R and J in the USA

New York is gorgeous. Full stop. 

We now have 11 months of fairly consistent anecdotal evidence to support the theory that, for most people, or at least a lot of people, what makes New York gorgeous is largely unknown outside of its borders and those places nearby. And, as new travelers ourselves to so many corners of the country, this fact is not surprising. In nearly every state that we traveled to that was more than a state or two away from our home state, we encountered landscapes that were so much more than we knew to expect that expanded our view and our understanding of the full scope and scale of that state in reality versus our prior simplistic perception of what that state would be like. It is no surprise that others far from New York would, likewise, have only a two-dimensional image of it made up of its most talked about features, our most famous city being top of that list. If we weren’t from New York and were entering it as strangers to its shapes and features as we did in so many states that were new to us, we are quite certain we would have been absolutely bowled over. Actually, even knowing its colors and curves to the degree that we do, we still were. And not just by the depth of richness of the beauty we saw, but by the amount of different ways that New York finds to be beautiful, from deep gorges and river valleys to undulating mountain ranges, to lush forest, to expansive and bucolic farmscapes with weathered and picturesque white and red barns, to vineyards and orchards and lakes that cut through and shape whole swaths of land, to the endless sea of rolling green hills that fill up the space between it all. New York is gorgeous. It’s a secret we know so well, but its a lovely one to rediscover with every new sunrise.

New York is a place filled with beauty of all kinds – the kind that the forces of nature mixed with time can create and the kind that happens when human creativity, innovation, audacity and necessity all mix up and stir up over centuries of trying to figure out how to make living work. It has places of pure peace and tranquility, places of raw power and beauty, and places of big thrills and big dreams – and everywhere in between. There are a few things that New York doesn’t have. There are no deserts, there are no volcanoes, no grizzly bears, no glaciers, no geysers, no 10,000 foot peaks and no canyons. But, New York has just about everything else you could hope to find anywhere else in the country and then some. You could spend a day immersed in the thrills of one of the most exciting cities in the world and end the day fishing in a mountain stream without a soul around. The diversity of life experience from one corner of the state to another can be tremendous in range.

Like every other state we’ve visited, we loved nearly every second of our travels though it. And, though more of what we saw was familiar to us than in most other places, we made a point to seek the spots we didn’t know and found ourselves with every bit as much of the thrill and wonder of discovery as anywhere else. The most major difference of our travels though the state than any other were the aroma of familiarity that we did our best to gently ignore in our fairly successful attempt to discover New York anew, the fact that it was our last state of 50 to explore and the knowledge that, though, just like every other state that we didn’t want to leave when the time came, we took easy solace in knowing that we would most definitely be returning to partake of its beauty and to get a chance to explore all the remaining twists and turns of it another day.

Our time in New York started about 15 miles before we entered the state. If you haven’t picked up on it already, Julie is pretty big into milestones and, as we began the drive from Pennsylvania headed east towards the western tip of New York, Julie’s anticipation of the monumental moment of entering state 50 caused her to skyrocket into a whirlwind of excitement. If you want to see what that looks like and watch Julie recount the journey of our state by state itinerary order with the spastic effusiveness of a blend between a Labrador puppy and a 5 year old rocking back and forth like they’ve gotta make a tinkle, you can see that in another post. Ryan, ever the cool cucumber of the duo, took the final miles of Pennsylvania quite in stride.

That said, when we actually arrived at the Welcome to New York sign, our enthusiasm met in the middle. Julie found her excitement grounded into the reality of the moment and she regained the 40 years she’d momentarily lost a hold of in the her childlike excitement of the prior 10 miles and handled it like an excited, but fully grown 45 year old and Ryan found the moment eliciting genuine enthusiasm. We both hopped out of the car to get a picture of ourselves in front of the sign to commemorate the occasion. We hugged and embraced in joy at our arrival at this first of many milestones to come.

As you will see, over the next week plus, our lives would be a litany of finish lines and fist pumping as we experienced different waves of accomplishment all piling upon each other in our climactic, and, in some moments, anticlimactic finishings of our 11 month journey. Its a fun thing to do to accomplish something, to finish something, to celebrate something, and we have given ourselves a plethora of opportunities to experience it all in one never ending party of “we did it”s.

