Anniversary adventures!

Keegan and I spent the past week on vacation, partly to celebrate our one year anniversary, and partly just because we wanted a vacation :-) Luckily we were able to plan this trip around attending the big Brochufest (my name for it, not the official title) in Hardwick, VT that is always held the Saturday the weekend near July 4.

Weekend/Monday travel day
Our adventure started on Friday, June 25. Keegan and I left around 5 to drive to my dad's house in Hillsville, VA. We hadn't been able to see him in awhile and since we were already driving up north anyway, we were able to stop in a visit a bit. It was nice to just hang around, watching TV (the World Cup and NCIS marathons), chatting, and generally having a good time. We also played some mini golf and toured around the area a bit, visiting a nice home-made candy store.

Also my dad does live in VA, he lives in western VA, so our trip to Rhode Island on Monday wasn't shortened by starting at his place rather than ours in Raleigh. We got up at 3:45 and were on the road by 4:15 on Monday morning. We're aware this is extreme but we wanted to be there to enjoy our first evening of official vacation! We arrived in Newport around 5 p.m. and got all checked into the hotel. Our room was small, but we weren't expecting a giant room in a hotel that was a historic building. In fact, the bed filled most of the room, but MAN, it was comfortable! After arriving, we set out to explore the town and find something for dinner. There was a crazy thunderstorm that only lasted about 10 minutes and we were able to watch it from inside the pub we found for dinner. After eating dinner, we (naturally) found the first creamery in the place and had some very tasty locally-made dessert, mmmm. (Side note: we had decided the end of May that we wouldn't be eating any more ice cream until we were on vacation because we'd been entering the dangerous "Let's buy some ice cream -- I mean, it's half price!" region) While we enjoyed the treats we walked down to the coast line to take in the Rhode Island coastline. Coming from North Carolina beaches, it's insane to see a coast that has no sand and is all rocks and cliffs. I knew it would be like this, but it was still neat to see it first-hand. We wandered the town a bit more then worked our way back to the hotel.


Tuesday
We started out the day on Tuesday by wandering the town some more on our way to see The Breakers, one of the big Newport mansions we had come to tour. As a couple who has been to the Biltmore, we can certainly recommend these houses to other people who enjoy touring old/obscenely opulent homes. The house, grounds, and view were gorgeous! Also, since The Breakers is the most popular house to tour, The Preservation Society of Newport provided audiotours to this house so people could walk it at their own pace, lingering where they wanted. There was also a lot of extra info on the audiotour that you could spend more time listening to. It took about 90 minutes for us to walk through the rooms on the tour and listen to all the extra information.

After exploring our first house, we walked about half a mile down the Cliff Walk to the The Chanler Hotel where we had lunch at their restaurant on the cliff face. The view was stunning, and that's really why we went there, but the food was also quite tasty! We were definitely in need of some sitting time after standing stiff and mostly still for such a long time in the house.

The passes we bought (the "Newport Mansion Experience") were $31 to tour 5 homes, which was an insanely good deal considering just a ticket to The Breakers is $19. Also, the tickets never expire, so we could have come back in years and still been able to go in to any of the houses we wanted. For our second house, we toured Marble House, another ocean-front home. The inside of the home is ENTIRELY marble, which was beautiful, but a bit overwhelming also. This house (and others) also had a room where gold leaf had been used on the walls instead of paint or paper or plaster. It is was it sounds like -- thin leafs of 24 carat gold were used to cover the wall and all of the sculptures worked into the ceiling and along the walls. This house also had an audio tour, since it was pretty popular. There was also a little asian prayer room type thing that the owner had put right on the water, which was neat, but looked a bit ridiculous and out-of-place. But whatever, when you've got so much money you have to cover your walls in actual GOLD I guess you can do whatever strikes your fancy.

The third and last house we toured on Tuesday was called Rosecliff. This house was also very grand, but didn't have a guided tour. It had been owned by a variety of people but all the interior decorations that were original to the house were sold off during the Great Depression, so it was a bit of a shell of it's former self. The preservation society has been able to restore some of it's glory and fill it in with stuff from other homes and stuff that has been donated.

