Launch of the Beaver Lodge

The Parachuting Beaver road trip has begun!!

We are having a bit of a kickoff party weekend with our friends, Kristine, Matt, Dan and Becky, in Hamburg PA. We planned to go to the Reading Museum, play lots of boardgames, say bye to Urdnot (Mike's pet/rescue Iguana), take our last showers in a proper shower and cook in a proper kitchen. We did all of the above.

When we left, our first official stop of the trip was the Delaware Water Gap. Really enjoyed a short walk to Dingman and Silver Thread Falls.

This walk is a must-do if you come to this park because it is an easy one along boardwalks. It also has an amazing microclimate that exists because of the rivers, cascading water and pine trees.

You can climb to the top of the falls and look down if you want. It's really a nice walk around but you have to be careful going up there because there's not a lot of safety things in place to keep you from falling in.

Too bad it was fairly late; we just got through the park and basically decided to stop on the other side in Milford. This is a nice little town at the top of the Delaware Water Gap. It's near the New York border but not quite across. We decided to sleep on a residential street! A little nerve-wracking, but it all worked-out. I have to confess it wasn't exactly the first night I had pictured.... RVing outside an antique store...but we were able to celebrate at the local inn with some local brews. Cheers to the trip!

In the morning we needed to stop at Walmart before we got on the road. We also realized that the kettle and the microwave pull the same amount of wattage as the inverter so we can't use them... Of course I was devastated because it meant I couldn't make breakfast! Hopefully you know that that would be a really bad thing. Luckily we do also have propane, so we used that on the stove to boil water for breakfast. On another note, I'm also not sure that Mike thought that Ramen was going to be our first meal in the van.

So from the photo above you can see that we went through New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. We made a lovely stop at a Rhode Island state park along the ocean.

Fort Wetherill is a former coast artillery fort that occupies the southern portion of the eastern tip of Conanicut Island, Rhode Island. The fort sits atop high granite cliffs, overlooking the entrance to Narragansett Bay.

Fort Dumpling, dating from the American Revolutionary War, used to occupy a small site until it was built over by Fort Wetherill. The fort was deactivated and turned over to the State of Rhode Island after World War II and is now operated as Fort Wetherill State Park, a 51-acre (210,000 m2) reservation.

Now the majority of the park seems to be dedicated to fishing, crabbing and recreation. The building on the left is a Rhode Island fisheries building and you can see the crab pots along the side.

After this, Mike had the idea that we might wanna go and see Plymouth Rock. It's an area that I had never been to but he had. What an amazing idea! You can see Plymouth rock above which I have to say was a bit underwhelming. The good thing is that the town was anything but.

We walked out on a quarter-mile pier of rocks to see the ocean. Looked at all of the lobster statues in town and just had a good time writing and relaxing in the van.

Just to be clear, this is our view for the insane cost of $1.00. I really love this town! We'll check back for our trip to the Cape and Boston tomorrow!!