We're baaaaaack!!!

Did you miss me? Sorry it's been over a month(!) since I wrote last on the blog.

But! We've been busy!

I will be posting photos of our trip, so you can see some of the pretty stuff we saw. We've been back for only a week and I know that I should have blogged sooner, but hey. At least I'm doing it now, right??

So! We started out by driving up to Virginia to stay one night at my sister's house. She spoiled us by having yummy burritos and even made cobbler for Joe. (I just noticed that cobbler and clobber are very close words - as in "This cobbler is going to clobber my diet.) The girls were cute (even though Leah called Joe "Uncle Joe" and called me "Miss Kelli". I've been demoted).

So then next day we drove up to Connecticut and stayed at a "family campground". These are the campgrounds with loud activities for children (this time it was a Grease sing-along - yeesh), and often have a putt-putt course and no trees. But we were desperate.

The next day we went to Mystic, Connecticut (didn't see the pizza place but saw some nice ships) and on to Rhode Island. We wanted to say we had been to Rhode Island, because how many people have been to Rhode Island? Not many. However, we realized why: by not going to Rhode Island, you aren't missing anything. Except bad drivers. BAD drivers. And lots of people at every public place imaginable.

Next we went to Massachusetts, and in New Bedford went to a whaling museum. Neat stuff there. And my favorite things? Carved whale bone knitting swifts and needles. Wow. We camped in Cape Cod, which doesn't look like Martha Stewart's neighborhood (well, that's what I was expecting, anyway. The beach was lovely though, with large dunes and fog.

One cool place we went on Cape Cod was an historical society museum that had a refurbished house and a tool museum. Very cool stuff. I particularly liked the clothes and hooked rugs and quilts in the home, and Joe liked the tools: they had all kinds of neat stuff, including a manual press drill, cranberry rakes, an asparagus buncher (odd), and a treadle operated jigsaw (built on an old sewing machine base). Very cool.

We also went up into the Cape Cod Light, an old lighthouse that had to be moved just like the Cape Hatteras lighthouse (and by the same company).

(Please note how brave I was, climbing to the top of the lighthouse!

We drove to Plymouth, Mass. where we saw a pilgrim monument and had our first snafu with the camper. Joe drove into an ATM and got the camper stuck. It was hilarious. I didn't take any pictures though for fear he'd kill me. Heh.

Our next stop (the next day) was Salem, which again wasn't what I was expecting. It's a big city - not a small historical town like I imagined. It had some hokey stuff too, but an AWESOME old cemetery and a good brewery. We also went into the House of the Seven Gables. Yes, THE House of the Seven Gables. Neat house, with hidden staircases and secret rooms behind the fireplace. Too bad I haven't read the book yet!

Joe gets into the Salem spirit. Heh. Doesn't he look like Jerry Garcia?

Thought some of you might appreciate these windows from the Salem Witch Village. Lovely, aren't they?

This is a pilgrim from the Mayflower. The MAYFLOWER. Wow.

We headed up to Maine. It's very pretty - very wooded and lots of wildflowers. Joe says it looks Scandinavian. We stayed at a primitive camp (pit toilets - a fancy name for an outhouse) but it did have showers at least.

This is Bass Harbor (on the other side of the island from Bar Harbor) where Joe and I had a very nice dinner with a lovely sunset.

That's up through Day 5. I don't want to bore all of you to death quite yet. :)