Appalachian Trail – Phase 1

Our wonderful journeys continues. The past few days we have been “hanging out” on the Appalachian Trail visiting and assisting the hiking community. I had met many hikers during my short section hike through Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York but really enjoyed a recently retired couple – Metta and Grasshopper. Elizabeth hit it off right away with them as well. We spent 3 nights (out of our 4) in the same hotel and plan to meet them again in a few days, further north on the trail, in Rangeley, Maine. All told Elizabeth got to meet 9 people I hiked with 7 weeks previous. Click the link below to view our recap.

Appalachian Trail

Freeport Maine

We have had a great time in Maine so far. We lived here for four years back in the 80s. Elizabeth enjoyed her Lobster at my brother’s, we visited her brother out on an island and now we are on the Maine/New Hampshire border by the Appalachian Trail. Our trail activities will be a separate post in a few days. We head to Acadia National Park tomorrow and then off the Rangeley, Maine trail activities.

Thanks for following along. Click below to read about our Freeport fun.

FREEPORT

Lancaster County

We are now in Connecticut, our 15th state of this road trip, 7 of these are new to Rangeley. Tomorrow we will go through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and end in Maine (all new states for Rangeley). He continues to be a fabulous traveler.

We were talking today how you never really escape civilization driving in the east. The highways are always busy and you are never too far from some town. In the west we were often on a road with town or no services for the next 80 miles and very few cars. The last 60 miles today took almost 2 hours, all on Interstate, but lots of traffic had us at a crawl for much of the way. We never saw an accident or construction issues to cause the slow downs, just lots of cars and trucks. The speed limit also goes down as you move east. It is 80 in Texas, then drops to 75, then 70 and is 65 in the northeast.

The main reason for this trip is coming up, visiting family in New England and friends on the AT, so we are very excited for the next couple of weeks.

Click the link below to read about our adventures over the past 2 days.

LANCASTER COUNTY

New River Gorge

Another wonderful National Park. This one is near the top of Rangeley’s list as it is completely dog friendly and it is full of sticks and water. He could go everywhere (except inside) we went. Being a river in a gorge it takes some driving to get around. The Park is only 7,000 acres but we drove nearly 200 miles getting to the various sites (and our hotel was only 3 miles from the primary visitor center). Click the link below to read about our adventures.

NEW RIVER GORGE

Laurel, Mississippi

This trip we are sticking to the Interstate highways to move along faster. Last two trips we avoided the highways if at all reasonable. The miles sure do go faster this way. It is also much easier finding dog friendly places to stay we like when we are on a highway and do not have designated stops.

Laurel was everything Elizabeth was hoping for. Rangeley was great and garnered an amazing amount of attention. We kept seeing people repeatedly which was a lot of fun as well. Again we just enjoy seeing new places and the wonderful people that are also travelling about.

There sure are a lot of Home Town fans. One couple we met was driving from Vermont to Oregon and ended up in Mississippi to see Laurel. Click the link below to see our pictures and write up.

LAUREL

Road Trip #3

OK, we are into long road trips. Instead of sitting around and enjoying the Phoenix summer we are off on road trip #3 in the past 10 months. We are calling this trip Roaming Rangeley. The plan is to visit 2 National Parks. Wish we could do more, but we have been there done that. We only have 5 Parks left in the lower 48. This trip is also about visiting friends and family as well as filling out my geocache map. (Finding a geocache in every state. I currently have 41 states).

Tomorrow we take off driving east. Our goal is to drive about 400 miles per day to start, less once we get to the east. Our first destination is Laurel, Mississippi, where the HGTV show Home Town is filmed. From there we will head to New River Gorge National Park. After that we will head through Pennsylvania Amish country as we go to Maine to see family, visit my new Appalachian Trail friends I hiked with in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York as well as visit Acadia National Park. (BTW – I spent 2 weeks on the AT the end of May into early June of this year). After Maine we will visit more family in Vermont, then head to the Amish farm in Ohio where Rangeley was born before returning to Phoenix.

We moved from Vermont 24 years ago and this will be the first time Elizabeth has driven to or from there to Phoenix. I have only done it once before.

We will do periodic posts as we travel along. Thanks for following along. The link below will bring you to our new page.

ROAMING RANGELEY

Death Valley

This is our last park of this trip. We will be home tomorrow, Monday May 11th. Elizabeth is off to Vermont on Thursday and I will be heading to Pennsylvania in a bit over two weeks to continue my 2018 Appalachian Trail hike. I will be journaling that hike on Trailjournlas.com. Once I set up my online journal I will send the link on this blog. I will only be updating on trailjournals. Thanks for reading along as we visit all these amazing parks.

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK

Kings Canyon

Park number 38 for Rangeley, 47 for us. We actually drove through Sequoia as well, so 3 parks in 2 days. Later today we will post Sequoia. It has been a fabulous trip. Sad to think only one more park (Death Valley) before heading home. Elizabeth has already booked flights to visit family in Vermont a few days after we get home and I leave later this month to hike the northern half of the Appalachian Trail. Elizabeth will meet me in Maine and we plan to visit Acadia then. So our adventures will continue. We will have 14 more parks to visit once we go to DVNP. 8 in Alaska, the brand new park in WV, Glacier, Acadia, Isle Royale and Voyageurs as well as the Grand Canyon, which we are saving for last. I personally have been to the Canyon 20+ times, including since we started this National Park journey 18 months ago, but we need to go together to get our passport book stamped.

KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK