Planning a week long RV trip is difficult enough. Planning a longer trip can have even more difficulties, particularly for foreign travelers. Tom Haye was planning such a trip and to make it more problematic he was hoping to experience fall colors at a time when many leaves had already fallen from trees.
Tom wanted to bring his parents to the U.S. around upstate New York, Pennsylvania and maybe Vermont. His parents had not been back to the US since 1969 and his mom had always talked about the time they were here and the trees during the fall. He wanted to give them a trip of a lifetime to see the beautiful countryside.
He decided to contact RV Adventure USA after finding them online. Although he had already rented an RV for the trip he needed help with getting to the various locations he had chosen. And he also wanted rental cars to be available at each stop along the way to make the traveling a little easier.
We provided him with a detailed itinerary for the 12 days and 11 nights he would be traveling.
A brief list of recommended sites en-route & camped:
- Mexico: Kelkirk Shores State Park – 1st Fall Festival 2016
- Lake George: Fall foliage scenic drives
- Hinsdale: American Museum of Fly Fishing & Hildene, Fall foliage scenic drives
- New Haven: Mark Twain’s home, Sturbridge Village, Fall Foilage scenic drives, Mystic Seaport
- Quakertown: Sleepy Hollow
The result was everything Tom expected and more. Here is his recounting of the vacation.
“We picked up the RV, got our training, and we were then ready to set off to Pocono, which was only an hour or so away and was our first campsite. I was quite intimidated by the size of the bus, and without any experience in driving a bus was worried this might be a real challenge. To be honest, in the first 10 minutes or so I had worked out that at the speed we were driving it was actually quite easy. A week later and probably 20 hours of driving later I feel like a pro and love driving the big bus around the USA – your roads are so forgiving and people drive slowly here.
Pocono was our first night at a proper campsite. The campsite was actually very nice but due to the low temperature it was a challenge to have a shower in the morning. The next morning, we left early and headed over to Mexico NY. We made some nice trips in the local area and visited the fish hatchery on the salmon river – AMAZING! We also went for a walk down the waterfalls that RV Adventure had suggested we go to. Drove around the countryside and saw some of the amazing trees with the most amazing colors. My dad and I also met a local riverkeeper who showed us around some of the fishing on the salmon river. What an amazing day.
Lake George was amazing. There is an outlet at Lake George and spent quite a lot of money in buying clothes – lots of them! Unfortunately my mum was quite unwell and we changed the plans somewhat in terms of trips but managed to see some amazing forests and lakes in the Lake George area. We ended up in Inlet, Lake Pleasant and Raquette Lake.
We then drove to Hinsdale and en-route found that the weather was taking a turn for the worse – half way through we visited the fly fishing museum in Manchester VT which happened to be next door to the Flagship Orvis store (the home of fly fishing – all my dad’s rods come from Orvis) so we spent quite a bit of time there.
Route 9 took us over a mountain range and the snow got worse and worse up to the point at Woodford where I didn’t know if we would be going any higher. We contacted RV Adventure and really appreciated their time to check their altitude map and sure enough we had gotten to the highest point by then – when we were coming into Brattleboro we had seen lots of snow ploughs going up the hills.
I was particularly impressed that RV Adventure had gone to so much detail in their planning and really every single junction or sign was detailed in their documents. Even when leaving Enterprise in Brattleboro they told me to turn right, then immediately left into a road and then told me to do a U-turn in the shopping center car park – they must have been doing a virtual drive on google earth to give me this much detail! Enterprise gave us a massive Suburban so we had a 4×4 to play in the snow with and that evening found a local (amazing restaurant in Brattleboro) – this was the scene in the streets that evening:
Whilst in Hinsdale we did your trip across the countryside in the suburban and had some fun driving in (what was by then melting) snow. Had lunch in a great restaurant in Wilmington. After this we went to New Haven.
Tonight we are at Riverdale campsite and just finished a nice dinner – tomorrow and Monday we’re off exploring before we head back to Quakertown to return the RV.
It’s been an amazing trip and this has been massively due to your planning and support you have given us. We are all so amazed with the detail of planning and the detail in the route descriptions – thank you so much for this, it would have been a lot more stressful without it.”