Visiting Morristown NHP, Edison NHP, and Paterson Great Falls NHP

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Ben

We had a nice pair of Pesach Seders here in our driveway. Today we decided to visit all three of New Jersey’s NPS sites. Our first stop was the Washington’s Headquarters unit of Morristown National Historical Park, the first National Historical Park to be created way back in 1933:

Washington wintered in the adjacent Ford Mansion in the winter on 1779-80 while his troops wintered a few miles down the road. We checked out the visitor center:

A Ferguson Rifle, invented by Ferguson who was killed at the Battle of King’s mountain, the site of which we visited on Day 980:

The sword Washington wore at his presidential inauguration:

This room contained a formerly private collection of antique documents:

We walked across the lawn to view the Ford Mansion:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

Our next stop was Thomas Edison National Historical Park:

This site preserves Edison’s laboratories, where the motion picture camera was invented among other inventions:

The chemistry lab:

The sound labs, where the phonograph was refined:

The photo lab:

The labs were so extensive that the site had its own volunteer fire department:

In the machine shop, all the tools were belt driven from a single power source:

Edison spent more time tinkering here than he did in his office:

Edison’s office:

His desk was sealed after his death in 1931, so what we see here is exactly how his desk was arranged before his death:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges and patches:

Our last stop of the day was Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park, the 397th NPS site to be created in 2011:

My reaction to the falls was “this is amazing for New Jersey!”:

Lots of Jews here because it’s Chol Hamoed:

The city of Paterson is old and interesting:

This raceway used to carry water to turn waterwheels to power factories, a system promoted by Alexander Hamilton:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Our Third Passover in the RV

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Ben

This past week, we’ve been getting ready for Pesach:

Passover starts tonight, and the seder table is set:

Happy Passover!

So Now What?

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Ben

It all started in the fall of 2012. We were in the middle of our 2012 Vacation in the Florida Keys. After another beautiful sunset, Trish said “why don’t we do this full time?”. For the next nine months, we prepared for the trip, both excited and worried. Worried about how the kids would adjust, worried about homeschooling, worried about leaving our perfectly good jobs behind.

In August of 2013, we drove away from our rented-out home and headed west. For nine-hundred and eighty-four days, we traveled this amazing, vast continent. We’ve climbed sand dunes and glaciers, walked beneath the world’s tallest trees, and touched the Arctic Ocean. We’ve strolled though a Mexican village, visited our nation’s capital, and panned for gold in the Yukon Territory beneath the midnight sun. Personally, I’ve had the time to bicycle many of the toughest cycling climbs in the US, and I realized my dream, now over thirty years in the making, of owning and flying a PPG. In the mean time, our children have both grown up so much, in so many ways. And we’ve come closer as a family.

And now it’s over.

We’re currently parked in our driveway here in New York. As of now, our plan is to aggressively triage our belongings into a single 26-foot moving truck and then move to Phoenix, Arizona. There are good schools there for M and B, and we will be near our parents. I’ve always loved the desert, and I think the rest of the family has come to appreciate its rugged beauty too. Our plan is to somehow be able to travel during the summers, to leave behind the monsoon thunderstorms of Phoenix’s summer and travel to places yet unvisited. We hope to share those travels with you here.

I considered continuing blogging daily until we arrived in Phoenix, which would be the end not only of the trip, but of this chapter of our life-journey as well, but I don’t think I could stand writing a blog post titled “Day 1045: Packing, Day 46”, nor do I think you would want to read it. I will continue to blog trips we take, as well as bike rides or PPG flights or RV modifications of note, but daily blogging will likely not return until we begin our westward drive to Phoenix. If you like, you can sign up for blog updates via E-mail, or receive updates by liking our Facebook page or following our Instagram page.

So here in the driveway our RV sits. And even though we’re here in the outer suburbs of New York City, when I close my eyes, I can still imagine us parked on some patch of lonely desert in the middle of nowhere, the scent of sagebrush and Palo Verde in the air, looking to the distant horizon beneath a vibrant sunset, with only the sound of the wind for company.

Are you there with me? I hope you are.

Day 984: Hampton National Historic Site

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Ben

We had a great Shabbos with our friends Avi and Debbie and their kids. Thanks for hosting us!

This morning, we drove just a few miles over to Hampton National Historic Site:

This site preserves the estate owned by the Ridgely family for seven generations, from 1745 to 1948. The mansion was the largest private home in America when it was completed in 1790:

Next to the mansion is the icehouse:

We visited the Ridgely family cemetery on the grounds:

The mansion looks the same from the front and the rear. This symmetry is a trait of the mansion’s Georgian Architecture:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

We continued north, crossing from Maryland into Pennsylvania:

We eventually entered New Jersey, then New York. At last we arrived at the freeway exit for our house:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 982: Washington Birthplace NM and Thomas Stone NHS

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Ben

This morning we visited George Washington Birthplace National Monument:

The outline in the foreground shows the location of the home in which George Washington was born and lived until he was three years old. The commemorative building in the background was erected in 1931 on the location thought to be where the house used to stand. Later, when this area was slated to be converted into a parking lot for the visitor center, site excavations to prepare for the parking lot installation revealed the correct location of the historic home: