As Dani was receiving her Masters degree now and participating in her commencement ceremony, her parents came to see her and they invited us to go on a trip around the west coast in an RV. For those of you who don't know, an RV (which stands for Recreational Vehicle) a.k.a. motorhome, is a big car (almost a bus) where you have an almost full house inside with kitchen, bedrooms, and a bathroom. It was an awesome way of going around, as you are able to go around just like if you were on a car, but much more comfortable. I will give a small daily summary (with pictures of course) of what we did on each of the amazing 9 days we spent on this trip. To start, here is a map with the whole trip:
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Day 1 (May 13th):
We didn't do much on our first day as we basically had to travel all the way to Long Island to get the RV, which they only give it to you around midday, and then drive all the way back to Manhattan to put our stuff inside. That meant that we were not leaving before 5:00 pm, and thus we were not able to get very far. Our first camp ground was on the Delaware Water Gap, a huge natural reservoir close to Stroudsburg, PA. These camps have everything you need, from bathrooms and supermarket to full hookup for the RV (meaning electricity, water, and sewerage), so you just park your car and you are ready for anything. In this case anything meant just sleep, as we were really tired after all the work and the trip.
Day 2 (May 14th):
Now that we were a little bit more rested, we woke up early-ish, as we had quite a long road ahead as we wanted to get to Allegheny National Forest which is literally at the other side of PA. Here is my view after I woke up that morning.
After getting all our things ready (and taken a quite large amount of pictures, specially macro ones) we set off on our trip, leaving this first camp site behind.
Our lunch stop was not very far away, as we took it quite slowly. We stopped near Dingmans Ferry, on the northern part of the Delaware Water Gap. The place was very nice, and although the visitors office was closed, we were still able to hike (actually just walk) a little trail up to the Dingmans Waterfalls. The day was gorgeous and we found quite a large amount of insects on our way to the falls, so it was an excellent opportunity to try out the macro extension tubes. I must say it was quite hard to focus as the tubes make the depth of field quite shallow, and is specially hard if your subject is a hysterical caterpillar who apparently had just drank an espresso by how fast and erratically it was crawling around. From a bunch of photos I took I was able to get a couple on focus, but it was worth the try. I think...
But not only insects were a good catch that day. We were quite lucky as apparently it had been raining during the night, so most of the plants and trees still had some drops of water around, giving another great opportunity for using the macro.
After this it was basically just a long drive to the Allegheny National Forest, to which we arrived very late, to camp site a few miles to the south west of Bradford, PA. The camp was managed by a retired couple who were the nicest people on earth. They actually waited for us to arrive (quite after the closing hours) so we could find our way inside the camp and park the RV without any difficulties.
It was so late that after a couple of long time exposures like this one I just went to bed.
Day 3 (May 15th):
We woke up relatively early-sh and decided to walk around the park a little, before heading to our next destination.
As you can see we were very lucky as the forest was really green and the light was very good. Plus, as it had been very humid lately there were tons of mushrooms which I learned are excellent subjects for using the macro (mainly because they don't move, not even with strong wind which tends to make flowers move all over the place and hence make the focusing a living nightmare).
Our lunch break was relatively close by, at the Allegheny Reservoir, a lake created by a dam that was a few miles away from the camping site. Again we were really lucky by the weather as we had an amazing blue sky with patches of clouds here and there that gave us some awesome views.
The mid-day sun though was a little bit too strong so some of the views had an extremely large range of light values to be able to get them all in a single photo. But with some exposure bracketing and blending those images together you could achieve some nice landscape photos, like this one.
After driving around the area we finally arrived to our new camp site, which was a few miles south of Erie, PA. It was a huge camping site with a lot of people and many activities specially for children. It even had a small artificial lake inside, where you could rent a little boat to go around and you can see in this picture.
Day 4 (May 16th):
We were so close to Erie that we decided to go and visit it, and specially visit the Pesque Isle State Park, which is a small peninsula that goes out into Lake Erie, and that is had ponds, loads of wildlife, and even sandy beaches.
As you can see here, there were even some floating houses in the inner ponds of the Isle, like these ones in Horseshoe Pond.