After touring this last house, we hiked the Cliff Walk, which is something I wanted to do even more than touring the houses. The walk was a lot longer than we thought it would be and it took FOREVER, but the views were absolutely amazing. I've never seen anything like that in my entire life and I can't wait to get the pictures off my camera so I can post them on Facebook for everyone to enjoy! We were able to see the sunset at the very end, which made it even more beautiful. The houses on the water are so spectacular and it was neat to be able to see the more residential side of the town than the side that's geared towards all the mansions' visitors. There was then a 4.5 mile walk back to the hotel after the end of the 3.5 mile Cliff Walk, so we easily walked 10 miles on Tuesday. Which we celebrated by eating our weight in more locally-made ice cream :-D

Wednesday
On Wednesday morning we saw our last two houses. My favorite house that we toured, The Elms, also had an audio tour and while it was spectacular also, it was less in-your-face about it. There was still marble and gold accents, but it was much more subdued and instead the house was filled with windows that let in the light and the views of the huge garden in the back. It seemed more like a place someone would actually live (granted someone ridiculously wealthy) and it was less crowded than The Breakers so I could linger looking at everything I wanted to see. :-)

The last house we toured was called Chateau sur Mer and it is the oldest of the houses we saw. This tour was nice and small, which was good, and the house also still contained a lot of its original furnishings, making it even more interesting.

Keegan and I highly recommend visiting this town if you're interested in this sort of stuff! After finishing our tour, we drove to Chelmsford, MA, about 2 hours away, to spend time with Keegan's aunt, uncle, and cousins on our way to Bar Harbor, ME.

Thursday
We hit the road on Thursday morning around 5, trying to make it to Bar Harbor with plenty of time to take in part of Acadia National Park. We got there around 10:30 and then we drove the Park Loop Road, a 20 mile loop that circles Cadillac Mountain (among other things). We were able to park and hike a lot, right along the coast, which was really nice after spending all that time in the car. Plus it was only 70 degrees and completely sunny so it was really easy to just stand there and take it all in. We spent about 6 hours in the park exploring this road and the trails around it. Then we went to Bar Harbor to check into our hotel and look for some dinner.

For dinner we found a little Italian restaurant where I had -- no joke -- the best pasta of my life. I'm really drooling about it right now just remembering it. It was chicken broccolini, but with garlic and some sort of four cheese sauce that most likely took 5 years off my life, but oh man. Keegan and caprese chicken that was also amazing, and we shared some herbed goat cheese brushetta. Then, of course, we found some more local ice cream about 4 hours later for a late treat. We were able to look into the local shops and take another little walk called the Ocean Walk that just went around the harbor a bit.

Friday
On Friday we had breakfast at our hotel and then went to hike around Cadillac Mountain before making the drive to North Conway, New Hampshire. In the winter months, the Cadillac Mountain is the first place in the United States to be touched by sunlight, which I found pretty interesting. The views of the ocean and surrounding park from the top were breathtaking and just going to this park has even further intensified my desire to visit more national parks. After taking that trip with my grandparents a few years ago, I knew I wanted to explore more of the United States, but after seeing Acadia I'm already plotting family vacations in my mind... a bit premature, I know, but I can't help it!


Last weekend and drive home
We drove to North Conway, NH to spend the night before heading up to Hardwick, VT for Brochufest on Saturday. We stayed in North Conway so we were able to drive the Kancamagus Highway in the White Mountains on the way up to the reunion. The drive is very scenic and we'd heard about how beautiful it was from Keegan's family and some of the members of my family. We were able to hike a bit and enjoy more of the 70 degree weather before spending the day with his dad's side of the family. After the reunion, we drove to Gloucester, MA to spend time with one of Keegan's cousins at Keegan's aunt's family's (whew!) beach house. We were able to just relax on their porch, walk the (teeny tiny) beach, and spend time with some of Keegan's cousin's family on his mother's side. They were all really friendly and with the house having 9 bedrooms, there were a lot of folks around! We watched Boston's insane fireworks show and then hit the road Monday morning at 6a.m. 15 hours later, we were home!

2877.5 miles from Raleigh to Raleigh and 13 different states visited. What an adventure! Our trip was rather whirlwind, but it was still relaxing because we were together and not worrying about all the stuff going on in our lives back home. Now I get to tackle the laundry we brought home, and eat through all the preserves and taffy we bought in Maine (MMMMM!!!).