Our cross-country, summer trek was so much fun that we’ve taken our children and business on the open road again! We departed Bangor, Maine on Sunday with our laptops and the kiddos and started driving south. During our last trip, we were sensible (say boring). We had a firm itinerary and had made all our reservations in advance. However, that kind of traveling was kind of a drag because we couldn’t stay longer at the places we liked (and had already prepaid for the bad places even when we wanted to leave early). So, this time, we did the non-sensible thing and left home with an itinerary, but no reservations.
Our first stop was meant to curb our intense culinary craving for smoked turkey legs and sausage. We arrived at King Richard’s Faire in Massachusetts and quickly changed clothes. We’d invested heavily in Renaissance costumes for the entire family since the children are studying the Renaissance Period in their homeschooling and since we’d planned to attend three festivals on our trip. Max looked quite dapper in his little king’s costume (with ruffles!) and turned quite a few heads. Frank looked very intimidated as an executioner (the huge ax looks real, but it’s plastic) and Ali is a gorgeous lady-in-waiting (and I almost cold-cocked a man for ogling her that afternoon).
Richard was happy that his costume didn’t include tights (which I made him wear to the Renaissance Festival in Texas one year) and my wench costume has three layers, so I wasn’t freezing like many of the women appeared to be on Sunday. It was quite chilly!
Our first lesson in “winging-it’ (not having reservations) was learned on Sunday when the campground we were heading to told us via cell phone that we couldn’t stay there if we arrived after 6:00 p.m. We sat at a rest area and searched for about an hour for another campground in that area with wi-fi. No luck. So, after staying at only one campground on this trip, we had to walk, with our tails between our legs, into a Marriott in Poughkeepsie, New York. They had high-speed Internet access so at least we were able to get our work done after being on the road all day. Much of western Massachusetts and eastern New York state are pretty remote and our T-Mobile connection was non-existent there.
However, the unexpected detour we took on 22 South from Pittsfield, MA to Poughkeepsie, NY was absolutely and stunningly breathtaking. In my opinion, that drive made all the headaches of our afternoon worth it. Not only were we blessed with rolling hills of brilliant fall foliage, but we were also treated to dozens of geese formations, honking happily on their way south. The drive was magical, almost surreal in its beauty, and I knew then that we were destined to end up in Poughkeepsie just to experience nature’s awesome Fall show!
If you find yourself on 22 / 44 South heading toward Poughkeepsie, don’t miss the Arlington Diner (805 Dutchess Turnpike / 845-452-1554 )! The food was excellent, the staff was incredibly friendly (they made us an “Egg Cream” just so we could all taste it) and the cost was unbelievably low, considering we stuffed ourselves silly and had enough leftovers for a small army.
Hugs to all!
Angela
P.S. The WritersWeekly.com Fall 24-Hour Short Story Contest is only two weeks away! Can you receive an assigned topic and then write and submit an award-winning story within 24 hours? Try it! See: https://www.writersweekly.com/misc/contest.html