The next 10 miles of driving were a jubilee of excitement. Ryan DJd the moment with all the New York songs he could find. Even though they said the words “New York”, they were mostly songs about New York City – a point which Julie’s Dad was quick to point out. This is a fate us New Yorkers are quite accustomed to and somewhat resigned to. Even to call ourselves New Yorkers, which would most logically refer to all of us who live in and are from New York, isn’t really ours to claim. Most people, including most people in the state of New York and likely all of the people living in its city, hear “New Yorker” and think of someone that lives in New York City. Julie had her sights set on her ode to New York State and let her dad know she intended and hoped to write a song that all New Yorkers – the whole state through – might feel able to claim as theirs.

But, with that not yet done, we enjoyed every single note of the great New York songs, even though none of them had the shores of Lake Erie in mind when they wrote them, which is where we were when we were singing them. And we still sang our hearts out as they welcomed us to New York in all of their musical glory.

As was the case with every other state on this trip, we entered New York with the goal of getting as holistic a view of the state as possible within the limited time available. Unlike the other states, that included a specific goal to see as many parts that we hadn’t seen in our collective almost 90 years of habitation in the state (for Ryan, 52 out of his 54 years, for Julie, 36 out of her 45). We were off to the races succeeding in that first goal since we had decided to enter New York from its westernmost point. Instead of driving along interstate 90 as we had both done plenty of times, we hugged the shore of Lake Erie along Route 5. From the moment we entered New York, we were seeing things we had never seen before. Yes, we had seen Lake Erie, but we hadn’t seen this part of it. We ended up passing a park and pier with a beautiful lake view that we had never known was there.

Our first planned stop was a small town we had both heard of plenty of times, but had never been to or through – the town of Fredonia. It was a great first stop, as it was the quintessential New York small town. We immediately could tell we were in our home state even though we had never been to this particular town. As we walked through the town square, we admired their sweet one-seater benches set up for two people to be slightly facing each other so they could better have a conversation. What a brilliant design choice, we thought. We had been all over the country now and had never seen such a thing, and it seemed the most obvious thing to do. We also leaned that Fredonia is where the first natural gas well and company were started. Who knew? Well, the town of Fredonia did, but we certainly didn’t.

After walking around the quiet town a little bit, we hopped back in the car and made our way north. We had two very big stops planned for our fist day in New York.

Our first stop was a place in Buffalo where a piece of history occured for which we are quite grateful. We stopped at the house on Delaware Avenue where Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president, but that is not the historic moment to which we are referring. Our Buffalo pilgrimage was to the Anchor Bar on Main Street, where Teressa Bellissimo is credited with inventing the chicken wing in 1964. Now, she didn’t invent the wings themselves, as it is either the chicken or the egg that did that. But she did invent the idea of eating them as their own treat rather than just tossing them in with soup stock. She also invented the sauce that made them Buffalo wings. Julie loooooves chicken wings. For those of you that know her, you know she only just became able to eat them after spending the bulk of her life with a chicken allergy. She has grown out of that allergy and is now devouring chicken with a hearty vigor any chance she gets.

Ryan had been to the Anchor Bar before, but Julie never had. As Julie sometimes likes to do when something on the menu that she really wants has dairy in it, she likes to pretend she is not allergic to dairy and just take one for the team. Oftentimes, that means eating a gluten free cookie with only a little bit of butter in it or a touch of milk. She usually manages to get away with it fairly well. But, there is no question, Julie is definitely allergic to dairy and, though she dove into those wings with buttery Buffalo sauce like she wasn’t, this was no small dose. She had no questions in the post Anchor Bar hours that, though she had tried to pull one over her body, the jig was up. Julie spent the next few hours walking around feeling like a dumpster fire was going on in her bowels, and she did so with zero regrets. Those were some goood chicken wings.

