Nothing Mundane

October 19, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 8.2: Maine, Part 2: The ReMaineder

Hey friends! We’re back with the rest of our trip through Maine, or as some prefer to call it, “The L.L. Bean State.” After parting company with the Browns, we headed up the coast towards Acadia National Park. Acadia is ridiculously photogenic, so brace yourself: a million photos are loading. We hope you have a decent internet speed.

The Road to Acadia

Before we get to the eye candy, let’s talk about the drive through Maine and RV driving routes. We quickly discovered on our trip that while we all know and love Google Maps, it isn’t that great for RV driving. Google always wants to send us down impossibly narrow or hilly roads instead of major highways, just to save about 16 seconds. It also has no mode or understanding of RV- (and truck-) specific problems like restricted roads, and once attempted to send us under a railroad bridge that would have sheared the top off of our motorhome. Luckily, we noticed the low height of the bridge in time, and were able to quickly change course. (If you’re curious, our RV is 11’6″, which is fine for almost all bridges.)

Losing the roof to our motorhome would obviously not be ideal, especially since that’s where the air conditioner lives. We frequently use an alternative app called RV Smart Route, which has a database of low bridges, restricted roadways, and even narrow or hilly roads, so it plots safe courses. Unfortunately, it doesn’t route around traffic, and it can sometimes be way too conservative – it will make you drive 2 hours out of the way to avoid 30 seconds of unpleasantness, for example. So if the RV route looks absurd, we’ll switch to Google Maps.

All of this is a lead-up to how we found ourselves ignoring RV Smart Route and listening to Google Maps on the way to Acadia, a decision which directly contributed to hurtling around narrow, twisting, mountainous 1-lane roads in the rain. In retrospect, maybe we should have taken the much safer recommended route – but hey, we saved sixteen seconds!

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park has been one of the coolest places we’ve seen on our trip so far. Acadia is a huge park built on land donated by the Rockefellers, and it is like a ski resort for hiking and biking – there are trails everywhere, heading up some of the numerous small mountains or through pristine wilderness, and they all connect to each other. There is also a parkway which goes around the edge of the park, with beautiful vistas and picnic areas to pull off. We were confused by this at the time, but have since found quite a few “national parks” that are really just roads; it’s such a good thing America doesn’t have a problem with obesity.

We stayed on Mt. Desert Island, where Acadia is located, at Seawall Campground, which is on the very southern edge of the island. It is near an eponymous sea wall, which could be pretty except for the fact that it is almost always shrouded in fog. Of course, the only time the fog lifted was when we were headed somewhere else and had no time to stop. Ah well – at least we were able to take some album cover style pictures! Now we just need to figure out how to make an album…

Acadia Loop Road

The weather was glorious for our first full day in Acadia, which we mostly spent driving around on the loop road and taking in all the sights. There are miles and miles of (extremely rocky) coastline, mountains, a nature center, a carriage house (?), and just so many pretty views. We took about 400 pictures, but Heather heroically narrowed them down to just the below gallery for your viewing pleasure.

Jordan Pond

After driving the loop road, we went hiking around the crazily picturesque Jordan Pond. Although the Jordan Pond hike is pretty flat, there was a long portion of it that was simply scrambling over rocks, maybe just for the challenge. The other portion of the hike required balancing on a narrow, raised wood platform, which was pretty simple, until you had to pass hikers coming from the other direction. Our athletic balance beam walking, combined with the sunny, warm weather, resulted in us being pretty sweaty when we finished the 3.3 mile hike, which is perfect because the end of the trail leads to a swanky restaurant.

Now, everything we ever saw about this restaurant, the Jordan Pond Tea House, indicated that there would be popovers and that we could eat them. So that was our plan: hike trail, eat popovers. Ingenious in its simplicity, really. Unfortunately, the popovers were a lie. Worse, the restaurant was way too fancy for the likes of us, and we and the other gross folks were shooed away to a gift shop selling trail mix and candy bars, and no popovers.

Whatever – we didn’t need your food anyway, Jordan Pond restaurant! (Except the trail mix and candy bars. We bought all of those immediately.) Jordan Pond pond, you were pretty, so we’re still bros.

