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| Jordan Pond Trail, Acadia N.P., Maine |
Back in July, 2012, Callum and I left Greece after a couple of fun weeks with Liam & Amy and Ryan Carmody. Our destination? Bulgaria. Our new travel companions? My parents. And quite the adventure we had. If only we had a blog written back then, there would have been some stories to tell. Navigating the roads, the stress we put Dad under with right-hand driving, the language barrier, getting lost hiking in the mountains, or pulled over by the police, it all added to the excitement.
Fast forward four years. Callum and I had been away for over two years (of course, omitting the unplanned little foray home to have his foot reconstructed), and Mum and Dad informed us they were taking the plunge again. A few days in British Columbia and a week's cruise in Alaska, then the fun game of "where will Callum and Nicole take us this time?" Surely, surely, they must have thought, given we were living and working in North America, it couldn't possibly be any more random or out of the way than Bulgaria, right?
I wouldn't say it's on your typical American road-trip, but given we'd already covered a lot of ground in other parts of the country in previous trips, we informed them we were off to New England. To the land of patriots and firey autumn colours and clam chowder and the Cape. Where the American battle for Independence was born, and realised. Where people spoke a language we could understand, and Callum and I would be taking on the driving duties. And so, packed to the eyeballs in our ever-faithful Rodge the Dodge, we set off from JFK in New York City, the experience of dodging tortoises and horse-and-carts in Bulgaria just a distant memory to Mum and Dad. Or so we thought.
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| Rodge with a fancy new hat |
It's no secret that where we Hadlows go, adventure, or perhaps the word is misadventure, just seems to follow. It took about two hours, a record I'm sure, for us to lose Dad for the first time that day. Yes, I'll give him two concessions: NYC is a big city, and it has a lot of people. But how on earth can you lose someone on the Brooklyn Bridge, when all you can do is walk in a straight line? But when we finally spotted him through the crowds, smiling back at us under his St. Kilda cap, he didn't seem to have a worry in the world. He knew where we were, he explained. Twelve hours later, at one o'clock in the morning in Times Square when he really was lost for about 40 minutes, he admitted the worry had started to set in. Particularly because he didn't have his phone on him and he had absolutely no idea where our accommodation was. So we were, or at least one of us was, still getting lost. Bulgaria, here we go again.
And so, you'd think that by 1am, the excitement for the day would be over. But you're forgetting, this is the Hadlows we're talking about. Callum and I knew that subway trains late at night are few and far between but one of us wasn't quite prepared for the wait. After quite a few beverages (including, on a side note, a few catching up with Peter and Mark Roethisberger, which was great to see them both!) and with no bathrooms in sight, Dad made the smart decision to disappear down the end of the platform clearly marked "Do Not Enter." Mum and I couldn't watch. He was going to be arrested, I was certain of it. And sure enough, no sooner had Mum and I started to panic, down the stairs came two of the biggest, burliest, armed security guards (at least, that's how Dad recalls it), asking the question, "Where is he?" We feigned indifference, we didn't know the man, but Dad popped back out, a sheepish look on his face, his explanation simply, "Sorry, I just had to," managing to get away with it. I don't know how, ask him I guess.
And this was only day one, I remind you. Actually, scrub that, it hadn't even been a day yet! So add a run-in with authority, not unlike like the time Dad managed to shrug and bumble his way through questioning by the Bulgarian police, and it was like we'd never left. (Admittedly, it seemed to be a routine traffic stop by the Bulgarian police, but with the language barrier, we'll never know).
Speaking of the language barrier, there was much relief all around that menus and signs would be in English. But given Australians, in general, talk a pretty unique form of English, and Dad's hearing is mediocre at best, communication wasn't alway smooth sailing. Our jovial waiter at a brewery in Middlebury, Vermont, gave us a recommendation to a winery down the road, told us to tell them that 'A.D. from Otter Creek' had sent us. Dad, much to the amusement of all involved, was delighted to make the aquaintance of his new friend, 'Otto the Greek'! This continued in a similar vein throughout the trip, with either Dad or whoever he was talking looking at me for a translation. So the language barrier persisted!
Sampling a few of Vermont's finest!
We'd been warned about the impatience of drivers in Boston by our friends, Ale and Kenda, when we visited them and their parents at their beach house in Centerville, Cape Cod. Sure enough, the very next day, I took the wheel after a long day of pounding the pavement, taking in the sights of Boston. It didn't take long for another driver, a lady I might add, to speed around me, the impatient cry of "Don't drive here!" echoing in my ears until I managed to get us, white-knuckled, out of the city. Dad, to his credit, had all sorts of choice words planned had we ever encountered her, or anyone else of that nature, again. Fortunately, for them (and my sanity!), it never came. I must say, Dad seemed to handle the right-hand driving in Bulgaria, with all it's stressors, better than I did in downtown Boston!
Dad managed to develop some pretty impressive blisters after a pretty mellow 5km hike to Franconia Falls in the White Mountains, New Hampshire. He bowed out from continuing downhill from the viewpoint at Bubble Rock in Acadia National Park, Maine, a few days later. It wasn't quite as strenuous as the hike we took them both on through the Rila Mountains in Bulgaria (where we got very, very lost, and had to trek our way out through the forest following a 'marked trail' that hadn't been hiked in what seemed like years), but the downhill section was very steep and quite challenging. We overheard a man hiking with his own mother say you wouldn't hike down the way we were going, but my mum, to her credit, pressed on and we all made it to the bottom for a further few k's around Jordan Pond.
Franconia Falls
Mum and Dad opted out from further hiking with us from then on, and that was probably wise. The premier hike of Acadia, and possibly the most technical hike we have done in the US National Park system, is the Precipice. It involves scaling a sheer rock face using hooks and ladders - the closest thing to rock climbing without needing safety apparatus. It was a pretty grueling trip up, but well worth the views looking out over Frenchman Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Other hikes worth doing are the Beehive (basically the Precipice's little brother, so not quite as strenuous but still hooks and ladders required) which gets you up looking over Sand Beach, Acadia Mountain with it's views into the Somes Sound, and the Ocean Path where you take in Sand Beach, Thunder Hole and Otter Cliffs. Add in a few hours at Echo Lake Beach and you'll fill a few days easily! Acadia was well-worth the trip and up there in our list of favourite Parks.
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| Precipice Trail |
The Beehive Trail and Acadia Mountain Trail
Our roadtrip took us through New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, with stops, many already mentioned earlier, along the way in New York City, Cape Cod, Boston, the Berkshires, the White and Green Mountains, and Acadia National Park. Dad got to satisfy his interest in the War of Independence with stops at the site of the Battle of the Minutemen, and a walk through Boston along the Freedom Trail. Mum took photos until her phone literally ran out of battery (her disgust at the battery life of her phone was a regular topic of conversation). We had Mum and Dad camping and hiking, eating meals out of a can, staying in questionable accommodations, and generally living the way we had become accustomed. We caught up with family, visited old friends and made new ones (including 'Otto the Greek', of course). And we reminisced, and laughed, about all the memories from when we had travelled together before.
The covered bridges of Vermont, the Bennington Battle Monument and the White Mountains
Now we have stories to rival, and perhaps top, those we have from our time in Bulgaria. Really, when you think about it, it was like we (mainly Dad) never left!
