How the seed got planted - 2009 Fall Foliage trip

While we were on a trip to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida to see another neurologist about my stroke, Consuelo and I talked about how we both loved road trips and learned that we're also both afraid of bears. After some discussion, we determined that a camper van might be a good way to get on the road and out to the parks and other campgrounds, to begin having some RV adventures.

So, when we got back from Jacksonville, we started looking for a suitable camper van - in RV lingo: a Class B motorhome. Consuelo finally found one listed on eBay and entered into a frenzied bidding war and won the bid. Then we had to drive to Parkersburg, West Virginia to pick it up.

As soon as we got the camper back to Tennessee, we started making weekend trips to State Parks in East Tennessee and we were having so much fun, we decided to do something bigger. So we started planning what we were soon calling the Fall Foliage Trip - the first of what I hope to be many RV adventures.

We left Tennessee the end of September 2009 and drove north, up through West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and then into Vermont. Of course, we had timed this so we would be seeing the best foliage colors. Vermont was stunning!

We then drove over to New Hampshire for a day and night in the White Mountains, an area where I spent many happy childhood summers camping with my family. Then, over to Maine where we discovered they were hard at work repairing what seemed like ALL the roads. We stayed the night in Scarborough, outside Portland on the coast of Maine and dined on the mandatory lobster (Consuelo had two!). We then drove back down to the lower part of New Hampshire to visit with friends and family in Goffstown and go to my family’s cemetery in Hooksett.

Next, we went down to Boston where Consuelo’s niece Robyn had just started school at Northeastern University. While in Bean town we also visited with my cousin James. After Boston we headed to Mystic, Connecticut Consuelo’s father's childhood hometown. After visiting the family cemetery, we found her father’s old home, a beautiful old farm house. After taking pictures like crazy tourists, we headed down to Katonah, New York to spend the evening with Cheryl-Anne, one of Consuelo’s childhood friends from Barbados. After visiting with Cheryl-Anne and her family, it was time to head home, stopping in Charlottesville, Virginia to look at Monticello and the very interesting Natural Bridge.

Readers are welcome to browse through our 2009 Fall Foliage album with photos and notes from our trip.

This trip was so much fun! And, we had caught the RV travel bug! It was within days that we started figuring out how we could hit the road for several months. This trip was the seed that sprouted into our Great RV Escape.