The Beehive

On our second day, we decided to tackle the Beehive Trail, which is a moderate-level hike that goes up a mountain using iron rungs, ladders, and even a metal walkway. That was a pretty awesome hike! Unfortunately, it was insanely foggy, so the normally picturesque views looked like the inside of a cloud. Here’s what it could have looked like, courtesy of Flickr user tourtrophy:

And here’s what it actually looked like:

At least we got some cool action shots (see gallery below). Incidentally, this all felt pretty badass at the time, until, at the top, we encountered people from the other direction coming down the trail with their dog. Bringing a dog backwards down the trail definitely seemed like a terrible idea to us given all the metal ladders and rails, but as we watched, the dog trotted past us, casually leaped down about 8 feet onto a narrow rock walkway without slowing down, and then just kept going, around the bend and out of sight. Well played, dog – THAT was badass.

The Beehive Trail at Acadia – leaving the path is not recommended! #acadia A photo posted by Jake and Heather (@nothingmundane) on Aug 25, 2015 at 12:17pm PDT

Miscellaneous Acadia Adventures

Included here for the sake of thoroughness, but these items don’t really deserve their own headings. They were subheading-level adventures, at best.

Bar Harbor The weather was awful again on our third and final day in Acadia, so we traveled into Bar Harbor, the town next to Acadia. Bar Harbor is a cute town, and we had the most incredible lobster bisque of our lives at a local gastropub, the Finback Alehouse. We’re still daydreaming about it. (Their blue label burger and clam chowder were pretty damn good too). We relaxed, drank some beers, and cranked out a blog post. (This one.) There are many worse ways to spend an afternoon.

A Crappy Lighthouse Bass Lighthouse near our campground seemed totally legit: it was marked on the map, had a big parking lot, and even had restroom facilities. But it turned out just to be a lighthouse. You can’t even go inside! All you can do there is walk up, say some version of “is this it?”, and then wander back to your car, slightly angrier than before.

The kind of day that lighthouses live for. #acadia

A photo posted by Jake and Heather (@nothingmundane) on Aug 26, 2015 at 1:16pm PDT

Cadillac Mountain

Cadillac Mountain is actually pretty great. Cadillac is the tallest point in the area, and you can drive or hike up for amazing sunsets. We drove up, and the view was great, and the sunset as glorious as advertised. Unfortunately, because we were taking photos directly into the sun, none of our pictures captured it as well as we’d hoped. Guess you’ll just have to trust us that this was cool.

Freeport

Acadia marked the easternmost point of our epic road trip. (The northernmost point was a Chipotle we stopped at in Bangor, Maine.) After Acadia, the “real” trip began, where we started traveling to a lot of different places, quickly. We were headed to New Hampshire next, so we stopped for the night in Freeport, Maine, home of the famous and inexplicably huge L.L. Bean Store, which Heather had never seen.

How to describe the Bean store? Well, first off, imagine a lot of flannel. No, no, MUCH more than that. No matter how much you love flannel, you do not love it as much as L.L. Bean does. Now add in ugly but functional winter boots, a mix of high-end camping and hunting, taxidermied animals, and a trout pond, and make it as big as 5 Wal-Marts. Then place it in a state so barren of people that the store itself becomes the most interesting thing within 100 miles.

The economics of all of this are highly questionable, but it seems to work for them. Oh, and there’s a rather large boot.

After paying our respects to the boot, we headed off to meet our friends Matt and Kate for some hiking in New Hampshire. Stay tuned.

Last Bits

What’s next: Currently, we are in San Antonio, Texas, hanging out with some friends and rehabbing Jake’s recently (and inexplicably) sprained knee. We’re headed west to El Paso, with stops currently scheduled for the Caverns at Sonora, Texas, the crazy art town of Marfa, and Big Bend National Park (knee permitting).

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 are happy to report that doing so is now less likely than ever to result in placement on the no-fly list.

Shamefully missed a prior post? You can check them out below, as long as you feel appropriately guilty.

Next Post: Week 9: Old Friends, New Hampshire

October 15, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 8.1: Maine, Part 1

Hey friends! We are writing this from Austin, Texas, which is pretty entertaining since the blog post is about Maine. We may be slightly behind on our writing. Since our adventures in Maine, we have driven the RV something like 3,000 miles. The RV gets an extremely efficient 7.5 mpg, so the gas cost was… not something we are going to calculate. It’s been pretty busy, at least for people who don’t have jobs.

While we may be behind on our blog posts, there is no need to fear, dear reader. We are still committed to delivering high-quality, low-punctuality travel blogging. We were just feeling a little burned out. Like Jack Donaghy, we needed a vacation from our vacation. (We’re sure your sympathy levels are high.) Luckily, we’ve now crossed off the one and only item on our schedule – the lovely wedding of Danny and Rose! So now we are about to slow our roll. The many, many people who have told us to write more blog posts can expect a slight uptick in blogging productivity as a result.

