itshalfempty

Last week we finished a two week trip across the Eastern US. The main features of the trip for me were a couple nights car camping in Acadia and The Great Smoky Mountains. In order to get my wife on board, I had to plan a few city days in between.

• Drive to Washington DC & spend a day there
• Drive to Portland, Maine
• Spend half a day in Portland, then drive to Bangor
• Spend 2 days camping in Acadia
• Back to Bangor to sleep indoors and shower
• Drive to Philly
• Spend a day in Philly
• Drive to the Great Smoky Mountains, stopping in Pigeon Forge
• Spend 2 days camping in the Great Smoky Mountains
• Drive to the Ashville area to sleep indoors and shower
• Drive back home

There would be a lot of driving on this trip, but it was pretty well spread out over the two weeks.

Washington DC

The first major vacation my wife and I took when we were dating was a similar road trip along the Eastern US. DC was the first stop on that trip too - so this was an intentional nod to the earlier days of our relationship.

We didn’t try to cram too much into our day. We walked a bit of the National Mall, retracing our steps from over a decade ago. I got to see the MLK Memorial for the first time. We also hopped into the Air and Space Museum, but unfortunately half of the museum was closed for renovations.

Portland, Maine

Technically this wasn’t in Portland, but at the Maine welcome center. But why in the world is this sign so bright!? Sorry for the awful photo, but this doesn’t even really capture just how blindingly bright this light was in the dark.

I didn’t really know what to expect in Portland, but we had at least half a day to spend in the area if we wanted. We walked through the surprisingly cute down town area, checked out some stores, and visited a couple of coffee shops.

It was a nice way to spend half a day, but certainly we didn’t need to stick around longer. Also notable is just how expensive parking was in the city, and really how expensive the city was overall.

We stopped at the Portland Head Light as we were leaving, and I’m very glad we did. We got pretty lucky with timing, as it started to rain just as we left.

Acadia

I was so excited to visit Acadia. I know a lot of people love the park. I visited Acadia and Bar Harbour as a kid and had fond memories. We were going to be camping for two nights, and I was looking forward to exploring the park, hiking some trails – and I even booked a sightseeing boat cruise.

Unfortunately the weather was pretty crummy. Clouds were low and it was supposed to rain the entire time we were in the area.

We spent our first morning in Bar Harbour and walked around. It’s not particularly big, but there are a lot of restaurants and very touristy shops.

Our boat tour was on our first day in Acadia. As we stood on the dock in the cold rain, waiting to board the fairly small boat, the number of people who arrived to join the line grew and grew. At some point, one of the staff came up the walkway to give us the “you’ll be boarding soon” speech, but then went on to try and persuade folks to reschedule if they could. The boat was small, and there weren’t really enough seats inside for everyone. On top of that, the conditions on the water were a little rough, so it probably wasn’t going to be a good time.

I didn’t mind rescheduling since we had so much schedule flexibility, but they canceled boat tours for the next day because of the weather. Oh well!

We drove around the loop road instead. Even though it was rainy, it was still very pretty.

Camping in the rain is never fun, and honestly I wasn’t really prepared for it, gear-wise. For the most part it was sprinkling, but it’s still not fun to sit in the wet. But regardless, we survived. And more importantly, I’m still married.

On our second day we decided to drive the Schoodic Loop. This was a recommendation from someone we met in Portland, and I’m very glad for it. It was about an hour away from the main park area, but the loop was really pretty and had more pullovers than the main park loop.

The day we left Acadia, after we packed up camp, we decided to walk the Jordan Pond loop. This was something like 2.5 miles, but it was actually sunny and not raining. I don’t know if the walk itself was great, or if it was just nice to be dry and feeling the sun. Probably a bit of both though!

Before we left Mount Desert Island, we stopped for lunch. I had been hunting for a lobster roll and finally got what I had been looking for. It was definitely not cheap, but it was pretty tasty. We had a nice view from our seats, too.

Philadelphia

Despite having spent a summer working outside of Philly, I never really spent much time in the city. I think I spent more time in NYC that summer than I did Philly.

We did a ton of walking in our one day. We started at the Reading Terminal Market, walked through Old City, along the waterfront, then along Chestnut & Walnut to Rittenhouse Square, and back to the market.

We both really liked Philly, and could very much see ourselves living there. It’s surprising how affordable the city is too, given the size. But really I think I saw about 1,000 things I wanted to eat, so living there might just be part of an excuse to try them all.

Great Smoky Mountains

Our first night in the area was in Pigeon Forge. We were both pretty surprised at what Pigeon Forge actually was. I was vaguely aware that it was a place that existed, and that some theme parks were close by. But I had no idea that the entirety of Pigeon Forge was like one giant theme park - but instead of walking to each ride, you drive. There were a ton of small little parks with a handful of rides and other attractions, and billboards for larger parks that weren’t too far away.

We arrived in Pigeon Forge on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, and the entire area was incredibly busy. I imagine that is kind of normal for the area during the summer.

I don’t know if I want to go back. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m impressed and intrigued, or turned off by the endless parking lots, traffic, and by how much of a tourist trap it is.

We had reservations to camp the next two nights in the park. Unfortunately it was going to rain pretty hard for the next two nights. Not like sprinkling rain like we had in Acadia, but good ol’ Southern storms. We had been watching the forecast all week with dread, and decided that since we were only a few hours from home, we’d just drive through the park go home, cutting our trip short by a few days.

The park was even busier than Pigeon Forge, which I also assume is somewhat normal. Just getting a parking pass was an exercise in patience. That said, the park is huge and the crowds dispersed pretty quickly.

We didn’t explore too much, instead we drove fairly directly through the park and stopped at a number of pullovers that looked nice. I can’t believe how amazing this park is overall, and how close it is to Atlanta. It’s totally possible to drive up in the morning, go for a half day hike, and drive back home the same day. I saw enough to know that I’ll be coming back at some point soon.

Takeaways

While I had little specific plans in both parks, I was really excited to explore them both and to get to some of what makes them both very popular. Unfortunately, I mostly got to see clouds and get rained on. I was pretty disappointed overall that the nature parts of the trip were quite a bit less than I was hoping for.

That said, this was the second road trip we’ve taken this year, and I think we’re really dialing in our gear and process. Checking in and out of hotels is a fairly efficient process, and we can haul all of our stuff in one trip without using a luggage cart.

Something that wasn’t particularly efficient was trusting Google to route us on long driving routes. I never thought twice about Google’s directions on our Western road trip in January, but before the trip I did wonder if we should plan a specific driving route in advance - but I figured Google Maps knows best. Unfortunately, that led to us driving through NYC traffic around weekday rush hour, and watching the ETA tick up as we sat in slow moving traffic. Not only did it end up taking just as long or longer than routes to avoid the city, but the tolls were crazy expensive too.

We learned our lesson after that and picked routes to avoid major cities.

That’s the last of our planned major road trips for the year. I’ll be happy to get back to trains and planes. The driving on this trip wasn’t so bad, but I’d much rather spend my travel time doing anything else other than paying attention to the road and dodging reckless drivers.