Travel Addict: Friends & Family on the East Coast

A large portion of our road trip (almost two weeks worth) was devoted to visiting family and friends from Massachusetts all the way down to South Carolina. Although quite a bit of the area we covered was not new to us, we did have a few new experiences along the way.

First, we stopped in a tiny New England town called Newburyport, Massachusetts, where an old friend of ours from our Cumberland days, now lives with his lady. It had been over 31 years since we had last seen Vaughn, but the years quickly melted away as soon as we arrived, exchanged hugs, and he introduced us to his long-time girlfriend, Liz. They live in a lovely home, which she has decorated in a very unique and eclectic style. I won't make you look through all the photos I took inside their house (mostly for my own inspiration!), but here is a shot of their music/media room, where I'm sure a lot of music is played, since Liz is musician in a band called Liz Frame and The Kickers (see next photo below).


I took a photo of a flyer Liz had framed on the wall of the music room. That's her on the left.

Liz also owns a shop in Newburyport called Fancy Schmancy , where she sells antiques, one of a kind art, gently used furniture, jewelry, and all kinds of interesting and unique items.

While Liz worked at her shop, Vaughn took us on a walk around town, filling us in with lots of historical facts and information, and we had lunch on the waterfront, where we did a lot of catching up on the last 31 years.


Your typical New England church.

Newburyport Harbour

Our next stop visiting F&F, took us to the town of New Milford, Connecticut, where our nephew attends a very nice boarding school. Spencer is a junior in high school, and a great kid. We picked him up, took him to lunch in town, he gave us a tour of the campus and even showed us his dorm room. The campus is very beautiful, and he seems very happy there.

Canterbury School Chapel

Spencer's Dormitory

When we left, we went on to New Haven, CT, to visit a young friend of mine from my last job at Sac State. Mike and I worked together until he moved on to bigger and better things on campus, but then his beautiful wife, Lindsay, got accepted to do her doctorate at Yale, so they moved with their two daughters, to Connecticut about 15 months ago.

Seeing Mike and his family was a lot of fun. We went to the rooftop of the building where Lindsay works, and then Mike and the girls gave us a tour of the campus, which is amazing! The gorgeous, old buildings made us feel like we were in jolly old England again.

View from the rooftop of the Loria Center (I think that's right), where Lindsay works.

Tatum and Elliott

Circulation desk at the Sterling Memorial Library. Looks more like a cathedral.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is a modern building with walls made of a translucent marble, which transmit subdued light to protect the rare collection from direct light.

Shelves and shelves of extremely rare books.

One of two copies Yale has of the original Gutenberg Bible.

Mike and his two little girls, Elliott & Tatum.

Now, you would think that since we were in New England during the second week of October, we would have seen a lot of autumn color, right? Not so much. I guess we were just a little bit early for it this year. When we got to Cumberland however, we were pleasantly surprised at the bright red, orange and gold trees we found!

We stayed with our old friend, Dave and his wife at their home nearby in LaVale. And we got to spend some time with another old friend who was in town for the day, Brendan, who was one of Sam's photography students back-in-the-day. He is a very successful photographer in Rockville, MD, and after we had a really good lunch at a Mexican restaurant (things sure have changed since we first moved to the Cumberland area in 1973, when we couldn't even buy tortillas!!), he took us to the top of Haystack Mountain, where we hiked through the woods to a ledge overlooking the Cumberland Narrows. It was beautiful!

Taken from Haystack Mountain, overlooking the Narrows near Cumberland, Maryland.

653 Greene Street

Believe it or not, this is the house that we lived in between 1976 and 1980, and this is where Alison was born, at home! There are 50 steps from the street to the front door, and no other access! We had to park our cars on the other side of the street in the A&P Market parking lot! It was never in great shape when we lived there, but in the 31+ years since we left, it has only gotten worse. When we visited in 2010, someone was doing lots of work on it, so we were anxious to see it again this year. Sadly, it looks like the project hasn't gotten much farther. :-(

Next stop: Washington DC, and Sam's brother, sister, niece, and nephews. Since we have visited the DC area many times, and we only had a couple of days, we spent most of our time visiting with family, but we did manage to walk around Georgetown and have lunch with Sam's sister, Mary, at a cafe on the Potomac River.

The historic C & O Canal, as it flows through Georgetown.

(I should also add that on our way into DC, we met with another old friend of ours from Cumberland days, a fun guy every one calls Abbott. He works at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD, and he suggested we meet for lunch at a place called Cubanos, which was great. And he didn't even know we are hoping to go to Cuba in the spring!)

From DC, we drove all the way down to Bluffton, South Carolina, near Hilton Head, to Sam's brother's home. Tom and Deb live in a huge Sun City community, with multiple golf courses, lots of lakes, and ALLIGATORS!!!

At one point during our visit, Deb and I went out in their golf cart to "hunt" for gators I could shoot pictures of, and just weren't having any luck. We came upon a boat house on the other side of a small lake, reflecting beautifully on the mirror like surface. I got out, positioned myself near the grass on the edge of the lake, and took a couple of photos. As I turned and got back into the cart, we heard a loud swooshing sound and then a big splash, and when we looked back at the lake, we could see waves radiating out from the edge, just a few feet from where I had been standing! What seemed to be be a fairly large alligator, had been in the grass right in front of me!! Needless to say, we took off, squealing like teenagers, and when we came back around, we saw this guy floating on the surface.

One of the photographs that almost got me eaten by an alligator!

Nice scene on one of the golf courses.

High tide in the low country. Residents go crabbing at the end of this pier. Apparently, just before Deb and I walked out here, there were a bunch of dophins swimming through the water on their way back to the ocean.

On one of our days, Tom and Deb took us on a driving tour of Savannah, Georgia, which is a very interesting old southern city, built on a grid with, I think, 16 little park squares, and lots of old oak trees covered in Spanish moss and tiny ferns.

Typical southern mansion with old oak draped in Spanish moss.

This is the house where The Big Chill was filmed.

They also took us to Tybee Island, Georgia, to see Fort Pulaski, but it started raining, making it difficult to walk around the national monument, so we decided instead to go have lunch at a place called The Crab Shack.