Week 2: the reckoning

Not to be outdone by our last hectic week, Bethany and I are doing everything in our power to make sure this week is just as bananas. [yes, this is a shoutout to old school Riri- you still got it girl!]

When we'd last left off, we were in beautiful Frederick, MD [gratz on passing med school Maryland] with our friends Heather, Phil, and future Nobel laureate Maddy, having fixed up the vehicle and now ready to take on the nor'east.

We got up a bit late on Monday [totally underestimated the amount of time needed to make a successful blog post] and packed up the vehicle. With everything packed up neatly [and quicker than before] and set off for historic Gettysburg, PA. The drive was 50 minutes. As someone who grew up in the midwest, the distance between historical places on the east coast still blows my mind. How is it only an hour? How are DC and Richmond so close to each other and the Civil War still last 4 years! [as a history major, it pains me to say these things, but C'MON! I've played enough Real-Time Strategy games to be upset that no one back-doored the other capital during the war. ]

I never really thought about, but it makes perfect sense in retrospect, that Gettysburg is really America's monument to the Civil War. The museum there is top-notch [Cath, you'd appreciate the kid-friendly approach throughout it] and does a very good job of having sections speaking to those that often don't have voices: the confederates [makes sense], women, the average soldier [via letters], the town of Gettysburg itself, and the [freed] slaves. [I was also stunned by a History channel video we watched that spoke about the 'reconcilitation' 50 years after the battle that was only a reconciliation for whites. Honest reporting, on my History channel? It's less likely than you think]

The grounds around Gettysburg are well maintained and have a bajillion [rough estimate] monuments. Bethany and I toured them for a couple of hours after we finished the museum itself [and the amazing video that has voiceover work of Morgan Freeman [how you know a place is pulling out all the stops for it's documentary] and Sam Waterson [as Lincoln! I thought Lincoln had a high, reedy voice. Whatever, I'll give up historical accuracy to hear this man speak as Lincoln] narrating].

Seeing thousands come up towards you? How about no.

 using bayonets to defend this scrap of land?  Again with the no.

 The view this man had and his quick thinking saved the union forces

Another tangent: Almost every state who had men serve and die at the battle of Gettysburg has a monument on the grounds commemorating their soldiers. They're spread out along the 'auto-tour' you can take, along the lines of where the different sides were at the actual battle. So you pass many of the Union monuments in one section, and the Confederate ones in another. I got no end of joy from seeing the Confederate state monuments. On the one hand, the states want to honor the fact that men heeded the call and gave their lives in battle; on the other hand, you died trying to defend slavery. [And none of that bullshit about 'state's rights' in the comments here please. The museum did a great job of pointing out that the term wasn't even used during the Civil War and only after serving a couple of years in federal prison did Jefferson Davis start bandying it about as a excuse for being a man who believed that some people deserved to live in bondage because of the color of their skin]

Some of the monuments were done about as tastefully as could be:

other's tried to rewrite the history:

while others veered off into utter insanity:

We then continued our drive to New York, via shockingly beautiful Pennsylvania [minus Bethany's rando detour through the slums of Harrisburg]; I can't believe just how many trees there are!

Since we'd spent some more time at Gettysburg than we'd initially expected, we were running behind on getting to the campsite. Not wanting to repeat our issues from West Virginia, we realized we should stop before we run out of daylight again. We found one of the closer state parks, called Watkins Glen, and ended up stumbling into a lucky find.

After setting up our site [in record time!] we found some spare firewood the previous campers left, and got a warm fire going.

The following morning, we rode our bikes down to the hiking trail via one of the closed campgrounds, and walked down to the supposed 'falls'. Here's what we found:

Lord of the Rings; filmed in Upstate New York. 

 it was really hard to stay straight faced while this water is just splattering ALL AROUND YOU

That afternoon, we hopped into the vehicle and made our way up to Syracuse to meet up with my old customer team for dinner. We grilled, had a great time, tried not to talk shop. :)

On the drive home, Bethany and I realized that our temperature gauge was rising rapidly. Stopping quickly, we stopped, got the radiator open [without burning ourselves] and added some water. We got to a gas station, bought some coolant, added it with the water, and saw the gauge was stable. