Our trip out to Maine included all of the private campgrounds and hiking and national park stamps we could find on the way...our way home was filled with friends and family time! We left Maine on Monday morning and our first stop on the trip home took us to Rhode Island. Talk about a state I never thought we'd check off our camper map! But, earlier this spring Ryan found out that his college friend Brownie and his family were moving to Rhode Island this summer from California. They are a military family so they are often on the move. We visited them last summer in Cali for Brown's promotion ceremony and now just a quick year later we planned to visit them on our return trip.
I did a terrible job - I didn't get a SINGLE photo of our time with the Browns. What a miss! We so rarely see these families...I'm so bummed. We did have a nice evening with the Browns though. We arrived around 3pm and hung out for the evening. The kids played nicely and I know Abby and Hazel were super excited to have a new set of toys to play with after over a week of living out of the camper. They were excited to have a basement to play in (and us adults were happy for the separation of space and noise - lol!).
Being a weekday, the Browns were in the middle of kid activities and trying to get school kicked off (they are homeschooling this year) so we didn't stick around for too long on Tuesday morning. We grabbed breakfast and hit the road around 8:15 the next morning so it was very much a quick trip in Rhode Island. We didn't get to explore much, but we had a great time catching up with the Browns.
Tuesday took us from Rhode Island to New York where we stayed with my friend Lindsay and her sister, Sarah, at their lake houses. The drive was right in our sweet spot - 5 to 6 hours. Lindsay was working (darn us vacationers messing up the work week) and Sarah was coming from their home in New Jersey so we ended up having some time to spare on our drive that day so we stopped at a brewery for lunch along the way. Turns out breweries that are open on a Tuesday are hard to come by in New York - I could only fine ONE that was open for lunch that day, but it was great. They had good beers, great wings, really great fries and it was nice to sit down and eat lunch. For the majority of the trip we'd eat breakfast in the camper (or the girls would eat in the car while we drove) and then we'd make lunches in the camper when we stopped for gas. Abby being gluten free has really helped us say "no" to fast food stops, saving us money and helping us make better food choices. Unintended (but good!) consequences for sure!
We spent Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday hanging out with Sarah and Lindsay making crafts and letting the kids be kids! It was cool and rainy - which honestly was welcome after so many hot, humid days on the trip. So the kids stayed inside most of the day. Us adults caught up on life, shared stories and laughs, made cocktails in the afternoon and mostly just supervised a massive craft haul.
We also got to meet Nanny Amy - Lindsay's summer nanny for the last three years. She was great with the kids and was so sweet and fun to talk to. She even gave Abby a cool new hairstyle.
We left New York on Thursday morning and continued our trek back toward the home front. We made it all the way to the east side of Cleveland Thursday afternoon where we explored lake Erie for a few hours. A huge storm blew through a few days earlier and had knocked out the power in the entire town until a few hours before we arrived. We were bummed to find the brewery we planned for dinner was closed but the kids were all too happy to just play at a little beach we found and eat Smashburger Tacos right at our campsite.
We so often find ourselves traveling in a big herd of people, with friends and family in tow for these vacations, it was so strange to be by ourselves for the last part of the trip. We traveled home solo for the last 4 days and while we sure missed being with everyone, we really loved being just our small family too. We could pivot plans on a dime, move quickly once we had a plan and really enjoyed hanging out with the kids in a more focused way. Thursday evening we planned ladder ball and threw the football with the kids (Ryan decided he wants to teach us all how to throw...me included - LOL!).
It's funny - we drove all the way to the east coast - all the way to Maine and it wasn't until we were sitting on a tiny little beach at Lake Erie that I felt like we were actually at the ocean. Of course, we weren't...but it sure felt like it.
A standard deep lunge picture because we wanted Erin to know we missed her lots on this trip! (The kids even joined in on the lunge).
All in all, here's my quick recap:
- We drove a lot (see the photo below for our trip total).
- We figured out that we prefer driving for about 5-6 hours per day - 350 miles doesn't seem like a chore and we still have time to explore when we arrive at our destination for the night.
- We love a road trip - but we can't do them every year - we need to every other, or every three years them....
- The kids are really good kids - they get drug along to a lot of places they wouldn't pick and they are good sports.
- We love a destination - something to do when we get to a place...a hike, a swim, a lake...hell, even a brewery!
- These long road trips aren't REALLY camping. Sure, we sleep in the camper, but we're really tourists...doing tourist things. Not usually just sitting around a campsite during the day.
- We love games - we played games almost every night.
- We liked Maine but it felt like Wisconsin...and we can get to the north woods in 6 hours. We didn't need to drive 20+ hours to get there.
- We want to visit Vermont again - I wished we'd had another day there!
- Lake Oquaga (Lindsay's lake) was beautiful! We could live in that area of the world...hilly and full of trees. It was one of our favorite areas to drive through.
- There are lots of strange names on the east coast that we can't pronounce. LOL!
- I love lobster - hot or cold. Ryan, not so much!
If you've read this far, you might be wondering "so where are you guys going next!?!" and the answer is, we don't know! We have a Ritterbusch family trip planned to the Florida panhandle area next year (which we'll fly to) and a wedding in Mexico next spring...but outside of that, we don't have our next big family trip planned. 2026 will be a Ritterbusch family reunion year and that might send us on another big road trip but the location and date haven't been set yet! We've been causually talking about the Ozarks area, or maybe doing Isle Royal next...but we don't have anything in the works just yet!
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