For those of us who don’t live in New York, whenever we hear “New York” we might automatically think of New York City, tall buildings, Broadway, crowds of people, subways, etc. The state of New York is so much more than that! There are mountains, vast acres of farmland, small towns, vineyards, and, of course, access to one of Canada’s Seven Wonders—Niagara Falls (subject of a later blog to be written).

What a glorious 12 days we had in the beautiful state of New Hampshire. Highlights include bike riding along the beach, ice cream, Rummy, Uno, paint by numbers, puzzles, laundry, mystery, fantasy, chocolate, shopping, dogs, heat, humidity, and fun, fun, fun with friends!

We stayed in Pennsylvania for 11 nights. Amid this COVID-19 pandemic, the Hershey amusement park was closed, as were museums and national parks. Restaurants were still doing curbside pickup, and some were starting to offer outside dining. With the regular “tourist” places closed, we took the time to have some down time, to visit some old friends, and to check out the local area.

We arrived in Pennsylvania on Friday, May 29, 2020. As if pulling our Airstream on a busy highway isn’t terrifying enough, we transcended that by “deserting” our pull-behind home at a truck stop for a few hours to make a detour to the Flight 93 Memorial in Stoystown, PA.

During our first week of full-time travel, we made three stops as we drove toward Pennsylvania. The first was in Stuart, Virginia to visit friends. The second was outside of Lynchburg for a couple of nights. And the third was an overnight trip to Harrisonburg, Virginia to say hello to a friend. These stops were designed to keep our “moving” days relatively short (versus a long 8-10 hour driving day pulling an RV).

My friend Sharon is one of the loveliest, funniest people I have the privilege of knowing. We met in 1996 when a mutual friend introduced us as Sharon was starting up a company. She hired me as her Office Manager (her first hire), and I accompanied her the day she signed the lease on her first office space. Those early days, helping her establish this new company, are some of my fondest from the “corporate” world. I left at the beginning of 1998 as her company was beginning to zoom into the stratosphere of success, and we stayed in contact and saw each other over the years. She eventually sold her company and moved back to Virginia to be close to her family, and I have visited her a few times since. It was a delight to be able to stop in with our Airstream so she could see our new “home” and catch up with each other’s lives.