OK, enough from Texas. Back to Maine.

Tired Out

So there I was (I = Jake), driving from Massachusetts to Maine in the motor home all by myself. Heather drove behind me in our car, since we didn’t have the towing equipment for our car yet. We had just sailed through New Hampshire and crossed into Maine, and I was blasting out some tunes, as four hours of being cut off by Massholes that have no idea I could COMPLETELY CRUSH THEIR CAR takes its toll. At some point, the back right tire of the RV goes flat, and I am completely oblivious. Note there are two rear tires on each side of the RV, so it’s not as obvious one is flat as it would be in a car.

Of course, the flat is obvious to Heather, as she can see all of this happening. She flicks her lights at me, but it was the middle of the day, and I can’t really see behind me anyway. She honks, but my windows are closed, and please see above re: tune-blasting. She calls several times, but my phone is on vibrate and does not alert me. This could be bad.

Luckily, I happened to decide at this moment pull off at a rest stop. Heather thought I finally caught one of her signals, but I just wanted to get some lunch. Specifically Popeye’s, which usually makes me instantly regret my life choices. But not this time! Like an extremely salty fried chicken lighthouse, Popeye’s guided me to safety before any serious damage was done.

Then we had this conversation:

Me, hopping out of the RV: “Hey, looks like the tire is flat. Why didn’t you tell me??”

Heather:

The tire was destroyed, but we had a spare. However, it turned out the spare was unremovable, even by the roadside assistance guy, since it had essentially rusted to the frame of the motorhome. So we carefully drove over to a nearby tire place, and we learned that the spare was the original spare tire from June 2001.

Since I prefer my spare tires to be a little newer than the date of my high school graduation, we ended up with two new tires. We purchased the “unnecessary extended warranty” on these under the theory that Murphy’s Law guarantees they will now never, ever have issues – so far, so good.

On to the Brown Compound!

Brown Compound

Our flat tire adventure set us back a few hours, but we made it to our destination, the Brown Compound, just after the sun had set. We were headed to the main house, which is on a private road off of a semi-remote cul-de-sac, with only handmade signs to mark the correct road. Being idiots, we of course drove down a road that “felt right” rather than bothering to read all the signs with a flashlight. This decision worked out beautifully, assuming “beautifully” means “frantically and repeatedly turning around an RV in a narrow forest road owned by strangers in the dark.” Which, come to think of it, it usually does not.

The Brown Compound is so called (informally) because our friends and their family, the Browns, own a group of summer houses in the area right next to one another. The legend goes that the first and biggest house was won in a classic fiddle duel with the devil. The rest were won in a less-classic recorder duel with the devil’s young nephew, but hey, fair is fair. Of course, we made all of that up, but they’re pretty sweet legends, so think about it, Browns!

Anyway, we had a great time hanging out at the Compound, and the Browns were fantastic hosts. It was our first time sleeping in a real bed since we started our trip, and we even got some surprisingly good cheesesteaks from a man in a trailer at the end of their road. (Not as shady as it sounds.) We played shuffleboard, which was possibly improved by the fact that their dog Reggie kept trying to bite the pucks as we slid them – only got hit once! – and Jake even made friends with a dragonfly.

The highlight of the visit was heading out on the Browns’ boat, Todaro, which to our knowledge has no devil-related acquisition backstory. Captain Rhea and First Mate Dan were steady hands at the helm, and we saw live lobsters in a tank, followed by about a million seals on the aptly-named “Seal Island.”

We finished the outing off with some lobstah rolls overlooking the bay. It’s the kind of day that we could happily repeat many times, especially since we didn’t pay for any of the gasoline for the trip.

Oh, and we also saw this amazingly-named boat.

It was a great time with the Browns. Thanks guys!!

Re-Maine-der

Sorry about that pun. Not to make promises we don’t intend on keeping, although that is exactly what this is, we promise our post covering the rest of Maine will be available soon. It is mostly just about Acadia, but there will also be Chipotle and a giant boot, so please be prepared appropriately.

Last Bits

What’s next: Currently, we are in Austin, Texas, keeping weird and working on shamefully old blog posts. Next up: Big Bend National Park, Texas.

Shamefully missed a prior post? You can check them out below; Candy Crush will wait.

