While we were in Vegas Jared's sisters invited me to come to Vermont to visit with
Ariane and her kids (whom I hadn't seen in almost 2 years). Ashley and
Anisha were flying out there for a week to meet our new niece Josie and they were so sweet to offer to bring me along. I thought that it was a great idea but I wished I could take my kids to Vermont with me so that they could spend some time with their cousins. That is when the idea of a road trip from Indiana to Vermont was born.
The day after we got home from Vegas I packed the kids into the car and headed off on our 14 hour road trip adventure across the the north eastern United States. We ended up driving through 5 states, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont. I have to say that this drive was beautiful. I also passed a lot of places I would have loved to stop if I was not alone with 3 kids. Some of these places include
Kirtland, OH, Niagara Falls, and Palmyra, NY. One day I think it would be fun to take this trip again when I have the means to stop at all these places.
About 11 hours into our trip our directions took us off the main highway and into the Adirondack mountains of New York. I thought that it was weird that google maps had me take this route but I am so glad that it did. The Adirondack mountains are absolutely beautiful. They are very green and full of lakes and rivers. I didn't take the picture above but it is just a small example of what I got to drive through for about 3 hours (and honestly I don't think any picture could really do justice to the how beautiful these mountains really were). One day when the kids are older i would love to vacation here.
13.5 hours into our trip we arrived at the ferry dock pictured below. It was 9 pm and we were pretty much a ferry ride away from our destination and that is when we ran into one bog problem.
I never planned on having to take a ferry to get to Vermont, but I didn't read the directions well before I left and that is exactly what I ended up having to do. Taking a ferry wasn't really the problem though. If you enlarge the above picture you will see that the ferry closed at 8:30pm, and as I mentioned about I got there at 9:00pm. I started to panic, what was I going to do with 3 little kids in some obscure little town in New York while we waited for the ferry to open the next morning. I started driving down the main road looking for a place to stay the night but there was nothing to be found. Just as I was about to start crying
Ariane calls and saves the day by telling she located another ferry that was 24 hours that was about 45 minutes away. So about 2 hours and one ferry ride later we finally made it to
Ariane's house.
The drive home went really smoothly because Jared had me buy a GPS after my run in with the closed ferry.
Now I am sure that you all are thinking that I must have been out of my mind to make such a long road trip with 3 kids under 5 but I had to give it a try. And honestly the kids did beyond amazing (thanks in part to our portable DVD player). Would I do a 14 hour road trip with the kids again? Absolutely. Would I do it anytime in the super near future? Probably not.
Coming Soon: Part 3 Fun in Vermont
2 comments:
ah man,.. sorry you got lost,.. good thing ariane saved the day!
You're so brave to do that trip alone. It looks and sounds like it was beautiful, and an adventure. If you ever do something like that again (which would be so fun!) you should get a GPS. We've loved ours. She's always almost correct (yup, we've accepted her into our lives as a separate, human entity).
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