NE, in Review — Something More Project

The classic trip review you've all been waiting for!!! 😝 Her ’s a little reflection on what went well, the obstacles, and things we can do better next time because we're always learning, folks. Especially in these Ruby trips when they aren’t ALL vacation, but also just life built in.

We’ve been west a couple times, but as I have mentioned, this was really our first time heading east in the bus, & the get further east we got is about 40 miles into Vermont (LOL - that’s a long ways from Maine #dreambig).

Trip Summary:

Duration: 1 month (Oct)
Work: 3 days / week, both
Startling location: Minneapolis, MN
States visited: 8
Further point east: Champlain Orchards, Vermont #worthit
Total Mileage (ish): 3,200 miles

Accommodation / Accessibility:

Dispersed camping: although free camping is much less common in the East areas we were (not many national forests in upstate NY), where we found public lands (state forests mostly), we never had an issue finding a campsite. No matter if we pulled in at 2pm or 8pm. And we never had a problem finding open camp!
So quiet! Idk if it was too “late in the season” for typical tourists, but it was so quiet, even in cities that we expected to be very busy - like Lake George or Lake Placid or Finger Lakes area.
Roads were GREAT. Even deep in the forests, sometimes they were even PAVED which is unheard of out west. Navigating, in general, was much easier and more accessible than in the western mountains.
Tolls are annoying; we did experience the Ohio Turnpike because why not. Oh, I remember because it was $14 for us to drive 60 miles!!

Weather! :

It rains a lot in the NE area in October…like nearly every day a lot. 2021 facts.
Fall colors ARE that beautiful, as beautiful as you hear the east is in the fall. And our timing was prime! We thought we were going to be late but in MI we were definitely early, Adirondack were prime, and we even hit lots of pretties on our way home late October.
Our solar system wasn't impressed with NY…10 cloudy days in a row definitely changes the way we use our electricity.
The first couple weeks were great temps - 50s-70s. But near the end, we had some cold fronts come in and were in the 30s at night. Our mini split heats the space up very fast, but our solar did struggle to support as it was always in a depleted state. We woke up to a hard frost the first night home #welcomeHOME
As the weather gets poopier, doing a dual work schedule gets more challenging.

Adventuring + Work:

I imagined the east being much more busy than it was - we never really faced crowded trails or even downtown areas. A lot of places had also closed for the season which seemed odd…
Compared to our travels west, we had service over 90% of the time #verizonFTW Sometimes in the mountains even! The coverage out east was MUCH more dominant amd reliable than that of the west which made working on the road nice.
GREAT hiking in the Adirondacks. We loved that area - but to get into the High Peaks, you need to be up for a big day of hiking. Like 15 miles +! Start early and wear gunning boots because you will be boldering up river beds majority of the time!
When you work in the Central time zone, being on East coast time gives you a nice morning. We loved having a slow roll in the morning, sipping coffee, and hanging out before logging in. However, you don’t get the same benefit at the end of the day sadly :/ We often didn’t worry about service the night before work because we had some hours to figure it out in the AM 😃
Always too much work!! 2 days / week would have been nice - we moved pretty slow and didn’t get nearly as far as we thought with 3 days being fully consumed by work.
We played a lot of games & also slept a lot.

Misc:

Get in the habit of checking your rig’s fluids - tranny fluid, oil, coolant, etc. :) #whoops, but thankful it didn’t come to bite us!
Our bikes were probably our least used accessory due to all the rain. They are growing some healthy rust from it tho!!
Our outdoor shower gets used a lot less when it’s 40-50F out and raining.
Ruby is still just as slow & the Adirondacks are still the same distance away (1200 miles).
So much wine. So many apples. So many fresh veg stands. #myjam
We want to go back already!!

We are very happy we made this trip happen, but there is still SO much to come back for! Between the Green Mountains, Acadia NP, the missed NP in Ohio (shame on us), there were many more months we could continue exploring.

Being on a shorter trip, we definitely neded to adjust expectations for distance and adventuring. If only mountains weren't so dang far away from MN! So that’s definitely something we can now gage a little better especially with working as well. What was great was we were introduced to areas we had no expectations for and ready loved. Every trip we take, we come back with 5 more trips we need to take 😛 So don’t worry, Ruby won’t be dormant forever!

But this winter, she will be taking a rest. Time for some family time, the Holiday season, and continued exploring of our own backyard. I always come back from these trips (& all vacations really) feeling a little more present and in the moment. The sunrises look just a little brighter and the sunsets a bit more spectacular.