Our next stop on the trip was one that we wrestled with whether or not to include – Niagara Falls. We have both been to Niagara Falls before, Julie a handful of times and Ryan a dozen or so. In the end, we decided we can’t do a 50 states tour where we are trying to get a sense of as much of a state as possible and NOT go to one of the world’s natural wonders in that state. And boy are we glad we did! It turns out, seeing Niagara Falls in the springtime is not something either of us have done, and it was a different sight altogether. It was amazing to see the massive snow and ice built up under the falls slowly melting away. And seeing the rushing turquoise blue rapids filled with ice melt run off rushing towards the edge of the falls was an absolute highlight. Niagara Falls is definitely one of those sights that hits you anew every time you look at it. It is a thing of wonder and worth as many trips as one can afford to take to see it. Having it in our veritable backyard means we can take advantage of that more often than most. We were very glad we included this stop on the trip.

We bypassed plenty of places in Western New York on our tight-as-always schedule, many of which we had been to many times before: the National Comedy Center and the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum in Jamestown, the Chautauqua Institution, the entire southern tier region of New York, and a bunch of sites in Buffalo. Oh, and we bypassed a city called Rochester – home to Eastman Kodak, a bunch of gorgeous Frederick Law Olmsted parks sitting on the shores of Lake Ontario, and…us. Since we live there and have done a decent job taking in the local sites over the years, we didn’t see the need to make a stop. That, plus we didn’t intend to step foot in Rochester until the trip was done.

After our first day of events in New York, we headed east towards the Finger Lakes Region. The Finger Lakes are a beautiful region in the eastern half of the westward jutting nose of New York. (We often think of New York as being shaped like Snoopy’s head, so the Finger Lakes would be somewhere between his eyes and his nose.) This region features a handful of long, gorgeous lakes running parallel to each other like fingers splayed out in an open hand. The Finger Lakes are filled with rolling hills and long ridges of land that are bigger than hills and smaller than mountains that rise up around the lakes in a way we haven’t seen elsewhere in our travels. They are carpeted with vineyards, and they are just about as pretty a place as you could hope to find. We stayed the night at a brewery through Harvest Host. Ryan had the pizza. It was delicious. Julie had the best Reuben of her life.

We had sent an email out to our friends and family about our 50th state race, which we would be running through one of those vineyards on the morning of our second day in Geneva, New York. We invited anyone who felt like making the just under an hour drive to witness us cross our 50th state race finish line. We were elated to get to see some familiar faces the next morning when nine of our friends and family were able to join in the festivities. Our 50th state race was rainy and beautiful and so much fun. You can read about it in our 5K section.

After the race, we enjoyed an hour or two of hanging out and chatting. It was, in a word, delightful.

We left Geneva energized by the accomplishment and the joy of friends and family.

That joy of friends and family would continue. One of the things that had happened as a result of not finishing our trip by the end of March as originally planned is that we had missed celebrating our nephew’s 13th birthday – an event we had been looking forward to celebrating together. When we had offered to fly home from Alabama for the occasion, our nephew frugally encouraged us to save the money for a future fun trip together and that we could celebrate when we finished the trip. We all decided to squeeze in some birthday fun and make it part of our New York trip.

After the race we met up with Julie’s Dad, sister Jennie, and birthday boy (scratch that, young man!) Harley at a Thai food restaurant in Geneva where we often meet , it being centrally located between our home in Rochester and their home in Ithaca. It was marvelous and the party carried on.

We would meet up in Ithaca with Jennie and Harley for more birthday festivities before heading out in the early AM for the rest of New York.

We knew we wanted to stop by the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls before joining up for more birthday fun in Ithaca. To our pleasant surprise, Harley proposed joining us for the trip to Seneca Falls. He suggested it with the perspective that he knew it probably couldn’t happen thanks to there only being two seat-belted seats in the van. This is true, and he was right that we definitely wouldn’t drive with him without a seatbelt on. That said, it is also true that, over the course of our trip, we have come to feel quite comfortable with one of us lounging in the back on the bed while the other drives. We tossed Ryan in the back and Harley joined Julie in the front. We had a blast having our first and only third party accompaniment for any part of the trip. Rather than a quick stop in Seneca Falls, we enjoyed a day of wandering, playing, and chatting.

After being away from her only nephew by blood, Julie absolutely adored getting to spend time with him. She got to see a little bit of the world and life through the lens of a 13 year old growing up in it, and Harley took on the responsibility to educate her on the modern music hits of the day. For all the time we have spent in the van, we uncharacteristically have listened to the radio very little, so Julie was entirely out of touch and appreciated the schooling.

