In my last post, I recalled our recently-concluded summer RV excursion – 60 days, 18 states, everywhere from Wisconsin to Kentucky to Maryland to Maine – in snippets. This time, I’ll do it with some quirky superlatives:
Most charming town:
1. Spring Harbor, MI
2. Woodstock, VT
3. Camden, Maine
4. East Grand Rapids, MI
5. Saranac Lake, New York
6. Boonsboro, Maryland
7. Butler, Ohio
Most charming little city:
1. Traverse City, MI
2. Burlington, VT
3. Petoskey, MI
Most charming minor league ballpark:
The Cove, home of the South Bend Silver Hawks
Best minor league team name:
The visiting team – the Beloit Snappers
Goofiest town names:
1. Paw Paw, MI
2. Manville, NJ
3. Point of Rocks, MD
4. Hollsopple, PA
5. Acme, MI
6. Mianus, CT
7. Connoquenessing, PA
8. Killingly, CT
Most lyrical neighboring towns: Parsippany and Whippany, New Jersey
Best waterfall:
1. Niagara Falls
2. High Falls in Wilmington, NY
3. Flume Gorge in Lincoln, NH (Franconia Notch NP)
4. Brandywine Falls (Cuyahoga Valley National Park)
Best crossing signs:
1. In the Adirondacks: Snowmobile Xing
2. In northern New England: Moose Xing
3. In northern Michigan: Bear Xing
Most scenic river crossing:
1. The Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River from NY to CT
2. The Potomac River at Point of Rocks, MD
3. The Susquehanna River in northeastern Maryland
Best name for a waterway:
1. Passagassawakeag River in Maine
2. Skookumchuck Brook in New Hampshire
Cheapest gas: Whippany, NJ -- $2.37 per gallon
Biggest spectacle: The World’s Largest Tire (a Uniroyal) outside of Detroit
Cleverest church marquee: “May all your days have son shine” (near Sandusky, OH)
Cleverest Best business marquee: “Leopard or not, clean the spot.” (Rainbow Cleaners in Whitney, CT)
Most curious team nickname: Escanaba (Michigan) High School is the “Home of the Eskymos.”
Coolest library architecture: Ypsilanti (MI) District Library
Most confusing location: Isaac Street Drive in the hamlet of Oregon, Ohio
Most road construction: Inland Maine and western Pennsylvania
Least favorite drivers: Connecticut
Most road kill: U.S. 30 through Pennsylvania
Most hair and nail salons per square mile: North Providence, RI
Best indication that you’re not far from the Canada border: the Runaway Truck Ramp sign is also printed in French: “Sortie d’urgence pour camions.”
Best reaction while watching a movie while we drive (My 9-year-old son Luke watching the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance scene from “Back to the Future”): “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Yes! It’s about time!”
And here’s my favorite photo from the summer – a late-afternoon lake scene in Quechee, Vermont:
The 2010 Herzog Family Summer RV Adventure – our 11th epic summer RV trip in a row – is complete. We started in Chicago, setting off from my childhood home (where my parents still live). And we’re back in Chicago – after a 60-day trip through 18 states, covering some 5,500 miles.
How does one encapsulate such an epic journey? It may turn out that I’ll remember the experience in snippets – moments frozen in place and time.
I’ll remember what we did:
Cruising on a pontoon boat along the St. Joseph River in Indiana. Crossing the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Strolling through the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in D.C. Hiking through Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Bounding down a 200-foot sand dune at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Puddle-jumping along a hiking trail alongside our campground in Verona, New York. Riding in the RV atop a ferry boat over Lake Champlain and into Vermont. Skipping stones into Western Bay in Bar Harbor, Maine. Playing a brings-me-back-to-childhood Atari game (Space Invaders!) at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Pitching horseshoes at a campground in Williamsport, Maryland. Exploring a tall ship in Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport. Plummeting on a log ride at Idlewild amusement park in Pennsylvania.
I’ll remember what we saw:
A Green Bay Packers training camp practice a couple hundred yards from Lambeau Field. A gaggle of geese parading through a parking lot in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. “Maple Syrup For Sale” signs throughout the Adirondacks. A covered bridge in Woodstock, Vermont. Birch trees leaning toward the highway along Maine’s Highway 2. A late-afternoon lake in Quechee, Vermont, reflecting the forested shore like a mirror. Amber waves of grain in rural Pennsylvania. “Moose Horns 4 Sale” on the side of the road in Rumford, Maine. A man in full clown regalia driving beside us on the outskirts of Cincinnati. A dramatic crossing of the Susquehanna River in Pittsburgh. The rolling hills and undulating fences of Kentucky’s horse farms. Myriad rock walls throughout New England. A sunset in central Ohio that turned a cornfield into a landscape painting. A multi-hued masterpiece etched onto the cliffs at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. A marquee outside of Farmington, Maine: “Just when I got used to yesterday, along came today.”