Next Post: Week 8.2: Maine, Part 2: The ReMaineder

September 23, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 8: Womp, Womp

Wompatuck

When we last left off, we were at Scusset Beach near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, complaining about Plymouth Rock. Well, the following week, we headed to Wompatuck, another state park just south of Boston. Wompatuck is an interesting place – it used to be an World War II munitions factory and storage area, but most of the buildings were since torn down, and a forest arose in its place.

Wompatuck today is heavily wooded, but there are echoes of its former life scattered throughout the park: heavy gates in front of roads to nowhere, an abandoned train transfer station, and the occasional fire hydrant in the middle of the woods. In places, even the campground itself was abandoned – we found many neglected campsites and bathhouses being slowly overtaken by the forest.

Perhaps it was built too large, or perhaps it has something to do with what we just discovered while writing this post – Wompatuck is an active Superfund site with potentially unexploded ordnance in the soil. That would have been good information to known before we went exploring! Nonetheless, the park was quite beautiful in some places, and hopefully disarmed.

Though the park was lovely, what we will remember most from Wompatuck are the bunkers. Made of heavy concrete and built into the hills, there were bunkers sprinkled throughout the park and all along the hiking trails. Always, the concrete exterior was covered with graffiti, sometimes quite artistically, sometimes much less so. Given the number of empty beer bottles and condom wrappers at these sites, one might charitably call these bunkers “multi-use.”

The exception to the graffiti-clad bunkers was Bunker N-9, which is locked and painted a pristine eggshell white by local Boy Scouts. The accompanying plaque suggests the bunker used to hold anti-submarine nuclear depth charges, which… first of all, the concept is preposterous (we actually first learned about these at the Groton Sub Museum), and second of all, Wompatuck seems pretty freaking close to Boston to be holding nuclear weapons. Oh well – no harm, no foul?

Also, we found a beer bottle Christmas tree thing someone apparently set up in the woods, which is one great reason to only hike during the daytime.

World’s End

After a few hikes, Wompatuck State Park was starting to feel a little bombed out, so we headed to a nearby park called World’s End. Located in Hingham, Massachusetts, World’s End is right on the water and features beautiful views of the Boston skyline. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, who famously designed Central Park. Fun fact: once you start paying attention, you will see that FLO (as he preferred to be known) also apparently designed every other damn park on the East Coast, and possibly the world.

Either way, the park was pretty, and also it was very, very hot. Friends, don’t start your road trip adventures in the middle of summer.

[New Orleans]

While we were staying at Wompatuck, Jake flew to New Orleans for a bachelor party. There are only two shareable photos from that particular event – a real-life bar wench serving absinthe, and an interesting real estate marketing pitch. We’ll “officially” be in New Orleans soon, though, so more pictures will certainly be forthcoming.

Happily, Heather was able to make friends with a dragonfly while Jake was gone. She also reupholstered our couch, which will feature in our RV video tour as soon as we get around to making it. (Given our current pace of updates, that should be no later than 2018.)

A photo posted by Jake and Heather (@nothingmundane) on Aug 14, 2015 at 11:40am PDT

Boston

Just kidding! We never actually got to see downtown Boston, although we’ve both been there before. We did visit some friends in the area, and we did curse at the crazy Masshole driving, but we had to scrap our scheduled sightseeing to do something much more fun: visit the DMV.

You may recall that we recently purchased a new car. Well, it wasn’t the fastest process, starting with insurance: we were rejected by our existing insurance company (which insures the RV) because they could not “verify our identity.” Apparently not an issue before! We ended up getting different insurance, but because we bought the car in Rhode Island and are New York residents, we had to drive 3.5 hours across the state of Massachusetts to register the car in New York.

OK, fine. It’s not like we have jobs we have to go to. However, once we got to the New York DMV, we found out that the dealership had not actually given us any of the paperwork we needed, or even properly transferred the title! So we had to drive back to the dealership in Rhode Island, drive half an hour away, discover they still hadn’t given us the proper paperwork, return to the dealership, and then drive back to Wompatuck. And the next day, instead of sightseeing in Boston and dinner with our friends, we had to drive another 3.5 hours to New York State and back, bringing the grand total to something like 15 hours of driving across Massachusetts in two days.

Womp, womp.

If that explanation confused you, which it probably did since it even confuses us, here’s the short version: it took forever. And if we sound bitter at the dealership, it’s only because we hate them.

via GIPHY

Last Bits

What’s next: Currently, we are in Charleston, South Carolina, enjoying some Southern hospitality (and air conditioning) and celebrating Heather’s birthday! Next up: Savannah, Georgia.

