Blogged Off to Canada!: Road Trip!

The New Jersey Railway station. This is the old station, a really nice building, now used to sell you tickets and also has 9/11 memorial walls.

This is a story of 2 people, 4 states & a Province, 1300 miles, 1 dog and 11 geocaches!

Well Boxing day rolled round and due to unforeseen circumstances we were to be reunited with our dog Forrest. He was due to land in Newark airport on Saturday the 27 December at lunch time. Now what else would you do on the days after Christmas but sit around and put on weight? We decided to go for a drive to pick up the dog!

We arranged for the kids to be watched by Tara's 2 sisters, which was very much appreciated as I'm not sure sitting in a car for 24hrs would appeal to them very much at all. So we got them dropped off early on boxing day so that we would be hitting the road early to make the best of the time we had. After drop off 2 in Taylor MI we had hardly made the state line to Ohio through the ice rain and there was accident after accident along the road. we sat not moving far for 2 hours!! finally when we did get going and the weather got a bit better things went well. I got to pick up a few caches along the way ( I was trying to make my 300 on this trip but because of delays and the likes I still need one more) Apparently Pennsylvania is a beautiful mountain state, well by the time we got there all we could see where silhouettes of mountain tops oh and a pocono ski resort all lit up. We made it to East Orange in New Jersey around 11 pm, booked into a hotel and crashed. We woke up in the morning and decided while we are here and have some time might as well try and make the most of the area and headed towards the Liberty state park to see the Statue and the famous New York Sky-line. It was at this point that it donned on me that this very time 10 years ago I spent 10 days in New York with Simon Gibson whilst visiting Sharon Canez (then Coulter). This time it was spent in the company of my wife! As you can see in the pictures we got there just in time as the fog was descending rapidly. We got on the ferry out to the statue but decided we did not have time to go in as the dog was due in soon. Probably a decent idea because by the time you get in and up the statue visibility would have been zero and the last time I went I reckon it was about a mile as we could not even see back to Manhattan then. By the time we got back on land Manhattan was invisible and I quickly grabbed a near by cache before getting the dog. It took quite a bit of time to get the dog and we only got back on the road around 5 pm with fog thick around these mountain roads thank goodness for tom tom and also people who I have named 'Wilson'. Now at this point I will say that Tara did all the driving as she does not mind it and I don't like driving places that I am unfamiliar with. So she was the real star of this whole show. OK back to Wilson now most of you I hope have seen the movie castaway with Tom Hanks and he gets very attached to a volley ball made by Wilson and names it the same. Tara had a similar affection for cars that's seemed to know the area and continued to drive a fair old rate through the fog. She figured that they knew better and if they go over a ditch she would have time not to do so herself... oh and also they would get pulled for speeding first. Now when you are travelling 1300 miles it will be very unlikely that another drive is going on the exact route as you. So as these 'Wilson's' headed off the road Tara would get upset a bit like Tom hanks did when he lost Wilson. So a name was born and now when cars pulled off the road we would shout "wilsonnnnnnnnnnn" until the next Wilson was found.

We finally made it back to Taylor and crashed at the sister-in-laws house at around 3am, then headed home this morning. All in all a great trip but not something I would do too often.

Manhattan Sky line, Now You See It! (well most of it)