On our way from Seneca Falls to Geneva, Julie got so absorbed in talking with her nephew that she went on autopilot. We didn’t have the GPS on since we’ve driven these roads towards Ithaca tons of times. Before long, we started to notice coming up on the town right before Geneva. Julie had autopiloted her way back towards Rochester! Oops! After a few head shakes and laughs, we turned south AGAIN. This time, we actually ended up heading towards Ithaca.

Ithaca is definitely on the list of New York State sights worth visiting. It is the home of Cornell University, a sight worth visiting just for its campus alone. It also has the Ecovillage of Ithaca, a community of 500 residents built to model sustainability-focused design. It is a sight worth visiting, and, also, conveniently, where Julie’s sister and nephew’s house is located, so we made it the next New York stop on our trip. We spent the afternoon playing soccer with Julie’s nephew in the rain and enjoyed Jennie’s delicious homemade guacamole and home-cooked dinner. We also enjoyed giving Harley his birthday presents and receiving some unexpected and wonderful Christmas presents they had been waiting to deliver.

The next morning, before leaving, Julie and her sister had planned to check Julie’s New York State swim off the list in the pond at the Ecovillage. Julie’s sister is a regular polar plunger. Even though Julie’s last swim in Lake Erie’s alleged 33-degree water was one she faced in a head to toe wetsuit, she was all in for following her sister’s lead and going in full plunge. Add onto that the windy morning, the two siblings were ready to get seriously cold and to love it.

It is the same for Julie everytime she faces down cold water. She gets really nervous beforehand and doesn’t want to do it at all. Then she gets in and realizes she actually quite loves the feeling of cold water – that is until hypothermia starts settling in…but, before that, its lovely. Painful at first, but eventually lovely.

Ryan stayed sane and warm on the shore in a hat and gloves. After a quick shower to warm up and hugs exchanged with Jennie and Harley, we were back on the road.

Our next stop was the first on our list of New York places we had long wanted to visit but never made it to – the Harriet Tubman house in Auburn, NY. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and the house is not open on Sundays. Still, we saw the house from the outside and paid our respects at Tubman’s grave

After visiting Harriet Tubman’s house and grave, we drove through Auburn and enjoyed the sights of another upstate New York town.

Perhaps the biggest deal of all in Auburn was stopping at our first Wegmans in months. If you are from a town with a Wegmans, you’ll understand why this was momentous.

From there, we began our drive up north to the Thousand Islands. Julie had only been to the Thousand Islands once and had always wanted to go back. More so, she desperately wanted Ryan to see it. After our New York tour, we wanted to have both been able to say we’ve visited all of the major regions in New York. There were only two Ryan hadn’t been to and only one Julie hadn’t been seen. For all of our years living in New York State, neither of us had been to Long Island past the most western part of it and Ryan had never been to the Thousand Islands.

While driving up there, we began researching places to stay. It turns out, the Thousand Islands doesn’t open until May. We couldn’t find a single open campsite. We came up with a few possibilities of where to stay, but as we were driving, we both realized we would be content just to visit it and make up some time driving back south afterwards to get ourselves in place for what we hoped would be an Adirondack hike the next morning.

Even though we only spent a couple of hours driving through and walking around by the water, we both absolutely loved it. It was so quiet, so peaceful and is one of the most beautiful spots we’ve been.

We began to strategize about where we would land for the night and hike in the morning. For those that don’t know, the Adirondack Park is one of the first wild forest preserves in the nation and covers six million acres. It is covered with trees, lakes, mountains, and towns that live within the blue line of the park. And, it is one of both of our favorite places. We chose to get married in the northeastern part of the park in Lake Placid, home to the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Games. If we hadn’t been to Lake Placid so many times in our lives and for extended time periods, we would definitely have made it part of our New York tour. But, there is a lot of New York to see, so we decided to save the extra four hours of driving it would add onto our travels by only driving through the western and southern area of the park. Julie desperately wanted to hike one of the 46 high peaks, but we decided the extra driving wasn’t worth it, and we knew we would definitely be back for hiking another time.

