeast for the holidays.

Obligatory social media self-promotion:  If you want to follow along and you haven’t yet, please Like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter (@NothingMundane) and/or Instagram (NothingMundane) to make sure you get all the updates.  Every update is certified GMO-free!

Shamefully missed a prior post?  We made a list of the most recent ones, just for you.

Next Post: Week 12.5: Drinking & Driving in Charlotte & Asheville… Respectively.

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November 26, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 11.5: The Greenbelt in the Beltway

Hi friends,

We’re a bit further behind than usual after spending the last 3 weeks in El Paso making some major renovations to our RV:  we replaced the floor, the countertops, faucets, a sink, a backsplash, and more.  Not to toot our own horns, but it looks pretty great!  We’ll post some pictures soon.

In the meantime, let’s reminisce about that time we went to Washington, D.C.  Cue obligatory White House selfie.

Capitol Camping

After leaving Pennsylvania behind, we headed south towards Washington, D.C., with some trepidation.  We’ve had bad experiences on the Beltway before, but this trip was mercifully smooth.  We headed to a national park right inside the Beltway called Greenbelt Park.  Greenbelt Park is spacious, cheap ($16 a night),  wooded, and totally empty – apparently because nobody knows about it.  From their website’s FAQs:

Why haven’t I heard about Greenbelt Park or the Greenbelt Park campground ? Since we are a federal government agency, we cannot spend taxpayer dollars on advertisements. We rely on word of mouth, Internet, and campground directories. We are a hidden jewel of the National Park Service.

They claim to have never been totally full, and when we were there on a warm weekend in September, we were nearly alone.  We saw more deer than people.  Definitely unusual for a campground near a major city, so if you’re in the area, you might want to check it out.

Though, you might want to avoid the bathrooms.

They weren’t moving.  Just staring.

Incidentally, the campground is extremely close to an Ikea.  We went over and strolled through, to dream about throwing away all our crappy RV furniture and replacing it with real furniture.  Or semi-real; it is Ikea, after all.  But it turned out there was nothing there we really wanted (or could fit) except Swedish meatballs and a 99¢ toilet brush.

Well, we got the meatballs, but the line to buy the toilet brush was about a half hour too long.  So, we gave up and, seeing nowhere else to return it, hid it in a potted plant.  Sorry, Ikea!

Social Medium

Most of our time in D.C. was spent visiting friends, and we won’t bore you all with the details of people you may not know, but we will say thanks for a great time to Nila & Patrick, LD, Rachel, Ashi, Alex, and the other folks we met up with.  We had delicious Sri Lankan food, delicious beers, and even an accidental front-row seat at a bar for the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight.

We did want to give a special shout-out to our friend and unpaid social media coach Kaoru, who allowed us to crash at her place and taught us how to use Twitter for personal benefit (our favorite kind of benefit!).  Also, how to use it at all.

Kaoru was once the “Bravoholic,” which is like being an addict for social media about terrible reality shows, and now she is our “social medium,” a new term we just invented for probably the four millionth time.  Among her other duties, she politely yells at us when we fail to post things correctly, which is frequent.  She also helped us get free cupcakes, using the power of social media.  Oh, and!  She taught us what all the buttons do in the Twitter app, which sadly is not a joke.

We wanted to say thanks for the help, so please feel free to visit her blog or twitter or instagram or… smoke signal region?  Whatever the kids are into now.  Everyone else, try to think about you how you can earn your own paragraph.

Nothing Mundane growing its social media presence (via GIPHY)

Strolling The Mall

We have both been to D.C. several times, but we decided to walk around and see all the tourist-y stuff again anyway.  We took the Metro into downtown and although we walked about 8 miles, according to our pedometer, it felt like we barely scratched the surface.  We saw the sculpture gallery, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, WWII & Korean War  Memorials, the MLK Memorial (surprisingly weird), and many more miscellaneous fancy buildings.  We have photos of some of our favorites below.

Sculpture Garden

National Museum of Natural History

Just like A Night at the Museum, except not at night, and without Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson.  And nothing came alive.  Otherwise, exactly the same.

We really enjoyed the gem and mineral collection at the museum. Our take aways:  (1) the Hope Diamond isn’t all that big, and (2) minerals grow in crazy, cool ways – they can look furry, defy gravity, glow in the dark, and a million other naturally occurring, wholly unnatural things.

