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Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts

In comparison with our adventures during the first week, it seems as if the second week past by without any highlight.
While traveling we are accustomed to undergo many new experiences but this week seemed to be a real quiet one, like a holiday should be sometimes.
As a rule we have travelled an average of 200 miles per day in such a way that we arrived at our next destinations between one and three p.m.
From Lake Placid we drove through Vermont and New Hampshire to Maine and later to Massachusetts.
The autumn colors were at its best in Vermont and New Hampshire and while driving narrow roads, it sometimes looked like as if we were driving through a kaleidoscope as the colors altered constantly.
In New Hampshire we stayed overnight in Twin Mountain, a small town situated in the White Mountains and from there we headed for Bar Harbor, a town on Desert Mountain Island. This island is connected to the main land by a bridge and is situated in the far North-East of the USA in the State of Maine. Here is the Acadia National Park, one of the first national parks of America.
Bar Harbor is a fanciful little town located along a natural bay where two cruise ships were anchored during our visit. For that reason the main street was extremely busy with passengers but we were able to find us a good restaurant where we had the famous Maine lobster.
We made a trip through the park by bus. A strong Northern wind made the day freezing cold and for that reason we have seen most of the park from the bus. Unfortunately, it seemed that at sea level, Autumn start a few weeks later than in the higher-level States, reason why the park appeared to be mainly green.
After three days in Bar Harbor we headed in a Southern direction, and after a night in Freeport, Maine, we were on our way to Cape Cod in Massachusetts. When we passed the city of Boston, we decided to search for a campsite in the vicinity and to take a day to visit Boston. We found us a site in Middleboro and on Monday morning we took a train to Boston where we have been walking for hours along the historic monuments.
The weather has been good for the time of the year, sunny, little rain and reasonable temperatures.
We are aware that the report of this week is not as spectacular as the reports of the trip that we have made earlier this year but we are enjoying every quiet minute, because we know that during the coming months we can expect a lot of excitement in South America and South Africa.

A miserable start!

On 12. September, we left Bonaire for the continuation of the world trip that we started in Amsterdam in January 2009. In April we took a flight home from Newark to enjoy doing nothing for a few months. Unfortunately, we received a message from Continental Airlines that they had cancelled our direct flight to Newark on 13. September and that we had been rebooked on a flight via Houston that would leave one day earlier . It took us eleven hours to reach Newark instead of four and we also had an extra day in a hotel because we could not pick up our rental RV before Monday. On Sunday, it was found that our laptop had been infected by viruses and as a result of that mishap we spent the whole Monday at a specialist who formatted the hard disk and lost all of the data. Fortunately, Jan had a backup copy of the most important files but we could not retrieve the e-mail addresses. Luckily Peter had an old file of which we retrieved 90% of the addresses and with the help of Pat & Ren & Lorraine we have found another five percent. After we had picked up the recreational vehicle, we started at eight o’clock in the evening from Newark, New Jersey to Newburgh NY. The RV is more than 30 feet in length, has two slide outs and a bedroom with a queen size bed and is equipped with a flat screen TV and microwave. Room enough for the two of us!
With the help of the GPS that we had purchased, we drove the busy roads near New York into the direction of Newburgh, where we arrived at 10 p.m. Our ultimate goal is to enjoy the autumn colors in New England and therefore we proceeded up North. After taking petrol, we unfortunately touched a little pole with the right back cornor of the RV. What we expected to be a small scratch, appeared to be a considerable damage! The back Panel had been partly torn off from the side as can been seen on the photograph. After a phone call to roadside assistance, we were asked to return to Newark, where the damage had been repaired temporarely within two hours. So after two days we were back at the starting point and as it had become four p.m. we decided to move into the direction of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania where we arrived after sunset. The evenings and nights are cool so we tried to switch on the heating system. That was our third setback because neither the airco nor heating was operational. We called for assistance, but found out that there wasn’t a repair shop in the neighborhood. The next morning we found out that all the misery was not over yet , while we were having breakfast the battery of the engine exploded with a huge bang! We had a replacement within a few hours so we could continue our trip without further delay.
El Monte permitted us to buy a heater and after a stop in Franklin, NY, we arrived on Saturday afternoon in Lake Placid, New York in the Adirondack Mountains. Lake Placid is known by the Winter Olympics that were held in 1980 and when Eric Heiden took all gold medals and left the Dutch speed skaters empty handed. The Adirondacks are situated in a park the size of the Netherlands and used to be inhabited by the Algonquian and Mohawk Indians. In the language of the Mohawks Adirondack means " they eat trees" because in times of famine the Algonquians ate the bark of the trees. We liked the campsite and because the weather was clear and warm, we decided to stay a for few days. We have walked some trails and discovered a fall that we named “The End of Our Misery”! This report has been made at the picnic table while sitting in the sun. We expect the heating to be repaired in Bar Harbor in Maine, but it would not be a disaster to use the electrical heater until the end of the trip. We have made two world trips without a single problem, so we could expect something to go wrong. So far we have survived this week with a smile but hope that everything will be going as expected from now on.

On September 12th we will depart from Bonaire after a five months stay at home to resume our world trip.
From that moment we will have 115 days, 15 flights and 78.000 kilometres to go until we will be back home.



We had a wonderful time on Bonaire. Early July our grandchildren Kyle and Heather had a three week vacation on Bonaire and we travelled with them to Holland to cellebrate the 93rd birthday of Jan's mother.


Back home we started planning our trip. That took us many nights but with the help of the Internet we came to an itinerary that can be seen on the left under "Our Itinerary".



The trip is devide in four parts:

We will make a round trip with a 31-feet RV through New England and perhaps a part of Canada to enjoy the Autumn colours.
Furthermore we will be in NYC to attend the wedding of Farrah, the daughter of our Bangladeshi friends, with Jordan.

Second Part:

Subsequently we will fly to Buenos Aires in Argentina for a tour of four weeks. We will concentrate on Patagonia, the rough and cold part of the country but will also drive through the wine region in the warm Northern part, whereafter we will stay for four nights in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Third Part

From Argentina we will fly to Cape Town. In South Africa we will drive to Johannesburg. During this thrip we will visit several game parks and Lesotho and Swaziland.

Op December 3rd we will fly to Amsterdam to see the family once more. Here we will celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. We look forward to be in Holland during Christmas but on December 29th we will return to Bonaire, in time to celebrate New Year's Eve.