Day 1

Prologue: (How in the heck did we end up on a 10+ week road trip)

The idea of a cross-country road trip was always something we talked about, but we didn’t seriously consider until right after our trip to Costa Rica.  Like we said, we usually begin planning our next trip while we’re still on our last.  Throughout the summer, we were wondering how a road trip would be feasible since we would both be graduating with our Masters in May and would need to start our careers.  Jillian’s answer came mid-August when she got a job offer with a start date of August 10, 2015.  From there, we were 110% committed. 

We had pin-pointed our family and friends as definite pit stops and everything in between could be figured out later.  For Christmas, we went in on a GoPro because who travels around the country for 10 weeks without a GoPro?  Between Rico’s sister, Shannon, and our friends, Audrey and Drew, we had enough travel books to help us dream bigger.  We had actually planned on leaving in June, but after looking through everything, we changed our departure date to the Monday after graduation.

We both graduated this past Saturday on May 16^th, Rico with his Masters in Civil Engineering and Jillian with her Master’s in Accounting.  The next day we became nomads.  We packed up everything and moved it over to Jillian’s parents’ garage (Thanks Mom and Dad!) (and Thanks Rico’s Dad for helping us move!).  Our adorable little furry friend is spending the summer with Rico’s parents.  We were sad to say goodbye, but we know she’s in good hands (aka getting treats every day).  We didn’t finish until around 9pm, but we had to set aside some time to say goodbye to friends so we didn’t make it back to Jillian’s house until around 10:30pm.  At this point we hadn’t packed anything; rather the car was still filled with random things from our apartment.  We spent the next 5 ½ hours getting everything together and packing it into the car.  Thankfully, Jillian’s Mom is practically a boy scout herself so she was able to give us everything from a tent and sleeping bags to “tightly wrapped” toilet paper (that’s a real thing apparently).  By 4am we called it quits and went to bed.  We were up again at 7am and were on the road by 9am with as much stuff as a Toyota Corolla would allow.

Day 1: 05/18/2015 (Berwick to Trumansburg)

381 miles

After the twilight portion of Day 1, we started our trip heading towards Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont.  Our initial plan was to camp here for our first night, but instead we just made it a pit stop where we picked up a National Park Pass (thanks for the early birthday present Sean and Chelsea).  The drive was very peaceful and scenic.  It seemed that we were the only car on the road for a majority of the drive through VT.  We tried testing out the GoPro and how it would hold up if we stuck it out the window while driving – turns out that the attachment on the extending rod can’t withstand 70mph winds.  

From VT, we drove a few more hours to Taughannock Falls State Park in Trumansburg, NY which is just north of Ithaca.  We picked out a camp site and quickly set up the tent so we could walk to the waterfall before dark.  The trail to the falls was an easy walk through the gorge which was about 400 feet deep.  We saw one embankment and just thought it was wet from the rain, but once we looked closer, we realized it was covered in thousands of broken pieces of slate.   If you were quiet you could hear little pieces of rock falling down.

 When we got back to camp, we made a game plan to find dry wood.  There were a bunch of little twigs here and there, and then Rico dragged out a few dead branches from the woods.  Being the resourceful man that he is, he wedged the branches in between the “Y” of a tree and “cut” it into smaller logs.  From there we searched for the closet grocery store to grab something to cook for dinner.  On the way there we spotted 3 deer standing in the middle of the road and on the way back we passed a sheep farm with lots of little babies.  Of course we stopped to take pictures of both.  For dinner we cooked up some sausage with peppers and onions and had corn on the cob for a side.  We were able to get a fire going and we cooked right over the open flame.  Rico was using a stick to rotate everything and at one point a sausage got knocked into the fire.  We rescued it and washed it off and it was good as new!  Our dinner came together quite nicely and we were happy to have a warm meal.  

Shortly after finishing dinner we went to bed right in time to be lulled to sleep by the pouring rain.  We were just hoping that the air mattress would stay inflated and that nothing in the tent would get wet.     

Fact:

Taughannock Falls is the highest vertical single-drop waterfall east of the Rockies at 215 feet (30 feet higher than Niagara).

Lesson:

make-shift stick tongs are not as dexterous as actual tongs

Eat Well; Travel Often

Rico & Jillian