Monuments & Stately Buildings

Washington, especially the Mall, is just packed full of monuments and memorials. We tried to look up how many official monuments there are in DC, for a “fun” trivia fact, but our google-fu failed us.  So we are going to say there are more than… five! Can you believe it??

Our favorite part?  The below sign on the new Trump Hotel, very close to the White House.  It reads “Coming 2016, Trump.”  Amusing, but also, please God no.

LAST BITS

What’s next:  Currently, we are back in El Paso for a home-cooked Thanksgiving.  We’re headed back soon to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, where the sunsets are beautiful and the medicinal hot springs can out-cure any brand of snake oil.

Obligatory social media self-promotion:  If you want to follow along and you haven’t yet, please Like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter (@NothingMundane) and/or Instagram (NothingMundane) to make sure you get all the updates.  It will help us make Kaoru proud.

Shamefully missed a prior post?  We made a list of the most recent ones, just for you.

Next Post: Week 12: Footloose in Richmond

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November 4, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 10: Hitting the Brakes in New York & New Jersey

The White and Green Mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont are quiet places, with lots of nature but not a lot of people.  For our next stop, we headed towards the complete opposite: New York City.  We made it in one piece, but the trip there was anything but easy.

All Hail the Storm King

Our first destination was the Storm King Art Center, a sculpture park about an hour north of New York City.  The drive was pretty rough, as the bucolic rolling hills of Vermont transitioned quickly into the construction zones and potholes of Troy and Albany, New York.  If you’ve never been to Troy, it’s basically the crackhead younger brother of Albany, which is not so nice to begin with.  The roads in Troy were in terrible condition, but if you need to pawn something or get a payday loan, we recommend checking it out.

Storm King was extremely cool, however.  It’s a huge park with numerous installations, including some truly gigantic pieces set in grassy fields.

It was a little less intimate than the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, but the scope is vast, and it features works by famous artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Calder, Maya Lin, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Serra, and many more.  Unfortunately, it was punishingly hot when we were there, but the upside is that almost nobody was around.  We may have seen more animals than people.

We’ve got pictures of some of our favorites below.  If you’re in the New York area, Storm King is well worth a look – it’s really spectacular, and you can take a bus from the city or drive in.  If we did it again, we would probably rent bikes (which you can do on-site), as the park is so big that we barely got to scratch the surface.

Also, we could have watched this sculpture do its thing all day long.

An Unexpected Side Trip

We left Storm King, which incidentally is the name of the town and not the local deity, and headed to a nearby Wal-Mart to stay for the evening – the same one we stayed at on our first night in our RV, in fact.  But when we got there, we found that our tow car smelled overwhelmingly of burned brakes – and to our amateur eyes, it seemed like the front brakes had been completely destroyed.

We’re still not completely sure what happened, but most likely there was a malfunction with the supplemental brake system installed in our tow car.  This is a big plastic box that sits in front of the driver’s seat in the tow car, and clamps onto the brakes.  When we push the brakes in the RV, the brake system is signaled to physically and proportionately push the brakes down in the tow car.  Considering the relative sizes and weights of the vehicles, this is kind of unnecessary, but we are required to have it installed under New York law.

The weird part of the brake system is that it’s not attached to anything.  It just sits in the driver’s side in front of the seat.  So what we think happened is that it rode slightly forward somehow and ended up pushing down on the brakes continuously, just a little tiny unnoticeable bit, maybe even for just the 13 miles we drove from Storm King to Wal-Mart.  This created enough heat to totally destroy the brakes – as the mechanic who replaced them said, “It’s not that your brakes were ground down.  It’s that they were burned to death in a pit of fire.”

Basically what happened to our brakes. (via GIPHY)

But the story of how we got to that mechanic is pretty crazy.   While examining the brakes, we found out the battery in the tow car was also dead, from the daytime running lights being on while the car was towed (we later disabled those).  Lacking jumper cables, we called for roadside assistance and asked the friendly responder about the brakes.  He agreed they seemed to be destroyed.  Then, without asking, he called a mechanic he knew who does auto repair work and had him buy replacement brakes, then told us to follow him over to get them fixed.  Now, it was dusk and we had had a long day, plus we were already at a place that fixes brakes (Wal-Mart).  Also, according to Google Maps, the place was 45 minutes away – but the responder insisted it would be only 15 minutes, and peer-pressured us into following him there.