We ended up landing in another part of the park we’ve been to many times, the small town of Old Forge. This is another town we love and frequent when we get the chance. We not only ended up in this town we knew, but we ended up at a campground we know. Not only did we end up at a campground we know, but we ended up in the exact campsite that we’ve parked in exactly one time before. When we pulled into the familiar campsite, Julie found herself all of a sudden in the rush of a peak moment.

One of the fun parts of this part of the trip is all of the different full circle moments we get to have. There were a lot of full circle moments we expected, but this is one we didn’t see coming, and it washed over Julie like a shot from the blue. The last time we had camped together in this very campsite was almost exactly two years prior, when we had just started planning out this massive adventure. We didn’t yet own a camper van and were starting to discuss turning that dream into a reality. Before we decided to consider buying a van, let alone planning the almost year long trip to tour all 50 states, we asked Julie’s Aunt and Uncle if we could borrow their Sprinter van for a couple of nights, just to see if our theory of “Julie wants to live in a van and Ryan could be happy traveling around with her in it for a time” held water. Our Aunt and Uncle graciously allowed us to borrow their van, and we had come to this beautiful spot not too distant from our neighborhood – far enough away to really get a sense of driving distance in a van, but close enough to get home without too much hassle if we found out we didn’t much like living in a van.

It was also just days before she started another bucket list trip she would take that she called a memory lane trip, where she traveled to every major geographical spot in her life in chronological trip in what had ended up being a before and after experience in her life.

And, here we were back in that spot, having traveled the entire country in our own van that we had invested a great deal of time, energy, and money into making a reality. Here we were after completing the once dreamed of trips that had all happened since that moment of dipping our toe ever so gently in the waters of all of these other dream trips. The memory lane trip had happened, the trip to find the van, all of the work to get the van up to speed. Julie’s solo 6 week trip during which she had finished writing the musical she had started writing in college over 20 years prior. And then this 50 states tour. One dream after another and all of the work that went into dreaming them and making them a reality. Julie found herself overcome with the memories of all of the journey between then and now, all the personal development, all of the practical and logistical steps and all of the friggin’ fun adventures. It was the most sense of homecoming she had experienced so far and it was a pretty neat moment – one of those moments that sears itself into your body like a physical memory that you can get enjoyment out of revisiting even after it is gone.

We loved camping lakeside in this familiar Adirondack home. We love the Adirondacks and we were not keen to leave.

Luckily, we planned to do a small hike in them before we would officially leave town. We hiked Bald Mountain to the Rondax fire tower. It was a short 2 mile hike, but any hike to the top of an Adirondack Mountain with a view is so wonderful, even a short one. And, for a short hike, it definitely made you do some real work. On our tired bodies, it turned out to be the perfect hike in our 50th state, much better than hiking a high peak on our tired legs. It was soort enough to not push us to a breaking point, but strenuous enough to make us feel like we were really hiking and with a fantastic mountaintop payoff to boot.

From there, we headed south to another stop that was on our New York must-see list. Despite being an avid baseball fan as a kid and having always wanted to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, a mere 170 miles from our home, Julie had never been there. No matter what else happened, we were absolutely sure we would make a stop in Cooperstown. It was fantastic. You can read more about our Cooperstown adventure and one of the lovely humans we met there in our People Along the Way section.

We slept the night in a designated “all night parking” spot in the parking lot of Doubleday Field in Cooperstown. Julie had delicious Indian food and, to stay on the baseball theme, we watched The Natural, which was filmed in Buffalo, New York.

Cooperstown was another stop we weren’t all too eager to leave.

“On our way” to Albany, we swung by another town Julie had always wanted to see but never had – Oneonta, NY. One of her friends went to college there and it is just a town name you hear here and there when you live in New York. It was another lovely New York small town.

Our next stop was the state’s capital city of Albany, NY to take in the state capitol and the museum. We were pretty excited about this visit. This would be our 50th state capital city. If you are not too technical about capitol visits, this would also be the 50th state capitol that we would see…from the outside.