In one of the ends of the Isle there was also a very nice lighthouse, that together with the cracked pier and the blue sky made an incredible view.
There was also a lot of people fishing (and resting like in this picture), although you don't see many of them.
Our next stop in the tour was Pittsburgh, PA, which meant a long drive south. Once we got there we just parked the RV near Carnegie Mellon University and started walking around the place.
Regretfully everything was closed as it was the day of the commencement ceremony, so there was not much to see, neither at CMU nor at U. of Pittsburgh. But they both have a very nice campus so we spent a lot of time walking around. On top you see what I think is a track for some of those robot races they have at CMU, while at the bottom you see one cool statue they have at CMU next to the Miller Gallery.
After that we kept our south bearing and drove all the way to Washington PA, a small town in the south west corner of PA, as out next camp site was a couple of minutes away from it. The camping site was much smaller than the previous ones, and as the Interstate 79 passed right next to it, it was quite noisy.
Day 5 (May 17th):
In part thanks to the trucks and buses going by the nearby highway, we woke up really early and ready to leave. Regretfully it was raining a lot, plus there was an outlet mall just next to Washington, so we spent the morning there.
The objective was to get to a camp site right after the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, at that meant leaving the main highway and crossing part of West Virginia through secondary roads. The wonderful thing about this is that you end up going through really small towns and villages that are build around the road, which in general consisted on two or three houses, a church, and a supermarket. Very similar to some of the small towns you can find in the south of Chile.
We first crossed the Monongahela National Forest, which is in West Virginia, but the last part of the road was ascending the whole time. As it was really cloudy (and the clouds were kind of low) that only meant that at some point we were going to get stuck in a really dense fog, which happened just as we crossed the border between West Virginia and Virginia.
After that it was basically all downhill (literally), but the farm type houses and green meadows were still there.
The next big city we visited was Monterrey (VA not Mexico), which is a small town in between the Monongahela and the George Washington National Forests.
After that we crossed the George Washington National Forest, and we finally arrived to our camp site, which was a few miles south of Stauton, VA.
Day 6 (May 18th):
The camping site was one of the best we had visited, as it had a very good infrastructure and it was not as full as the others we had visited, so we decided to stay there for an additional night. But was we are in "visiting mode" we were not going to just stay there for a whole day of course! There were many things to visit around the area so we woke up early to be able to visit many of them.
The first thing was the Natural Bridge National Park, which is a small piece of the George Washington Forest (on its southern tip) that had, as it's name indicates, a natural bridge. The story tells that the Monacan Tribe, which lived in that part of VA, were able to flee from their pursuers (the Powhatans) thanks to this bridge that appeared out of nowhere when they had lost all hopes. So, it was a sacred place for them.
Legend also told that George Washington visited this place while he worked as a surveyor, and that the initials G.W. that are carved there were done by him. Below you see a view of Cedar Creek, the small tributary that passes below the bridge.
Apart from that, in this place they also have a couple of museums and a full recreation of a native village. Additionally, a couple of miles back there is a set of caves (also included when you purchase your ticket), which are quite nice. The place was really empty so we had almost everything for ourselves, including the caves, which had some bats here and there.
After that we just went back to the camp site to rest and go to bed early as we had a lot of things to do the next day.
Day 7 (May 19th):
We started really early today as there was a long trip ahead of us, plus we wanted to go through a secondary road that crossed the Shenandoah National Park instead of just taking the highway. For that we needed to drive up to Waynesboro and then head north to the park entrance.
The park is extremely beautiful and they have created a special highway called Skyline Drive, which crosses the park through its long side, going up to the highest peak of the park and hence giving amazing views of the surrounding valleys.
An additional attraction was the Appalachian Trail crosses the park and Dani was eager to hike at least a small portion of this mythical trail. For those of you who don't know what this is, the Appalachian Trail is a hiking trail that is 3,500 km. long and that goes from Maine all the way down to Georgia. As we clearly will (regretfully) not have the time to do the whole trail, Dani wanted at least to hike a small portion of it.
So we hiked for a couple of hours while Dani's parents went on with the RV to where we would come out of the trail, and thankfully they were waiting for us with cold sodas and a nice lunch.