Of course, it actually was 45 minutes away, through deep darkness on actual mountain roads – the route went around the peak of Bear Mountain.  It was terrifying driving, especially since we were pretty new to driving with the tow car.  Driving the RV at night is always scary anyway – it just doesn’t have the ability to stop like a normal car, so the lack of visibility is stressful.  When you’re hauling a car with no brakes up and around steep, curvy, and completely unfamiliar roads, to an unknown mechanic who you are starting to worry may be planning to rob you, the stress level is… heightened.

Even our cool hat didn’t make us feel better. (via GIPHY)

But we did eventually make it!  At 9 p.m.  And the mechanic was good, cheap, and fast, and he didn’t try to rob us even once – although he only accepted cash, and was located in a locked, gated business park in an extremely sketchy area.  He actually offered to let us sleep in the RV outside his shop overnight, but we saw a few too many “ladies of the night” around for that to be an attractive offer.  Although, according to the mechanic, it was safe because “the cops drive down here constantly…”

Alone at Last

After staying at a different Wal-Mart than the one we intended, we finally made it to our campground for the week – Voorhees State Park in New Jersey.  Because these were apparently our unluckiest 24 hours, this park – right near the interstate – turned out to be basically on top of a mountain.  After twisting and turning our way up there, Google Maps attempted to send us under a very low bridge that would have ripped off our roof.  Luckily we noticed and turned off in time, and the path we then took happened to be the only reasonable way there.

Narrowly avoided this fate.

The campground itself was nothing special, but there was something special about it:  it was totally deserted.  The bathrooms were closed for construction and there were no other hookups, and apparently, everyone else just stayed away.   At times, we were the only people in the entire park, which has at least 80 camp sites.  Of course, staying by ourselves in a place which shares a name with the killer from Friday the 13th – and which has active bear warnings – was a little unsettling, but frankly, we weren’t really staying there either.  We just needed a quiet place to park our RV while we headed in to “The City” for Labor Day weekend, and Voorhees was great for that.  No hockey mask required.

You can see our motorhome in the back if you look closely, and… nothing else.

Eating Our Way Through The Big Apple

As former New York City residents, we didn’t do much touristy stuff while we were there, instead taking the chance to see friends and eat some great food.  Our friend Brian and his girlfriend Kim put us up, and put up with us, for the weekend, and we got to revel in the decadence of 24 hour grocery stores and Seamless.com.  We even made the trek all the way to Brooklyn for Smorgasburg, a giant weekly food fair, which is always horribly crowded but incredibly delicious.  We ate way too much, way too fast, and paid way too much for it (lousy NYC…), but it was awesome.

We also had lunch with Jake’s Dad, and met up with a lot of old friends and some old co-workers.  We also got to have some wholesome family fun with the Browns again (of Maine fame).  We rode the carousel with Kaia (and our friend, Alex), and smashed some blocks with Captain Rhea.  All in all, it felt a little bit more like home than we expected – although we’re still unsure whether it will be our next home.

Penultimate Bits

Speaking of old friends, on our last night in New Jersey we stopped by to visit Jake’s college roommate, Mike, and his wife and two young kids.  They were cute!  But we forgot to take pictures.

We also got lost in a strip mall parking lot where almost none of the roads actually lead out – the New Jersey version of a hedge maze.  The legends say that on a moonless night, you can still see the ghosts of dead shoppers trying to make their way out at Christmas.

This is probably what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.

LAST BITS

What’s next:  Currently, we are staying at Jake’s mom’s house in El Paso, Texas, where the wifi flows like water, which incidentally also flows freely.  There are some benefits to houses that never move!  We are doing some heavy renovations to the interior of our RV, so stay tuned.

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Next Post: Week 11: Address – Gettysburg

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October 24, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 9: Old Friends, New Hampshire

After escaping the beautiful, boot-ravaged state of Maine, we headed to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  This area, which is in the northern part of New Hampshire, is serenely beautiful, exceedingly mountainous, and adverbly remote.  It was a great place to meet up with some friends and curse the lack of cell service.

Tow Town

Our first stop in New Hampshire was a Camping World located in Conway, New Hampshire.  If you’re not familiar with Camping World, they sell everything relating to RVs, including all sorts of nifty RV gadgets, and they also sell and service RVs themselves.  We had an 8 a.m. appointment at Camping World to get the tow equipment we bought online installed on our tow car.  Basically, there is a plate that attaches under the front of the car, with hooks for the tow bar to grab onto, and then there is wiring to make sure that the brake lights in the car light up when you press on the brakes in the motorhome, etc.