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. Remember: only social media followers are eligible for our super-secret, totally-real special prizes!

Shamefully missed a prior update? You can check them out below. We’ll just play on our phones while we wait.

Next Post: Week 8.1: Maine, Part 1

September 18, 2015 In Amusing Things

Spamalot

We’re still working on our next roadtrip travelogue, but wanted to share something that’s come up in the meantime. Over the last few days, we’ve received a sudden influx of spam comments on our (sadly underutilized) Zazzle-linked product pages. We do normally get a lot of these – 9,932 so far this year – but usually they’re blocked by a spam protection plugin called Akismet. It works really well, but for whatever reason, a whole batch recently slipped through the blockade all at once.

Here’s the thing: the spam comments are kind of amazing. If you’re not familiar with how these work, spam comments basically just provide a link to some (probably malicious) website or product, in the comments on our site, in the hopes that people or Google will see us linking there and treat the link as reputable. Because this is fairly obvious, the more sophisticated spammers have set up fake comment bots that try to masquerade as real commenters. The way they do this is by pulling text from real comments across the Internet, then changing them slightly or combining them together, while posting an unrelated link to whatever they want you to click on.

The comments bots still have a long way to go in perfecting this technique. As you’ll see, the comments are not particularly convincing. But they are nonetheless kind of fascinating, a blind remix of thoughts and ideas strung together and dumped into wildly inappropriate settings. And apparently, they really like yoga.

In an effort to slake your never-ending thirst for content, and also to remind our readers / ourselves that we do sell things, we collected a few of our favorites below.

8-bit Retro Gaming Santa Stamps

Yes, a very good piece indeed. The photo is not neslcsariey representative of today’s 70-year-old (I know because I’m over 70 myself), but her facial expres…

We apologize to obviously-real commenter “Alejandriitha” for our Santa stamp being insufficiently representative of today’s 70 year olds. We made it for yesterday’s 70 year olds, and obviously, it hasn’t transitioned as well as we’d hoped. But mostly, we enjoy how this one just sort of trails off at…

I Heart Indiana- Customizable City T-Shirts

Thanks for the something tolalty new you have disclosed in your short article. One thing I would really like to comment on is that FSBO relationships are built after a while. By presenting yourself to the owners the first saturday and sunday their FSBO will be announced, ahead of the masses start calling on Monday, you produce a good network. By mailing them methods, educational components, free accounts, and forms, you become a good ally. If you take a personal fascination with them and also their circumstance, you produce a solid relationship that, on most occasions, pays off when the owners opt with an adviser they know and also trust preferably you actually.

We certainly agree we should have spent more time on the inner workings of building FSBO (?) relationships while making this t-shirt. Thanks to this helpful comment, we now know how to produce a good network – we just need to mail our readers “methods, educational components, free accounts, and forms.” Check your mailboxes for quizzes and chunks of desks!

Stylized Initials Carved into Tree Custom Save the Date / Invites

Karen Cody – We are interested in gtenitg a wedding estimate for a date in October 2013 and what exactly the cost of the site and wedding reception will include (i.e., cake, dinner, open bar, linens, table, appetizers, etc.)Thanks, karen

Nothing Mundane – Karen, we are not wedding planners, but we suspect the main cost for an October 2013 wedding will be the time travel. Most likely, you’ll be looking at upwards of $1 trillion per head. If that’s not a problem, let us know and we’ll get back to you with an estimate for flowers, etc. as well. Thanks, Nothing

Life Is Meaningless Without Yoga

Baby Bunny Fingerprint Tree Guestbook – Wrapped Canvas

Please bring back Inhale with Steve Ross I used to do it with my mom every night, and he is so far the only yoga instructor that doesn’t drive me iannse! I need to do yoga but cant seem to unless I can have fun with it, I would settle for even a DVD

Baby Bassinet Fingerprint Balloon Guestbook

I need Steve Ross! Inhale was something I leookd forward to everyday! There is now a huge void in my practice that Rodney yee or Shiva rea and the likes cannot feel. I loved the energy and variety that each inhale class provided. There is nothing else like it out there. I started inhale in 2002 when I was 15 yaand years old and

A rare double comment on the same topic, and there was even a third, much longer comment which we cut for length. Yes, the spambot clamor for Inhale with Steve Ross (which was a real thing) is as overwhelming as it is poorly spelled. Don’t worry, friendly spammers! We’ll work our hardest to make sure Inhale with Steve Ross is next to come back, right after Gumbel 2 Gumbel.