I’ll remember what we heard:
The roar of Niagara Falls from a boat beside the torrent. The shuffle and ruffle of a chipmunk following us through the weeds along a trail in New Hampshire’s Flume Gorge. A choir comprised of various alumni joining voices on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The baritone belch of a bullfrog in a pond at our campground on Grand Island near Buffalo, New York. A pair of fiddlers making music at a hot air balloon festival in Vermont. A young woman playing a blue electric violin as part of a band at a street festival in Traverse City, Michigan. The distant buzz of racecars being driven on a road course a few miles from our campground in Watkins Glen, New York. The boom and crackle of fireworks over a fairway at a country club in Scarsdale. A cacophony of cicadas at a campground in Louisville. The Vines singing the Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping” as we cruised along the back roads of Rhode Island: “Keeping an eye on the world going by my window…”
I’ll remember the smells and tastes:
The smoke of a campfire in Twin Mountain, New Hampshire. The scent of the sea as we approached Acadia National Park. The unmistakable whiff of horses and history at Churchill Downs in Louisville, and peanuts and crackerjack at a minor league baseball game in South Bend. Oysters Rockefeller in Burlington, Vermont. Plantain dumplings in Saranac Lake, New York. “World famous” red hots with sauerkraut at Gus’ in Plattsburgh, New York. A lobster roll in Bar Harbor, Maine. A sample of Milk & Cookies ice cream at the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour in Waterbury, Vermont.
Other than that, I don’t think I’ll remember a thing.
It ain’t Cooperstown. It’s Elkhart, Indiana, the RV Capital of the World. And it’s not the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But it’s still 80,000 square feet of Americana. On wheels. Yes, a couple of days ago, we visited the RV/MH Hall of Fame. That stands for Recreation Vehicles and Manufactured Housing.
And you can find the Herzog family in there. Sort of.
Mostly, you could find us romping around the two exhibition halls dedicated to the RVs of yesteryear. A 1913 “Earl” Travel Trailer, the oldest one in the world. A 1916 Telescoping Apartment, originally sold for $100. A 1928 Pierce Arrow Fleet Housecar. A 1931 Mae West Housecar. A 1935 Bowlus Road Chief. A 1954 Shasta Travel Trailer. A 1958 Airstream – “The Little Prince” – that was the smallest one ever built. A 1967 Winnebago Motor Home, the first motorized RV built by the iconic Iowa company. A 1979 Starcraft Converted Van. Etc. Etc. Etc.
It is, essentially, a walking tour through the 100 years of RV history. But there’s also a nod to the current state of the industry, a Go RVing exhibition celebrating the advertising campaign’s role in the evolution of RVing. It includes a continuous screening of TV ads, interactive versions of print ads and a computer kiosk that allows visitors to search GoRVing.com. So naturally, I clicked on the “You Are Here” Family Travel Journal to find my family’s smiling faces. And I left it on the screen as we strolled through the rest of the museum. So you could say I’m a Hall of Famer in much the way my baseball hero Harold Baines is. His bat is in Cooperstown. My blog is in Elkhart. Same thing. Sort of.
Actually, there are photos of real inductees in the RV/MH Hall of Fame – men and women who have been integral to the industry over the past century. And we had the pleasure of being invited to a barbecue at one Hall of Famer’s house last night. B.J. Thompson has been a driving force in the PR and advertising efforts of the RV industry for decades. But yesterday, he drove the four of us – along with his lovely daughter, his son-in-law and his grandchildren – on a pontoon boat along the St. Joseph River.
So it was like visiting Cooperstown and then breaking bread with Johnny Bench. Again, sort of.
Thus we experienced the How and What and Who of the RV industry. But it was only while we were leaving the Hall of Fame that we received a reminder of Why. A family from New Jersey was walking out the door with us. They were about our age, their kids only slightly older than ours. They were driving their RV back from a month-long visit to Banff and Jasper and Glacier national parks. We traded insights and suggestions and bid each other safe travels – two families heading in different directions, but really sharing the same journey.
