Enjoying Our Dash

Our next stop took us to our first urban camping experience. We headed to Jersey City to catch up with some more of our family. This location was much different than what we are used to. Definitely not Dash in his natural habitat. Here we had a chance to catch up with Ed’s niece Rachel and her husband Vincent and to meet our grand nephew Reed Mercer Iadevaia. Reed was born on January 6, 2023! We only had a short time here, so we had to see most of the New York City from afar. Even so, we had a chance to see lots of beautiful sights, including Ellis Island, The Statue of Liberty and Freedom Tower. Getting into the ‘campground’ was exciting, but not nearly exciting as getting around New York City on our way to Connecticut. Fortunately, we have an expert driver and a highly skilled navigator on board to get us around safely.

After the battlefields, it was time to meet up with family. We headed down from the Pennsylvania mountains and ran into the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. It was crazy, the sun was trying to shine, but all we could see was smoke. Scroll through the pictures below to see just how bad it was. Our first family stop was in Pennsylvania to meet our great niece and visit with my niece and her husband. We got to driveway dock at their house so it was super convenient! We finally got to meet Eleanor James Devlin. She was born on November 12, 2023 and goes by her preferred her nickname, Nora! We had a great time hanging out with Katie, Rob & Nora. Cole wasn’t sure what to make of Nora, but he quickly decided that he needed to be her protector. Every morning when we got up, he immediately ran to the house door to check on his baby and make sure she was doing ok. He also loved getting the scraps of food that Nora was done with! Nora had a great time checking out Dash. She is...

As we continued to move north, many of our stops included Civil War battlefields and National Park Military sites. Our first was Fredericksburg, Virginia. There are several battlefield sites in the Fredericksburg area: Battle of the Wilderness, Battle of Chancellorsville, Battle of Spotsylvania Court House and Battle of Fredericksburg. The map below shows the locations of these battlefields. From the NPS website https://www.nps.gov/frsp/images/FRSPmap1_1.jpg We visited the Chancellorsville and the Fredericksburg battle fields. The Chancellorsville site is mostly a driving tour. The National Parks Service (NPS) has a great app that has narrated stories of what happened at each of the stops. One word of caution, make sure that you download the information prior to heading out on the tour. There is no cell service at some of the stops! The Battle of Chancellorsville was significant, because of a 5 way intersection of roads. Controlling this area enabled troops to be sent in multi...