Oh my God, Becky Magnet

That is exactly what life is all about! Great wrinitg Katie. Before you know it, you’ll be where I am and think, Wow, that went so fast . But I know that I still have Heaven to look forward to, and that wonderful life will never end! Love You, Pat

We totally agree – if there is anything which perfectly encapsulates what life is all about, it’s the opening lines to “Baby Got Back.” Enjoy your vision of heaven, Pat! And thanks to all of our spambot commenters for giving us a break from writing a real blog post today.

Previous Post: Week 7: Cape Cod – It’s Gonna Rain

Next Post: Week 8: Womp, Womp

September 11, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 6: Road Through Rhode Island

Cast your mind back to the halcyon days of early August. Everything was different then; the summer still stretched before us, Labor Day just the fevered nightmare of students and wearers of white. Geno Smith hadn’t yet been punched in the jaw by his own teammate, and Zimbabwe had not yet defeated New Zealand by seven wickets in Harare, which is an actual headline we found (six balls to spare!). Donald Trump was somehow a viable presidential candidate… well, never mind that one.

But we at Nothing Mundane did not yet have a car. And now we do!

Yes, in early August while staying in Rhode Island, we successfully purchased a used 2010 Honda Fit, which is tiny, hopefully trustworthy, and eminently towable behind our RV. It’s been a huge improvement over our previous world, in which we had to drive our thirty-one foot motorhome over questionable roads into unfamiliar small towns in order to do basically anything. This would typically involve a lot of hopped curbs, panicked 27-point turns in the middle of busy intersections, and our nemesis: speed bumps.

Ever gone over a speed bump with your house? Everything sounds like it’s going to break: dishes, glassware, the crystal chandelier decorated with razor blades which dangles directly over us while we drive. It can be a little nerve-wracking.

But now, those days are (mostly) over, thanks to our glorious new (extremely used) car! Wonder what we did with it…

Providence

So glad you asked. The first thing we did after getting the car was drive to nearby Providence, Rhode Island. Providence turned out to be pretty unexciting, except that the roads are insane and were entirely under construction, which was a fun test for our brand new (extremely used) car. We walked around the campus at Brown (motto: “the grandfathered Ivy”) and ate some crepes, but didn’t end up with much in the way of pictures or stories. We did spot this very strange sculpture which we rather enjoyed, though.

Newport Cliff Walk

Next up was the Newport Cliff Walk, which is a semi-famous path along the ocean in Newport, Rhode Island with nice views and large houses. Newport is in southern Rhode Island while Providence is more northern Rhode Island, so it took upwards of forty-five minutes to drive there. In Rhode Island, that qualifies as a road trip all by itself! (Just some trash talk from a Connecticut native)

It was a beautiful summer day, and the views were gorgeous. It’s hard to beat a walk along the ocean, especially when it’s a weekday and you don’t have to go to work because you quit your job to drive around in an RV.

We saw these warning signs all over. We took their meaning to be “Caution: Do not jump off of the cliff while decapitating yourself,” which really threw our afternoon plans for a loop.

There were a lot of old and pretty houses along the cliff walk, along with a lot of hedges hiding said houses. We especially enjoyed the the blue and yellow construction wrapping on the house in the picture above, and felt pretty clever for making jokes about an Ikea being built there, until about 3 other groups of people passing by did the same thing.

Maybe they were semi-professional travel jokesters too? Yeah, most likely that’s what it is.

We still need some work on our selfie aim.

The Fantastic Umbrella Factory

Our final stop in Rhode Island was the Fantastic Umbrella Factory, which confusingly is not a factory and which does not sell umbrellas. But it is pretty fantastic! The FUF, as we’ll call it to save a tiny amount of time, is basically a hippie bazaar / petting zoo: it features a great cafe, cool gardens, chickens and rooster and goats and emus, a bamboo forest, and lots of tie-dye.

My Big Lebowski Vitruvian Man shirt totally played at the FUF, which may give you a sense of the kind of place it was. We also got to see a pretty impressive rooster that seemed to have some peacock in its blood. The pictures don’t quite do it justice – it sort of looks like it’s getting turned down by the other chickens here, but trust us, this rooster was the cock of the walk.

It’s a pretty small state, so that’s all we’ve got for Rhode Island. If you’re interested, see below for a few more pictures of the weird and cool world of the Fantastic Umbrella Factory.