We had two state capitol blunders early in the trip before Julie became a pro at the 50 states tour itinerary planning business. Our first snafu was when we showed up to the Connecticut State Capitol on a Saturday. Rookie mistake. State capitol hours vary widely from state to state. Some are open on weekends, some are not. These were in the early days before Julie was rigorously checking such things as state capitol hours. You better believe when we showed up once to a closed state capitol, that mistake would never be repeated. This was in the early days of the trip when we had booked many things a month in advance. There would have been a lot of effects rearranging things to make a Connecticut capitol visit work, so we satisfied ourselves with walking around the outside and reading all of the statue plaques we could. At the time, we weren’t sure how strongly we would feel about needing to go inside. After 49 other capitols, we felt pretty strongly about it. Technically, we had visited the capitol, but we hadn’t seen the inside of it, and, by this point in the trip, that really mattered to us.

We still celebrated our arrival in Albany as our 50th state capitol visit, but there were some loose ends to tie up for purists such as ourselves.

New York was a great capitol to finish on for multiple reasons. One, it is absolutely stunning. There is no state capitol like it. You might be surprised to learn it, but it is also one of the most expensive government buildings ever built. This is sarcasm. As a long time New York resident, this does not come as a surprise. It cost 25 million dollars to build, which is equivalent to three quarters of a billion dollars in modern dollars. It was beautiful, though, so there is that.

The second reason it was great to finish on was that it felt pretty neat to have our home state’s capitol be the last one we saw. We can’t put our finger on why, exactly. Partially, it was kind of funny throughout the other 49 states to have seen so much of the nation’s capitol buildings while never having seen our own.

And, lastly, it was a great one to end on because we both have relatives that work there. Ryan has a brother that is a state senator. Though we would have loved to see him at work, unfortunately he wasn’t in session. But, still, we got to see where he goes to work. And Julie has an aunt that works for the Department for the Aging that is super great about last minute plans. Her office windows look right at the capitol and she came and met us for our state capitol tour. That was pretty special to finish our last capitol tour with family. Afterwards, we got to see her office.

While Julie took in the state museum, Ryan went and found his brother’s office, even though he wasn’t there. It was a neat way to really bring the whole experience of capitol visiting back home. Visiting the state capitols was one of our missions and turned out to be an incredibly rich part of our trip experience, one that brought home to us the reality and privilege and good old fashioned hard work of democracy and put in front of us how much heart, soul, thought, effort, pride, time and money has been invested by so many people over the many generations to build it and take care of it. We have always been the type to vote and participate, but not to the degree that we’d ultimately prefer to. Traveling the capitols opened up a mental pathway of what democracy is and means. Not that we ever would have denied that meaning before, but we had not felt it in quite the same way as we did now. It had become more real, more three dimensional, more accessible than before.

So, this was a neat way to check our 50th capitol off the list…well, kind of. More on that soon.

We finished the evening driving to a Harvest Host near New Paltz, NY. This was another one of our favorite New York stops. We parked in the open field amidst acres and acres of beautiful orchards. Julie did some serious damage to our wallets in their farm store, Wright’s Farm, in the morning, including purchasing their delicious sparkling apple cider that she is drinking while working on this post.

In the morning, we got going as soon as we could for what would be a full day.

We began the morning at another New York spot we’d both always wanted to visit, Hyde Park, home to the Presidential Library and Museum of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Perhaps we’ll write a ruminations post on the FDR Museum experience someday as there is just too much to say. We can leave it at the simple statement that we loved it and wished we had the whole day to read every word in it.

We had only a half a day.

And the reason for that was, as previously mentioned, that Connecticut capitol.

We are purists it appears. We set out to visit all 50 state capitols. And, we hadn’t seen the inside of Connecticut’s, let alone gotten to partake of a tour or any education about the state. We had looked at our various itinerary options and the easiest away to integrate a “swing by” Hartford, Connecticut “on our way” through New York and back to DC for our post trip epilogue was to include it as a slight detour during our New York trip. We had already known we wanted to get a chance to take the Long Island Ferry and we had already seen much of the southern part of New York. So, instead of driving south from Hyde Park to get to our second to last stop in New York, Long Island, we drove east to Hartford, Connecticut. One of the other loose ends we had to tie up was that we had missed a picture of the Welcome to Connecticut sign. We got that taken care of on our way.

We spent the afternoon touring the Connecticut State Capitol. It was worth it. We still like to consider New York our 50th state capitol, and it was, but Connecticut was the 50th one we saw on the inside.

That is not even the last state capitol technicality to come.

