The Smiths Go Northeast Day 3: Providence, RI---Bar Harbor, ME

We checked out of our hotel in Seekonk, RI and set our sights on Maine!!!  Josh and I had eaten at a DELICIOUS hole-in-the-wall hotdog stand (Flo's Hot Dogs) on our trip nine years ago--found totally by accident!  We kept going back and forth as to whether we should make it a point to stop and eat there again, or if it would end up being one of those things that's always better in memory...  We decided to go for it!  We knew we'd be a bit early, but it would be worth it to kill some time before they opened.

Good thing we got there close to the opening--the line gets just as long as we remembered!  I should have taken a picture of the outside.  It's a super-tiny building with room for about 20 people in line at a time and a very low and slanted ceiling!  There is a counter inside, but no one really eats at it because you would have other patrons in line behind you at all times.  The boys were SO patient!

While we were standing in line, we noticed a flavor of soda that caught our eye: Moxie.  Everyone who ordered it was asked if they'd ever had it because it has a very "distinct" flavor...  Josh decided to give it a go--it was pretty good!

First bites...

Yummy hotdogs!  Flo's has this extra-delicious relish to put on the hot dogs, and the buns are steamed white bread slices, which obviously, are more magically delicious than they sound!

We stretched everyone in terms of sleep in order to sneak in a few other stops we remembered from our last trip!  Here is Jackson in front of the huge window displaying Eartha at DeLorme--the world's largest revolving and rotating globe!  When we were here last time, it was on the way to visit the L.L. Bean flagship store that is open 24 hours, so DeLorme was closed--we only got to look from the outside.

A little closer up...

Inside, and of course, Eartha was a virtual geocache :)

Well!  When we came super late at night last time, we had no problems parking, but this time, in the middle of the afternoon, we had to park really far away!  I can safely guarantee this is the farthest Josh has ever parked to go shopping ;)  The boys hung in there walking from the parking lot by looking for the huge boot!

Jackson with our favorite animal from his namesake city :)

Graham Moose

I could have spent a long time wandering around the store, and there was actually a really fun kids' area, but we were up against the naptime clock, so Josh and the boys enjoyed their time hanging out around this indoor pond while I meandered a little.  It turns out, it's WAY more fun to shop at a store that's open 24 hours at odd hours ;)

We checked into our super-adorable inn for three nights--Open Hearth Inn.  The property is made up of individual cottages as well as a few larger rooms above a barn/garage-like building.  This was the best room of our trip--plenty of room and quite clean!  We got all unloaded and went in search of dinner.  Lobster pounds are quite plentiful in Maine, and there happened to be one within walking distance from our hotel, but it just didn't strike our fancy once we went over to check out the menu.  Thanks go Google, we headed to Mainely Meat, which not only had a unique outdoor eating area and delicious food and drinks, but also a fenced-in play area for the kids!!!  SO needed!

Like a mini-date!

Jackson's first soda, and blueberry at that!

Blueberry beer for me and blueberry soda for my under-age date :)

After dinner we happened upon this cool statue while finding a cache at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.

THEN, we headed to one of my favorite spots of this trip: the sand bar that Bar Harbor is known for!  It was a perfect time for low tide so we could watch this beautiful sunset!

Preparing for a rock-skipping lesson...

Helping Jackson practice his technique

Ahhh...summer vacation...

What a wonderful first night in Maine :)

The Smiths Go Northeast Day 2: Amherst, MA---Providence, RI

On our way to dinner our first night, we saw a sign for Dinosaur Footprints!  That went on our list for first thing yesterday morning!  Dinosaur Footprints is a well preserved area with a short trail allowing you to explore dinosaur footprints that have been fossilized!

Putting their hands in the prints left by dinos!

Trying to match the dinosaurs' stride

This was such a cool thing to see, but very challenging to photograph well...  Jackson's three fingers are inside a three-toed dino print!

And, now Graham!

Our wedding-ring fingers inside a dino footstep!

Our next stop was the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, but we had some time to kill along the way, so we stopped at Amherst Common School for a couple caches.  There was a great boardwalk and walking trail on the grounds.

I was SO excited to finally arrive at the Eric Carle museum!!!

There were two main galleries.  One was full of Eric Carle's artwork from his well-known children's books and the other contained pictures by other well-loved children's illustrators.  The Eric Carle-specific gallery had puppets that corresponded with his books as well as a scavenger hunt!

Jackson (and I!) had a spectacular time hunting for various details in the different pictures :)

Posing by the inspiration for Graham's first birthday party!

After touring the galleries, we watched a short film that brought one of our favorite stories to life: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!  

