Week 9: Old Friends, New Hampshire

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.

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. 9 out of 10 social media doctors recommend it!

Shamefully missed a prior post? You can check them out below, but be warned: we can’t keep coddling you forever.

Next Post: Week 9.5: Taking Vermont In

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).

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.

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 14, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 7: Cape Cod – It’s Gonna Rain

Hi friends! We’ve got a shiny new blog post for you. We know, we know, you weren’t expecting one for another week, at least, but we were so ~~bored~~ excited to share that we decided to ship one out early. Alternatively, we realized that our backlog has grown so large that we need to do at least two posts a week in order to have any hope of finishing this decade. So, no more excuses and no more procrastination. Time to strap on our blog helmets, buckle down our blog seatbelts, and blast off into the… blogosphere, we guess.

Hmm. That’s an annoying word, blogosphere. Really, just the word “blog” is so aurally displeasing. It’s a real earsore. Maybe we should be blasting off into the “chatmosphere”? That’s pretty fun, although this is not really a chat, more of a monologue. And if we’re being honest, it’s getting fairly stream of consciousness here, so maybe we’re having more of a ramble than a monologue. Ramblosphere doesn’t quite work, though – just seems like an atmosphere full of Rambos, just shooting and yelling and revisioning history, which is not at all the tone we’re looking for. It would probably make for a pretty sweet movie, though.

Wait, what were we talking about again? Oh right! Post. Here you go, fresh from the ramblosphere.

Scusset Beach

After our stunning success at purchasing a car in Rhode Island, we headed to Scusset Beach State Reservation, which is a Massachusetts state park located on the ocean near the very beginning of Cape Cod. As the name implies, there is a beach at Scusset, and enterprising and extremely foolhardy RV-ers can actually park and stay overnight on the sand if they so choose. That did not seem like a great plan to us, because of things like “no traction” and “high tide” and “sand freaking everywhere,” so we stayed slightly inland.

Scusset was recently renovated and was definitely a good deal, but here’s a full list of the weather patterns we experienced there:

Rain

And here’s a list of the activities we were able to take part in at Scusset:

Looking at the rain
Listening to the rain
Getting rained on
Waiting for it to stop raining

There was one brief period when we arrived during which the rain paused, and we headed to the beach to check out the scene. Although there were almost no humans there, we saw quite a few seagulls, who were taking advantage of the stiff incoming breeze to hover in place over the sand. Check out this vine:

Hover birds! We also took a few photos while it was not actively raining:

Cape Cod: Great Island Trail Death March

Hoverbirds aside, Scusset was a bit of a bust, so we decided to drive out along Cape Cod. Along the way, we went for a hike at Great Island Trail, a highly regarded national park in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The scenery was as pretty as advertised, with beautiful ocean views, an interior forest, and windswept grasses which looked almost like sand dunes.

Unfortunately, the day turned out to be extraordinarily hot. What’s worse, the trail took us primarily over very loose sand dunes, and hiking on sand (while wearing shoes) is not a whole lot of fun. It was rough. The back end of the hike was about 2.5 miles along the beach, under a blazing sun and over constantly shifting sand, until we were too tired to even complain properly. But we did snap some photos! Enjoy them in an air conditioned room with a cold beverage, for our sakes.

Cape Cod: Provincetown

Directly after our hike, we stopped to grab some ice cream (side note: we have eaten more ice cream in the last two months than in the previous two years), then headed up to Provincetown, which is at the very tip of Cape Cod. Provincetown is a very lively town with a culture best described as “rainbow,” and the weather had finally cooled down enough to enjoy it. We walked through the main drag and had a great dinner at The Lobster Pot, a P-town institution Jake remembered from a visit with his family as a kid. We even got to snap some pics of the sunset from the Lobster Pot’s deck during dinner.

A photo posted by @nothingmundane on Aug 10, 2015 at 3:44pm PDT

Plymouth

Our final activity while staying at Scusset was a visit to Plymouth, Massachusetts, home of the fabled Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock is the alleged spot where the Pilgrims first landed, and it’s an intensely boring landmark in person. It’s just a medium-sized rock with a date carved into it, surrounded by walls so that future generations can also be disappointed by it.

Luckily, we were prepared for this possibility, and had scoped out things to do in Plymouth before we landed there. We ended up walking around the town, which is fairly cute, seeing some semi-historic sculptures, and buying some delicious beer at an awesome craft beer store. We also ate some roasted cauliflower at a local gastropub, which looked suspiciously like brains. (The cauliflower, not the restaurant.) If you want to imagine this all occurring in a montage, we won’t stop you.

What’s next: Currently, we are in a campground near Washington, D.C., at which we have seen roughly equal amounts of people and deer. Next up: monuments, museums, and Richmond, Virginia.

Shamefully missed a prior update? You can catch up below, but please note that this is being marked in your permanent file.

Next Post: Spamalot

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