After we left the capitol we managed to squeeze in a 20 minute visit and hug with our dear friend Katy that had hosted us 10 months prior when we did Connecticut the first time. Another fun full circle moment.

We drove to New London and sent a hello text to our new New London friends, who we met in the line to Independence Hall in Philadelphia the week prior, as we were passing through without time to make an in person hello.

We pulled the van onto the Long Island Ferry and began our journey to the last place in New York State that neither of us had ever been to – Long Island.

We stayed the night at Wildwood State Park, where Julie took on what was, to her, the mildly terrifying task of writing her ode to New York. It was the first song Julie wrote that she was nervous to write. Out of all of the states, this is the one that she felt had some kind of stakes. The song started to take shape and, before we left, a first draft of her 50th song written in 11 months time was complete. She was pretty pumped and terribly hopeful that what she had written did justice to her home state.

When the next afternoon rolled around we made our way to Hither Hills State Park, further east towards Montauk and on the ocean side of the island.

We had one of the most wonderful afternoons of the trip, resting with the van doors wide open to the sound of the rushing waves and feeling ourselves relaxing deeply into the ocean air and enjoying this new-to-us part of our home state.

After some serious relaxing, we made our way to Montauk and the eastern most point of New York, which is also the eastern most point of the US if you don’t count New England. There would be no reason not to count New England, but, there it is.

We were both pretty thrilled to be there.

We were both reticent to leave, but also assuaged by the realization that returning to this spot was not an unreasonable thing to look forward to on future smaller adventures.

We had another loose ends itinerary decision to make. We have already discussed how we had reached our 50th capital city in Albany, along with our 50th capitol from the outside. And then, we visited our 50th capitol inside when we swung through Connecticut.

There had been one other capitol snafu early in the trip. We had showed up to the New Jersey capitol on a weekday when it was open. What Julie had neglected to ascertain during our research at the time was that New Jersey is the only capitol that does not allow visitors to wonder inside the capitol freely. You can enter as part of a tour or not at all.

So, we had visited the New Jersey state capitol. We had been inside of the New Jersey state capitol in the most technical of sense. But we had only been inside as far as the security checkpoint. We had never actually seen the building itself nor learned anything about it.

In our itinerary, we had specifically put two days in the schedule before our planned DC time to take care of all of these little loose end activities. So, we had the time to do it, but if we were going to visit the New Jersey state capitol, it couldn’t be between our last stop in New York and our arrival in DC as geography would dictate to be the most logical. It was a Thursday night and the New Jersey state capitol was only open on Friday. We didn’t want to rush our last stop in New York. We wanted to savor it, so we made the call to make the long drive from the eastern part of Long Island to Trenton, NJ on Friday for our tour of the capitol and planned to stay at an RV park in NJ that overlooked NYC and what would be our final stop of the state touring – the Statue of Liberty.

Well, this move turned out to not only be a good choice, but it turned out to be an auspicious one.

Well left at 9:00 AM. With traffic not being as bad at that time, it shaved an hour off our expected drive time, according to Google. It would now be only a 3.5 hour drive.

We had three extra hours to play with, but we figured we could make good use of them. We had one more New Jersey loose end to tie up that perhaps we could use that time for. We didn’t do that, but we did end up needing that time.

One our way towards New Jersey, while Julie was cruising down the highway, Julie went to apply the brakes to accommodate a slow down in traffic. Julie’s heart skipped about 5 beats as the pedal sank all the way to the floor and the van did not seem to be slowing down. It was one of those moments that feels like it lasts 20 minutes, but was actually about five seconds. With the brake fully pressed and Julie’s leg fully extended she started to calculate the swerve onto the shoulder that would be necessary to avoid crashing into traffic in front of her. Thank goodness, such swerving was not necessary and the van eventually did start to respond to the brakes. But, crap, that is a scary moment.

We immediately began making calls to dealerships and Monro Muffler and Brake in the Trenton area. Julie noticed that this issue was only happening very occasionally and only when slowing down quickly from a high speed. We drove the rest of the way at 50 mph and Julie made sure we were always about 20 car lengths away from the next car.

We made it safely to Trenton. The mechanic told us that our back breaks were in perfect condition. Our front breaks, however, were down to the width of a quarter. That is bad. Oh, and, apparently our break fluid was black. It’s supposed to be clear.

