Family Visits in CT & DE

October 23 – November 4

After a few days of delays to wait out some rainy weather, we left Vermont mid-week and drove to Connecticut to visit family on our way south. We didn’t leave until around 5 pm when Tim was done work, and after a stop for gas and another quick stop for dinner at a rest area, it was close to 10:30 by the time we got there. Normally we would never drive that far on a workday, but since we’ve done this drive approximately 1 million times over the years, we decided to go for it. Also, our parking spot for the next few days was to be the side of the driveway into Tim’s mom condo so we knew it would be an easy arrival even in the dark.

The Connecticut visit was a short one this time. We only stayed a few days and unfortunately only got to see some of the family we intended to visit. But it was great to see Carol, who continues to improve after her long health battle over the past year. Aside from work during the day and enjoying our favorite New Haven style pizza, we also took some time to put together a box of things for storage in Carol’s basement.

Although we try our best to follow the “one in, one out” rule, things tend to pile up over time and we had gotten to the point where nearly every cabinet and drawer were stuffed full. Earlier this summer we both donated a bunch of clothes and I recently did a purge of kitchen items. But donating our stuff only got as so far as we had acquired some things over the years that we wanted to save but didn’t need to keep with us. Things like a (small) bag of rocks I collected from different states, a few paintings from local artists, and the large orbital polisher that we used on the Airstream. After a few hours of sorting, we filled one large plastic tote with items to save, threw out some junk that wasn’t worth saving or donating, and ended up with a lot of half-empty cabinets.

On Saturday we said goodbye to Connecticut and headed south to Delaware. It was a long, yet uneventful, drive across the bridge to NY and down the Jersey Turnpike. We’ve done this drive a few times before with the Airstream in tow and despite the ever-present traffic, it’s not too difficult.

Our destination was Lums Pond State Park. We always stay here when visiting Delaware because it’s only 30 minutes from Tim’s sister’s house. It’s also a nice park with generously sized sites, full utility hookups, and a network of trails for hiking and biking.

That last part we didn’t really take advantage of because we spent all of our non-working time hanging out with family. Which was not a hardship with these three!

We had them over to the campground two evenings for dinner and a campfire, went to their house a bunch for dinner, hang out time, and pumpkin carving. We also got to see the last few minutes of swim practice and a soccer game. Oh, and we went trick-or-treating with them, although I neglected to take a single photo of the baby shark, unicorn, and robot.

It was a really great visit and, as always, saying goodbye to everyone was sad. But we’re both itching to head west and with cold nights (and days) now the norm instead of the exception, it is time to go south!