Here a couple of views of things along the trail, like this massive spider web on top, which surely had quite a large number of spiders inside, although we didn't stopped to check :D. The other photo is of part of the trail, when we got visited by a slightly dense fog. There are more pictures of the trail in the Web Album which I link at the end of this post.
After the much needed lunch and rest, we headed north through Skyline Drive until the exit to Luray. Luray is a small town in between the Shenandoah and George Washington National Parks, and that is famous for a set of caverns they have open to the public. As we had already visited a set of caverns before we didn't expect something radically different, but this cave was really wonderful. They have illuminated the cave is such a way that everything looked gorgeous, so I spent my whole time there taking pictures in every direction. This first picture shows the Mirror Lake, a very large underwater lake of crystal clear water, which was flowing so softly that its surface allowed a perfect reflection of the cave's ceiling.
The rest of the cave was equally beautiful, containing all the possible geological structures you can imagine. Additionally, at the entrance, they give you an audio tour that explains every single one of these structures so you come out with tons of new information. The whole tour takes like an hour and a half so be ready to walk and stand for quite some time.
These are just a couple of the pictures I took inside, and you can find the rest of them in the Web Album at the end. Apart from being one of the largest (and most visited) set of caves in the US, they also have the largest musical instrument in the world: a Stalactite Organ. (just in case, stalactites are the ones that hang from the ceiling and stalagmites are the ones that grow from the floor upwards). Basically the organ has connected to each key a solenoid that hits a stalactite that makes the corresponding sound. To make it must have been quite a task as you had to go around the cave with a tuning fork hitting different stalactites until you found one that resonated at the required frequency. They even do a demonstration of the organ and they play one short song that bounces all over the cave.
Outside the caves there is also a museum, this time it was am automobile and carriage museum that had some of the first carriages and cars in the US.
Finally, after all the walking and looking we set our course to or next destination, a nice campground near Hagerstown in Maryland. Again we were lucky with the weather as the sunset was great and next to the camp there is a small river (a tributary of the famous Potomac) where we found a floating pier that gave us a splendid view of the sunset and the moon after that (and also gave me several mosquito bites... but it was worth it).
Day 8 (May 20th):
The next day we started again early, and spent some time going around the camp site and in my case taking some pictures as usual. The camping site was really nice and well maintained, with nice gardens and a playground.
The objective of that day was to visit the Antietam National Battlefield, where one of the important fights of the American Civil War took place. The park is really well maintained, and at the entrance they give you a map with the explanation of what happened in every place, and then you can just go around in your car checking the different tour stops. Before leaving the information office I found this little fellow walking around. I tend to like spiders a lot, but specially these ones (the common jumping spiders).
Back to the battlefield. The place is enormous so you really need to go around in a car to visit it completely.
I don't know what this is, but it looks like a groundhog. The little fellow was sitting there like a statue while I kept on getting closer and closer for a better picture. As he didn't move the whole time I got to think that it was actually fake, but suddenly I got too close I guess and it started running really fast to one of the holes that were behind the fence.
Other sightings included ducks, geese, and deer like this one below.
The last stop of the tour was the Antietam National Cemetery where many of the soldiers that died on this battleground were buried.
Back on the road, we kept on going north, as our destination was in the middle of PA, so we needed to do a lot of driving.
But, on or way we stumbled into a new park called Catoctin Mountain Park, a very nice park with a lake called Hunting Creek Lake in the middle. So we left our course north and went to see that lake and rest a little bit.
The detour showed to be quite interesting, as the forest surrounding the lake was really beautiful and we were able to spend part of the sunset at the beach on the lake. The problem is that that meant that we were going to arrive quite late to our destination but I guess it was worth it.
Day 9 (May 21th):
This was our final day of travel, as the next day we needed to return the RV. The problem is that we needed to return it before 12:00, which meant that we needed to arrive really early to NYC, to be able to leave everything in our place and then drive all the way to long island to return it, so this last night needed to be quite close to NYC.
As the first camp site in which we stayed was close enough, we decided to go there and arrive early to enjoy a little bit of calmed time. So, after a couple of hours (and a small detour to a mall...) we ended up in the same camping site we started, at the Delaware Water Gap, and thus finishing this amazing trip.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.
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