76 Day Driving Trip-Segment 6

We arrived back in New England where the autumn leaves continued to impress us with their brilliant colors. This last segment of our road trip started with a 10 day whirlwind of visits with friends in the Boston/New York area. While at our timeshare on Cape Cod we traveled to Marblehead Ma., north of Boston, to see our cruise friends in their lovely home of 34 years. It was an unexpected surprise to tour their town with so much beauty and history. No wonder some cruise ships offer shore excursions to Marblehead while docked in Boston. We had a delicious lunch of fried clams and lobster rolls on the deck of a seaport restaurant. And then to Chucks delight we stopped at a chocolate shop established in 1929 serving their hand dipped candy to the White House and Buckingham Palace since the days of FDR and Queen Mary. A fun day was had by all! Our 2nd visit in Massachusetts was with our cruise friends who had just moved into their beautiful custom built country club home in Mattapoisett, Ma. We had lunch at their elegant club and had a fun afternoon sharing their plans for their new home, seeing their travel treasures and photos and touring their quaint seaside town. A must see destination while on Cape Cod was Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II. The Rock, housed under an elaborate Portico, was smaller than we expected. We learned that before it was placed there, tourists had chipped away at this piece of history and that half of the 1620 rock is preserved at the Smithsonian. We then attended a special harvest dinner at the nearby Plimoth Plantation where we ate 17th century food like pumpkin, turkey, sweet corn pudding and mussels. Actors dressed in pilgrim costumes served our food and entertained us with period music and song. As we left Massachusetts on our way to New York we had lunch at a Connecticut landmark. The Griswold Inn in Essex built in 1776 was the oldest continuously operating Inn in Ct. Another gastronomic highlight was Stone Barn in Tarrytown N.Y., which was not only an exceptional restaurant destination but also a 30 million dollar experimental center for food and agriculture. Our 1st visit in the N.Y. area was with our cruise friends in Westchester County. We had a delicious swordfish barbeque at her 1790s farmhouse in Pound Ridge and a deli lunch at his 1950s retro split level in Chappaqua. She is a talented sculptor using steel as her material of choice and he has a green thumb with 5,000 varieties of day lilies and at least 10,000 blooms at any given time on his property in the summer. It was great seeing them in their homes that we’d previously heard about. Our 2nd visit in the N.Y. area was with our friend of 30 years who we had rendezvoused with early in the trip in Chicago. This time we met for brunch at a restaurant overlooking the Hudson River. She brought her 27 year old daughter who we were so excited to meet for the 1st time. What a lovely young woman and it was interesting to reflect that we were her age when we 1st met. Our last visit of the trip was with our cruise friends from Mt. Vernon N.Y. We met for a wonderful breakfast with great conversation at a N.Y. Diner before heading west for the last 11 days of our trip. On our way back to California we stopped in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey Chocolate would be proud to see that his little town is considered a model community. The chocolate factory employs 3000 and the town supports excellent schools, theaters, a sports arena, gardens, an amusement park, a 1st class resort and of course Chocolate World. We also visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in western Pa. This architecturally significant home exemplifies his desire to be in harmony with nature. Last but not least was Homecoming weekend at my alma mater- the University of Missouri at Columbia. We knew we were in for a fun weekend when many cars sported a tiger tail (Mizzou Tigers) hanging out of their trunks. We participated in a flurry of events from the spirit rally held in front of my sorority house (Gamma Phi Beta), the Homecoming Parade, tailgate parties and of course the big game. The stadium was filled with students and alumni all decked out in black and gold and the atmosphere was electrifying. The icing on the cake was when we crushed Colorado 58-0. Then we again headed west through Tulsa, Amarillo, Gallup and spent our last night in Laughlin Nevada. Here we celebrated our successful road trip at a riverfront restaurant. After 76 days and 11,000 miles we thank all the gracious friends we visited and are constantly amazed at the beauty of America and this trip-Canada.

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