On the Road with Brent & Erika

Then it was off on another equally long day of driving! Although it was 15 hours this time, it went smoothly. I won't lie though, I don't think I would have taken on another day of eternal driving--two was plenty long and exhausting! We listened to a lot of This American Life, a book on CD called The Raft and lullabies when we were trying to coax Harper to sleep. Often Brent or I would sit in the backseat as well and entertain Harper or read books to her. She was such a trooper! :)

Although we were flying across the country at this point with the clear purpose of arriving in D.C. as quickly as possible, we didn't want to only take interstate. So we drove one stretch through Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive. The park ranger told us as we entered to watch out for critters along the way. When we asked what kind we might see, he said black bear and deer. Well, I figured we might see some deer along the way, but I never dreamed we would see an actual black bear! He was off to our left as we were driving, not very far off the road among some trees. We stopped and watched in amazement as he slowly lumbered up higher into the trees. Wow...I have never seen a bear in the wild so close up!

Matt and Carolyn had to work while we were there, so we took a day trip to Baltimore. We ate some famous Maryland fresh crab as well as crab cakes. I have to admit I liked it, and I am not a seafood person. We also went to the American Visionary Art Museum for some very interesting and unusual art (Harper slept in her stroller for this one), and then walked along the harbor. It was hard not to think of "The Wire" as we drove past Baltimore's docks and street corners.

After leaving D.C., we drove a mere six hours (which felt like a jaunt in the woods at that point) into Kent, Connecticut and Macedonia Brook State Park, where we camped for two nights. We arranged the camping portion of our trip to be at the beginning where we figured we would be freshest in case it was a dicey experience. And we almost cancelled this part of the trip because we couldn't fit our usual amount of camping gear in the car (we had to lose the camping chairs and a sleeping bag). The call for scattered thunderstorms did not help my anxiety, nor the fact that Harper had never slept in a tent.

All that worry was for nothing though because it turned out great! When we got there, we immediately loved our campsite because there was an outhouse and water pump very close, we were right along the river, and we felt sufficiently far away from other campers. When Harper would cry, we were happy that she wouldn't disturb anyone else's camping zen. It did rain for a brief spell the first evening, but we already had the tent all set up so it was okay. And the next day was sunny and in the 70's...hallelujah! We took one long hike that morning, relaxed and read while Harper took a long nap in her pack and play outside by the river and ate Nathans hotdogs and smores over the fire. We do love to camp, and I hope this was the first of many, many camping trips for our family.