My arrival on the east coast!

I drove away from Michigan, with some color to spare in the fall season. The view above is of Bill and Em's neighborhood up in Michigan. I decided due to the wonderfulness of the weather to drive across Ontario after leaving Michigan and visit Niagara Falls, somewhere I had never been. It was amazing, and I'm very glad Emily recommended the view from the Canadian side as it was absolutely amazing. I got there kind of late, so I got to watch the sun go down and the lights come on over the falls. They have it set up so various colors light up the falls.

It was really nice driving across Ontario as everything seemed much closer to get to as it was in Kilometers. So, when the sign said 100 kilometers, it was really like 60 miles, it was cool, but gas is expensive! They sell it by the liter at about $1 something which definitely adds up! After seeing Niagara Falls, I drove south through/past Buffalo into southern New York. He I stayed in a bizarre town called Falconer before heading through PA the next day.

I started out cutting across the northern part of PA through the Allegheny wilderness area. The picture below is of the Allegheny reservoir or something like that. It was really beautiful and the whole area was surprising. It was very rural and there were a lot of leaves still in the trees as well as lots of rivers or streams. After that I crossed into the Susquehannock (or something like that) wilderness area and drove through more of rural north PA. Again it was beautiful and it followed a river most of the way. There was no one else on the road for the most part as it twisted and turned along the river as well as in what I guess are called mountains here in Pennsylvania. If I weren't so spoiled with our mountains in Oregon, maybe I would have noticed the ones here more. Even though this route probably took a little longer, I was glad not to be on interstates. I'm not such a fan of those. You miss so much and it's tiring to throw on the cruise control and sit and do nothing for hours.

I arrived in Emmaus, PA that evening to visit my aunt Maryann, my mom's older sister. She has the cutest house. She cooked me London broil for dinner, which I'm not sure I've ever had before, but I was definitely happy with my first remembered experience of it. It was a really nice visit talking of politics, sharing some brews and talking about future travels. It has been really nice to see family along the way, especially because I never get to see them, me being a west-coaster and all. Maryann has traveled a lot all over the U.S. and gave me some great suggestions for New Orleans as well as New Mexico and Arizona. She also makes phenomenal
pickles, which I was fortunate enough to get a jar of, and most of you probably know how much I LOVE pickles.

After my visit with my aunt, I headed further east, but first I swung through the small town of Limeport, which for lack of closer town, this was my mom's hometown. It has about 100 people in it. This is also where my grandparents are buried. It was kind of misting and raining when I got to Limeport and wandered around searching for the headstone and finally found it. Without realizing it, this was my first visit back there in almost exactly four years. It was slightly surreal, but very nice to be there and more-so, very nice to be in the area where I have so many wonderful memories of them.

After getting slightly, o.k., really lost in the Limeport area, I finally found myself and headed to Brick, NJ. Here I visited my great uncle Bill, my grandfather's brother. It is always an interesting visit with him because he has stories! He served in World War II in Ireland, England, North Africa and was finally wounded in Italy. Always enjoy his stories. He also told me a lot about growing up in the Haggerty family and about his siblings and their parents. He's 91 and I swear he's a good 20 years younger than he says he is. He looked so good.

My next stop on my sojourn was still in New Jersey and this state is laughably small, so I made a slight detour to the Jersey Shore, Point Pleasant to be specific. I headed for the boardwalk and it was a total ghost-town, very horror-movie-esque. But the shore as always was beautiful and almost completely empty (something one never associates with the Jersey Shore). The beaches are almost always packed, in the summer anyways.

After this I headed to my aunt (whose really my second cousin, but she's an aunt to me) Debbie's house in Edison, NJ. Her house is almost impossible to find, I'm unsure of how I did it! It was so nice to see her and be in her home which I have so many fond memories of as well. I also got to really meet Ceara, her newest Collie addition to the family. Debbie took me out to the shore again to a place called Sandy Hook. You can see it in the picture below. It was absolutely a gorgeous day and if you look closely you can see the Manhatten skyline in the distance. This place used to be an old army barracks or bunker or fort or some such thing. It still has all of the buildings and everything too at the end of the peninsula. It was very interesting to see.

Again, it was a good visit and very nice to catch up with her and see how she's been doing since she has been retired, which has been less than a year I believe. I hadn't seen any of these people (including Bill and Em) except for briefly four years ago, since I was 15 really. So being older and partially a grown up really made the visits unique for me, but also a lot of fun, because I wasn't just the kid playing in the background anymore. It was a lot of fun, but none of the visits were long enough. I think that's always the case though. I'm just glad I got to make it out to visit at all.