To cap off a very busy month with a lot of travel, we took a road trip. Carly came with us, and had a good time for the first few miles. After that, a dog gets kind of tired of the car. Where at first she was jumping all over the place, eager to get in and go, after the first rest stop she probably would have preferred to stay out of the car.
I took a bunch of pictures on the trip, many of which I’ve posted. If you’d rather just see those and skip the prose, do not doze.
The first day, we drove from home to Pennsylvania, had dinner with a friend from college, and lost my credit card (although we didn’t know it yet). At the restaurant that night, I paid for the meal and they overcharged us by $20 (it was a legitimate and innocent mistake, don’t worry). When I brought the bill up to be corrected, they gave me a receipt, but forgot to return the card, and I forgot to ask for it. When I discovered this the next day: AWESOME. Our i-Pass was hooked up to that card, and it was the beginning of the trip. For future reference, you can cancel a lost card right away, and autorenew stuff like this will generally continue to work for a few months to give you enough time to remember and fix everything.
Day two, we drove to New Jersey and met up with another college friend and her husband in Ocean Grove, NJ. We had a lovely dinner on the balcony of their building, played some scrabble (see [the pictures][1] for something weird that happened in the game), and walked around through Asbury Park. Ocean Grove is owned by the Methodist Church, and there’s currently some conflict over the town’s refusal to let a gay couple hold a wedding in a beachside gazebo. There were HRC flags everywhere, so it will be interesting to see what happens there.
Day three, we drove to Portsmouth and hung out with my stepmom and youngest brother, recently turned six. He keeps growing, like you do, and is going to first grade now as well as making friends, playing sports, and being a little boy. It’s nice to see.
Day four, because we couldn’t not drive, we kenneled Carly in Rye and drove to Boston to visit another couple of friends, take a walk around Walden Pond, and see a [Cinematic Orchestra][5] concert. It was a lot of fun, and met my expectations. Before the show, we ate at a delicious Afghan restaurant whose name I can’t remember right now, and followed it up with some delicious ice cream and sorbet (in my case: Pumpkin ice cream and Concord Grape sorbet). The next morning, Evan treated us to yummy cornmeal blueberry pancakes and some Wii Sports. I played baseball and invoked the slaughter rule on the AI team after one inning. So manly.
The next several days were spent largely outside of the car, which everyone appreciated, especially Carly. We stayed with my mom; played cards with my grandparents; visited my great grandmother, another pair of grandparents, and other family; went bowling (candlepins!); and generally had a merry old time. The last day before hitting the road again, we were back in Portsmouth with my dad and family again, this time fishing for crabs with my dad and brother, walking around a lot, and enjoying the gorgeous weather.
Two days of driving with a stop in Erie, PA in the middle, and we were home again. It was fun, but I’ll be glad not to do any more major traveling for a couple months. Carly enjoyed running around in the NH countryside, but she also seems to be content back home in the big city.