A Very Social Time RVing in New England

Let’s see.. where were we?  Oh right, we just spent a couple days exploring the Big Apple, parked right downtown.

And now it’s time to head into New England for some pre-planned meetups with family and friends.

As usual, here’s the quick video recap of this segment of our summer van travels:

Harvest Hosting It

After a month or so of being in hyper motion – moving locations every couple of days, we were craving a longer stay. So we thought, perhaps picking a central location in New England might be a good idea.

Well, most of the commercial RV parks just weren’t our style for a longer stay and super expensive. Especially for a little van like ours.

And when we went to pick out a state park with wide open availability, which would have been a perfect location for our visits – we were met with the dreaded ‘no pet’ rule.

Seriously, Connecticut? Absolutely no pets?

Alright then, so much for that idea.

We took to Harvest Hosts (our affiliate link will save you 15% off a new membership), which as been proving to be a perfect solution for a lot of our stops – and booked the week up.

We ended up staying at a farm grocery store in Bishop, an organic farm with chickens as our neighbors, a winery in Rhode Island, and a you-pick berry farm back in Connecticut.

The winery was a perfect location for our friends Dennis & Jeanette (formerly full time RVers known as CheddarYeti) to drive over to spend a day together. We’ve enjoyed working with these two over the past nearly decade as clients of their Upthentic firm – they’re our web and branding designers here and over at MobileInternetInfo.com.

We were also able to stay a couple nights in my Aunt Kathy’s backyard in Groton, CT to meet up with family in the area (we have stayed in the past at the Elk’s Lodge there, but we’ve let our membership lapse while boating has taken up most of our time).

All and all, the van gives us great flexibility to go with the flow in our travels and mix up our stays – even if we didn’t manage to get our desired extended stay in.

Evacuating a Hurricane?!?

We decided to leave our boat Y-Not behind in Florida and not ride out another peak hurricane season in the southern heat aboard the boat.

The irony was not lost on us when Tropical Storm / Hurricane Henri turned his eyes to New England. In fact, right to our intended rendezvous location with friends & business colleagues Erik & Kala of Livin’ Lite / MobileMustHave on the Connecticut coast.

We held back from our arrival awaiting any shifts in the track, and we collectively decided to head to Erik’ family land in southern New Hampshire for our meetup instead. Erik’s family is working on converting the land into a future RV resort, which was perfect for our meetup. Aside from a bit of rain and wind, we were unaffected by the storm (and their home in CT was just fine after all.)

We’ve enjoyed our growing friendship with these two as we’ve found ourselves frequently crossing paths in the mobile internet industry.

MobileMustHave sells a lot of the high quality gear that ends up as our top picks – so we find ourselves in frequent calls together geeking out on the future of the industry and how best to serve our communities. We even managed a couple of in person meetings in Florida earlier this year that always turn into lots of bonding (and not just the internet connectivity kind.)

This meet-up involved goats, boating, swim holes, biking, collaborative content, fine wine and lots of mobile internet geeking out. Which in another twist of irony, the location sucked for connectivity (even their Starlink didn’t work well there.).

And while we did manage 5 days in one spot (the longest on this van trip), it was jam packed with work and social time. It hardly felt like rest. But it was wonderful.

To the White Mountains!

We parted ways with Erik & Kala and set our destination to return to the White Mountains.

We started by snagging a first come first serve site at Russel Pond Campground in the south end of the region for some chill time. And then on the way north, we put the eBikes to the ground for an amazing 19 mile ride through Franconia State Park.

And then we meet up with our friends Ron & Steve – fellow bus nuts. They’ve spent the past couple of summers workamping at the Twin Mountains KOA, where they arranged an awesome state park like feeling wooded site for us.

We had a great time hiking the Flume Gorge together, as well as going out an amazing electric bike ride together with a view of the Presidentials. And just general hanging around the campfire catching up since we parted ways in Florida this past spring.

It’s always fun to meetup with friends!

But our time in New England was way too short. When we set out in July, we imagined we’d have more time to spend meandering around. Perhaps getting back out to Maine and even popping up into Canada with the borders now open?

But the calendar kept reminding us that we have commitments in St. Louis in just a few short weeks, and there’s lots to explore on the way. So westward we we turned the steering wheel, with our final stop in New England being another Harvest Host location in Vermont – this time, a mini golf course.

Real Time Update

And westward indeed! I type this from Durango, Colorado where we just wrapped up another very social week with friends as we make our way into Arizona.

We should be seeing our bus Zephyr by the end end of the week! Can you believe it’s been almost 2 years?!? We intend to spend a few weeks in Benson before we start the return to Florida.

While our time in New England was nearly 2 months ago, we should be able to get you caught up in a couple of posts. Maybe. As I’ve said before, it’s difficult to keep up with sharing our adventures when the adventures keeping happening at rapid pace. But we’re having a fabulous time!