We knew it would be a long job, so we wanted to get there right on time.  Unfortunately, the road to Conway stopped being a road about 15 miles outside the town:  construction crews were resurfacing the roadway, which meant they had removed the entire road surface, and so a fairly major state highway became a one-lane dirt path composed, entirely, of potholes.

No time to worry about that:  we had a schedule to keep.  Jake plowed ahead in the RV as quickly as he dared, and Heather got to watch from the car behind as the entire motorhome was shaken like a Polaroid picture.  It was a little like riding a mechanical bull while wearing a backpack full of your pint glasses, and the second-most harrowing drive we’ve had on our trip so far.  (We’ll get to the worst in about 3 more blog posts.)

But we made it in the end, nearly all breakable items intact, and the cheerfully incompetent Camping World employees were able to get our tow equipment installed in only 4 hours more than they estimated.  Boom!  Tow car activated.

Friendly Fire

It was twilight by the time we finally made it out from Camping World, and we headed to our home for the weekend, Dry River Campground.  We met up at the campground with friends of ours from Boston, Kate and Matt, the only people so far brave enough to meet us somewhere dark and secluded.  Being outdoorsy, at least for former Manhattan residents, they slept in a tent outside while we stayed in our RV.  Now, one of the Kate and Matt duo is pregnant; we won’t tell you which one, but yes, that person slept in a sleeping bag on the ground while we cuddled up in our comfortable bed in our RV, which also has a bathroom and a refrigerator.

We have no regrets about this, which we assume toughened up the baby somehow.  We just thought you should know.

Anyway, we had a great time hanging out despite the inequality (check your sleep privileges, America!), and got to enjoy a pretty beautiful part of the United States for the weekend.  We hiked up Mt. Washington, except replace “hiked” with “drove,” and the views from the top were spectacular.  It’s so ridgy!

Here’s some trivia:  Mt. Washington is the highest peak in the Northeast, and infamous for it’s erratic and dangerous weather – the official record low is −50 °F.  The winds are insane; until very recently, the weather station at the top of Mt. Washington held the record for the highest wind speed ever recorded (231 mph).  According to the “Extreme Mount Washington Museum,” during the winter, researchers have to continuously clear off supercooled rime ice from the instruments, which actually is super cool unless you’re the one doing it.

In other words, don’t go to Mt. Washington in the winter.  During our visit in late August, it was mostly clear, with bright blue skies and a temperature of about 60 degrees.  As the clouds started to roll in, we made a hasty retreat.

We ended up on a short hike somewhere with a lower altitude: the lovely and lush Thompson Falls.  Brace yourself for lots of pictures of climbing on rocks.

After we got our fill of scrambling over rocks and tromping through nature, we headed back to our campsite. Unfortunately, the guys had to leave our evening campfire, for an extremely important and legitimate reason:  Fantasy Football.  You see, Dry River Campground is located in the middle of a national forest, in the mountains, in a remote part of New Hampshire.  We have been able to get cellular service through our Verizon hotspot or AT&T phone in literally every other place we’ve ever stayed.  But the one time we actually needed it, we couldn’t get even the whisper of a signal, which meant that instead of drinking beers and drafting around a campfire, Jake and Matt had to drive to a ski resort hotel, where they still drank beer but which had no campfire.   (We’re pretty sure the vacationing teenage girls at the hotel were impressed by the two bearded 30-somethings with stacks of paper and multiple electronic devices each, though.)   The draft was bizarrely held at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, so some camping time was missed, but at least they still made it back in time for some s’mores.

Meanwhile, the girls stayed behind to tend to the fire, and had the pleasure of listening in to our neighbors’ extremely loud conversations.  The neighbors were on a “mancation” (“sausage weekend” must have been taken), and built themselves a gigantic bonfire so they could see while they played the card game Asshole.  They also cursed like… well, like assholes.

Way to represent the gender, fellas.

That was it for our short but sweet adventures in New Hampshire, and the next morning, we packed up to head to Vermont.  Matt and Kate, ever the outdoorspersons, went hiking before they headed back to Boston.  We… did not.

LAST BITS

What’s next:  Currently, we are in Marfa, Texas, a desert town with a population of 2,000, taking a weeklong break from travel and cranking out some blog posts.  Next up is El Paso, where we look forward to mooching off of Jake’s mom.

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Next Post: Week 9.5: Taking Vermont In

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