We headed to the art room next where we all were invited to create our own Eric Carle-inspired tissue paper collages!

This was SO fun!  We each got to create two different ones :)

A Very Hungry Caterpillar reading nook!!!  There were bookshelves on either end and benches inside the caterpillar!

The very famous butterfly :)

I LOVED everything about this museum, and Jackson was very interested in it all too.  Graham's attention span waned, so he and Josh went outside to play in the sculpture garden while Jackson and I wandered the galleries again and watched a video narrated by and starring Eric Carle all about his process for creating pictures.  It was AMAZING!  We ate our picnic lunch in the sculpture garden and collected our tissue paper collages before heading out to our next stop!

A well-deserved snooze on the way to Rhode Island!

While researching Rhode Island, I quickly found out there are quite a few carousels around the state!  I believe there is a carousel "challenge" to ride them all, but we didn't have time to hit them all.  We chose Carousel Village at Roger William Park in Providence as our spot to experience the historic carousels :)

Daddy got to ride with Graham :)

Such happy smiles from this ride!

Boundless Playground was near the carousel, so we let the boys run off some steam while we made a plan for the rest of the afternoon/evening.  We decided to go check in at the next hotel and replay the night before.  Josh took the boys swimming while I researched dinner and set up our room!  Tonight's pick wasn't quite as big of a hit, but we moved on to the Riverwalk in downtown Providence after dinner for some pretty sight-seeing.

While I was researching our trip and choosing our route and dates, I really wanted to work it so we would be in Providence on one of the nights for WaterFire--in the summer about 100 floating bonfires are lit throughout the river on certain nights.  Unfortunately, we just couldn't get our days to line up so we could be there to see it.  I really would like to go back and see it for sure!

But, we had a good time wandering along the Riverwalk, and finding a few geocaches along the way ;)

The Smiths Go Northeast Day 1: On the Road and Overnight in Amherst, MA!

Several months ago, we brainstormed where we wanted to vacation this summer.  Josh had lots of good ideas, and I started with the Northeast one, and after one Google search, I knew there'd be plenty for us to do!  We took a very similar trip about nine years ago.  Obviously, it was more flexible and play-it-by-ear, but it gave us a skeleton to help us plan out this trip.  Something I heard about and really wanted to do was go visit the Eric Carle Children's Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts.  We decided that would be our first activity, so we set out to spend our first night near there in Northampton!  Something Josh heard about and really wanted to do was pick up geocaches in each state... ;)  In all seriousness, geocaching can provide such a great jumping off point if we are feeling overwhelmed of what area of a new city/park to explore!

 Northampton or bust!!!

 The boys really did great in the car!  It was encouraging that our longest day in the car was about 8 hours (except for the looooong drive home, which was possibly a planning oversight...), so we knew we'd be ok!  

 I made snack towers for the boys out of (brand-new and clean) pill containers.  

 Each pod had a different snack: Teddy Grahams, Baby Goldfish, Craisins, fruit snacks, Reese's Peanut Butter Cereal, and peanuts.

 We had a nice stretching stop to take a short hike and grab a geocache Josh needed to finish a big challenge he was working on.  I cannot believe all of the things different people think of to add more depth to geocaching!  It's definitely fun to just find any caches and keep track, but there are SO many challenges requiring different types of caches or caches fulfilling specific attribute requirements!  

 This trip was a dream come true for Jackson with so many climbing and mountain-goat-ing opportunities for him!

 Burger King lunch stop!!!

 This trip was full of hotel-hopping!  There were only two cities where we stayed more than one night.  I spent A LOT of time thinking about how to make this easy to load and unload the car and pack and unpack in the hotel.  I settled on using the boys' small, wheelie suitcases to hold two days worth of clothes plus bathing suits for all of us.  They were able to wheel those while Josh carried the Pack-n-Play, a backpack of laptops and other things we didn't want to leave in the car, and I carried a huge tote bag with our toiletries, lovies, and other etc. items.  This system worked beautifully!  The cities where we stayed two or three nights were spread out so I was able to use that "extra time" to re-organize suitcases/swap out dirty laundry, and we managed to not drive ourselves (ahem...each other...) crazy!  

 I unpacked the room and researched dinner while Josh played in the pool with the boys.  Jackson was SO excited to show off everything he learned in his swimming lessons!

I found a spot that looked good for dinner called Riff's Joint, and it was a great first night dinner!

We walked off dinner looking for some caches and headed back to the hotel for bed!

Jackson and I found a great spot to sit and read while Graham fell asleep in the room.