What’s next: Currently, we are in southern Pennsylvania, seeing some friends and hoping to tour Gettysburg tomorrow. Next up: friends and fatcats in Washington, D.C.

Shamefully missed a prior update? You can catch up below; we’ll keep your dirty secret in the meantime.

Next Post: Week 7: Cape Cod – It’s Gonna Rain

August 26, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 5: Underwater

Hey friends,

We’ve got a little more to share about our tour through Connecticut. First up, we stayed at Mohegan Sun Casino for the night. Although Mohegan doesn’t offer a full-service RV park like Turningstone, they do have a huge RV parking area with a free shuttle to the casino. We’re not actually big gamblers (we’ve gambled about $20 total on our two casino visits), but there aren’t a lot of places outside of campgrounds and parks that (1) allow overnight RV parking, and (2) have anything worth seeing. Mohegan Sun fills both categories nicely, and we had a fun time strolling the grounds, drinking, and imagining the type of person who goes to a casino to buy Tiffany (or Tommy Bahama!).

You may recall from prior posts that we have an affinity for the slots game Kitty Glitter, but we were unable to scratch that itch this time around. The best we could do was video poker and free drinks, which we tried to enjoy while sadly throwing glitter into the air repeatedly. The passer-by looked annoyed by all the glitter, but they were probably happy about it, deep down, at least once they stopped coughing.

The final highlight of the evening was a free performance by the band Filter to a large crowd of disinterested problem gamblers. We didn’t stick around for the entire set, but what we heard was occasional back-catalog type songs (which we’re sure everyone was hoping for), along with long, rambling diatribes about music piracy. It was all pretty top-notch entertainment, especially when they proclaimed that their new album would be their “best ever” would and sound just like the “modern music” that kids today are listening to (and probably pirating!), then left the stage and refused to come back for an encore.

Rock on, Filter. Rock on.

The Sub Museum

Our final stop in Connecticut was actually pretty nifty – the Submarine Force Library and Museum, on the grounds of the naval submarine base in Groton, CT. It is a great museum with a lot of interesting historical submarine exhibits. Most notably, we got to go into the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine (commissioned 1951) and the first submarine to reach the North Pole. It was a cool experience and we both geeked out a little.

We snapped a bunch of pictures as usual, and since we don’t really have a lot of “content” for this post, we’re going to post a few here in large size to fill some white space. Enjoy!

Helmet used by early submarine knights during underwater jousting competitions.

The U.S.S. Nautilus, modeling its good side

You know things are tight inside when even Heather has to duck!

The museum also featured a diorama of sub-mariners in supposedly typical clothing, which we thought looked suspiciously like Tobias Fünke’s never-nude outfit.

There are dozens of them!

The sub museum also has actual working periscopes which go from the ground floor to the roof. We were able to find our RV in the parking lot! We know, it looks like we lined ourselves up for a torpedo strike, but of course the sub museum doesn’t fire torpedoes. Just harmless cannon balls.

A photo posted by @nothingmundane on Aug 1, 2015 at 4:42pm PDT

A few more pics for the curious and bored:

What’s next: Currently, we are in Acadia National Park, bathing in glorious Internet at a cafe and recovering from some serious hikes. Next up: camping in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Or else.

Shamefully missed a prior update? You can catch up below; we’ll keep your dirty secret in the meantime.

Next Post: Week 6: Road Through Rhode Island

August 17, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Weeks 4-5: You Connect, I Cut

It’s been a while, but we’re back with a travelogue covering Weeks 4 and 5 of our epic road trip, which we spent in Jake’s home state, the great and tiny Connecticut. This will be a long one, so buckle in (assuming you’re also reading from a driveable house), and prepare for an exciting game of that classic Connecticut Rochambeau variant: Rock, Beach, Mosquito, Goat, Double Bus Explosion.

Black Rock State Park

The first stop in our CT odyssey was Black Rock State Park, located in Thomaston. We stayed at the nice RV park across the street, but hiked at Black Rock for two days – which unfortunately happened to be two of the hottest days of the year. The trail was rocky, full of mosquitoes, and at one point appeared to lead through an electrical substation, but it did have a satisfying view from the top. Overall, we rate the park “sweaty.”