We both had flashbacks of the thousands of miles of steep hills we’ve gone down needing to hold on those brakes to keep from barreling too fast. We both had a moment of realizing how easy it is, without even trying, to be stupid humans. As precautious as we both are, it never occured to us to get our brakes regularly checked on such a trip. It will now. We are grateful that our stupidity didn’t cost us any more than the grand it cost us to get our brakes repaired. We felt very lucky to have learned that lesson the easy way. Learning things the hard way is, well, hard…and a lot of times, really, really hard. So, we left the Monro grateful for the free pass on that crazy oversight. Consider this part of the story a public service announcement to any and all long distance travelers out there. Get your brakes checked on the regular! We certainly will now.

We visited the New Jersey state capitol with some reticence of whether it was worth the extra driving and the time. Once the tour got started we were 100% certain it was the right choice. We really loved the tour and learned some great stories about Abraham Lincoln. And we both felt so much better and more complete having truly visited it. It was another neat unexpected full circle moment as memories flooded our minds of the last time we had been here in the fourth state on our trip back in June of 2024.

And, with that, we headed up to our campsite for the night. It was in Jersey City but was the closest you can get to staying at a campground in New York City. The State of Liberty was right there in view from the campground.

Before having dinner for the night, Julie polished up her song and sent it out to her friends and family that had volunteered to listen to her rough drafts. The moment she pressed send, yet another surge of accomplishment rushed over her. It was another fantastic feeling of crossing another finish line. 50 songs in 11 months. They all need polishing, they all need instrumentation, but they are written, they exist, and whatever they do or don’t become, whenever Julie listens to them, the feelings of being in each state come flooding back, not like memories, but like they are happening in real time. It was a neat moment.

The next morning, we began our journey into New York City for our final stop on the 50 states tour part of the trip.

Our first stop was one of Julie’s favorite places to eat in the world. It is a gluten free bagel shop and bakery that has bagels that taste like real bagels. Julie got herself a bagel and cream cheese and smoked salmon and a blueberry coffee cake and we headed back towards Battery Park with big smiles.

We stopped at the 9/11 memorial on our way to Battery Park. We didn’t have time to go into the museum, but were happy that we had gotten to see the United 93 museum in Pennsylvania. The 9/11 memorials are extremely powerful. If you get a chance to see them, we highly recommend it. The mood there is always solemn and poignant even in the midst of the bustling city happening all around them.

With that, we headed to the line for Liberty Island.

We kept exchanging glances as it sank in. This wasn’t just our last stop in New York State. It was our last stop in all 50 states, at least for the state touring part.

The trip wasn’t over yet. We still had our four upcoming days to decompress and take in DC. But still, it was very clear that something huge was coming to an end. We have both enjoyed this trip so much. We have both had pinch me moments throughout it and so many moments where we couldn’t believe we get to have this experience and live this life. But all good things must come to an end and that is not a bad thing. We knew we’d be back to New York City soon, but it is not about whether we ever get back to one place or another, it is about this trip as a whole. No matter where else we go, this trip was one whole thing and it is not just the places we went, but how it all fit together that was a big part of what made it so special. It was an experience of pure and unbridled freedom and we have treasured it every second. We figured there was no better place to bring it all to a close than at the Statue of Liberty.

We landed on Liberty Island and walked around the mighty colossus. It is a sight that never gets old and never ceases to elicit something. You can read more about that in another post.

We didn’t have time to stop at Ellis Island, but felt fine deciding to come back when we had more time for that particular visit.

As we sat on the ferry leaving Liberty Island heading back to Battery Park, we were wiped. Julie passed out in a trip induced stupor.

Just before she faded into a blissful sleep thanks to the relaxing rock of the boat with the Statue of Liberty in full view and receding into the distance, Ryan smiled at Julie and said,

”Happy 50 States Tour, baby.”

Julie sleepily smiled back at him and replied, “Happy 50 States Tour to you, too.”

And with that, within minutes, we were back on the metro riding under New York Harbor, leaving New York City and New York State for the final time on this trip. We grabbed the van from our Liberty Harbor RV campground in New Jersey and began driving south.

Goodbye for now, New York. We’ll see you when we get home.