Going Home
We had planned 2022 around a few big destinations. We wanted to visit family down in Florida. We wanted to get some repairs done to the rig in North Carolina. We wanted to spend some time in the Smokies. Beyond that, our plans were flexible until the holidays, when we're due back to New England. This gave us a lot of flexibility in the summer and fall months, and ultimately we decided to spend Labor Day Weekend in the Niagara falls area. This would mark a special 10-year anniversary celebration. We met on July 7, 2012 and took our first road trip that Labor Day weekend. We drove from my apartment in Framingham up to the Canadian side of Niagara. Little did we know that the trip would be a milestone, the first of many road trips in our future. That's reason to celebrate. So, we're off to Niagara in September, this time with life looking much different than it had a decade ago.
To get to upstate New York, we had the choice of either going the Ohio-Pennsylvania-New York route, or heading east and circling up through New England. That decision was a no-brainer. We'd be able to go home and regroup, do some fixes on the RV, and see friends and family. Plus, we had done the Pennsylvania-New York trip once before, and well....
So that gave us a plan for the remainder of our year. After West Virginia, we'd continue heading east and start making our way north. We stopped in Virginia to celebrate the 4th of July in Shenandoah, and then continued eastward, back toward the DC Metro area. From March (when we were there last) to July, we noticed a big change. We felt no need to stay in an RV park near DC like we did last time. We were much more comfortable choosing a more iffy campground, an old state park outside of Baltimore. Some of the sites were measured to not fit our length, and the one that might fit us had conflicting descriptions. I checked the reviews and found 2 for that specific site, and it seemed like long RVs fit just fine. That was good enough for me! We booked our site at Patapsco Valley State Park. The drive in was a little dicey, but nothing our new, confident selves couldn't handle.
A water and electric only site surrounded by forest was a huge departure from our previous Maryland campground, and we couldn't have been happier. The site was plenty big, private, and surprise! We had fireflies! Plus we saved almost 2/3 the amount of money per night than when we stayed at Cherry Hill, and we were still near all the shops we needed to replenish our resources. After spending time in the land of fried awesomeness, we needed a major nutritional reset, so we made sure we were near our favorite places to shop clean eats: Mom's Organic and Wegmans. I admit that we stopped in Maryland specifically to make a Mom's run before venturing up to New England. Ever since we discovered it in March, it's been our grocery mothership, and there are only locations in the DC/Baltimore area, and a couple scattered in NJ and NY. Actually, we ended up doing our epic "clean eats" grocery run on our 10-year meetaversary! Hey, it's a celebration to us! Don't worry, we also stopped for lunch, trying Nando's for the first time. That was one delicious anniversary!
If we can find a campground that feels like we're in the middle of nowhere but still be a short drive from civilization, that's our jam, especially for our regrouping stops. We only stayed at Patapsco for a few nights, but it was plenty of time to run our errands, and I was able to pop over to DC to visit bestie Roberto before hitting the road again.
That was the end of our campground bookings for the next week. We weren't sure if we wanted to book it up to New England or take our time, so we figured it made the most sense to give us the freedom to stop for however many overnights we needed, wherever we needed them. Turns out driving in the Northeast, though still a congested mess at times, wasn't nearly as stressful as our initial launch day, and so we covered all our ground from Maryland to Massachusetts in just 2 days. Our overnight ended up being at a conveniently located Cracker Barrel in Connecticut, right across the street from a Pilot fuel stop. We fueled up Clyde and then staked out our camping spot in the Cracker Barrel parking lot. It may not have been a clean, organic dinner, but it certainly hit the spot after our long drive day!
We arrived back to MA on July 10, and our campground reservations didn't start back up until the 16th. So it was back to our home base in my parents' driveway for a few days, where we were ready to tackle a long list of reorganization, modification, and cleaning tasks.