We did not have a car, and moving the RV around is not that easy, so after our hike we needed to walk somewhere to get a late lunch. Amusingly, the closest restaurant was actually a new location of Senor Pancho’s, a Mexican place which originally opened in Jake’s hometown, Southbury, CT. Senor Pancho’s’ food is notoriously terrible, so their business model always seemed to be “don’t check IDs.” That business model has apparently been successful enough for three locations! As legal drinkers who have tasted actual Mexican food, we wisely chose instead to walk about fifteen minutes in the sidewalk-less heat to a nearby restaurant, Rozzi’s, for a pretty good lunch.

Next time, buddy.

We also met up with Nothing Mundane’s official sister, Kate, and her friend Tanya, along with Tanya’s cute new baby Kennedy. We neglected to take any pictures, so you’ll have to take our word re: cuteness.

Hammonasset Beach State Park

Next up was Hammonasset Beach, a state park on the Connecticut coastline where the cool kids partied back in the day. It’s probably the only Connecticut public beach worthy of the name, as the others tend to use “rocks” instead of “sand,” although there are no real waves since Long Island steals them all. We had a great time at Hammonasset, which suggests we may ourselves have now become cool kids (doubtful), possibly since we get to go to the beach instead of going to work. We also got to visit with some of our friends and family still cruelly forced to live in the CT.

Our favorite part of Hammonasset was the sunsets. With beautiful hues of orange, pink, and lavender, they looked like God had thrown up Gatorade and a Yankee Candle all over the sky. So romantic! We took pictures, but some things just need to be experienced.

Hopeville Pond State Mosquito Sanctuary

After Hammonasset, we continued our eastward trek, spending some time at Hopeville Pond State Park, an obscure park near Connecticut’s eastern border. It was fairly overgrown and had very few other residents, possibly because there were no flush toilets. We, however, scored one of the few sites with an electrical hookup, and so had the unique pleasure of laying in our comfortable, air-conditioned RV, drinking french-press coffee and using our computers and watching TV (more on that later), while the people around us lived in tents, attempted to make fire, and used what was basically an outhouse.

Friends, we are living the good life here.

The only downside of Hopeville Pond, aside from the infrastructure, is that – and this cannot be said properly any other way – there was just a shitload of mosquitoes there. We tried to hike into a nearby state forest, but the mosquitoes were so thick that even an irresponsible amount of bug spray did nothing to keep them away. There was an actual cloud of them following each of us. The huge amount of flying insects also supports an equally huge amount of spiders, so the narrow trail was full of spiderwebs, lined up right at mouth level.

You may not be surprised to learn we did not complete that particular hike. What you may be surprised to learn (we were!) is that a cloud of mosquitoes will follow you forever, through the woods, out onto the road, and even down the road, and they do not care if you you walk quickly and then jog and then run. They do not care even if you just start sprinting, confusing the passing cars and especially your own body, because mosquitoes are Liam Neeson from Taken mixed with vampires.

We probably will not be back to Hopeville Pond, but we did snap a few pictures of the forest in between swats.

Niantic, CT

While in eastern Connecticut, we stopped to see Jake’s dad, who was gracious enough to put us up for a night and let us store some stuff at his house. He also spent a few days helping us with some RV fixes and enhancements, using a technique we hadn’t tried called “actually being handy.” The sweetest of these was figuring out a mounting system for our 55″ television, which happens to fit perfectly onto the long shelf in our tiny bedroom. (We take it down to travel.) The result is getting to watch what feels like a huge screen while laying in our own bed, an experience you can’t get at the big chain cinemas without a lot of negotiation.

While staying with Jake’s dad in Niantic, we stopped at a very cool place called the Book Barn, which features a huge number of books (they claim over 500,000) spread across numerous buildings (some across town). The main compound is extraordinarily whimsical, and includes a small tower, fairy garden, faux cemetery, chalk body outline in the crime section, goat petting zoo, and about 1000 things more. It’s weird and awesome.

All bookstores should have goats playing “king of the hill” with a large plastic castle near the fiction section!

Bonus: We saw what can only be called a “double bus” in a parking lot in Niantic, and no, there was not really any more explanation than that as to why it was there. As for the explosions, well, maybe Heather added them in, or maybe they actually happened spontaneously in real life because Jake is so damn awesome. We’ll never know for sure.

But it was probably the second one.

What’s next: Currently, we are in Massachusetts near Boston, and we just finished buying a car to tow behind our RV! Now we just need to install the parts so it is actually towable… We’re headed to Maine and New Hampshire tomorrow.

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’re also in the market for a deranged stalker; please glue your application directly to our door.

Shamefully missed a prior update? You can catch up below; we’ll keep your dirty secret in the meantime.

Next Post: Week 5: Underwater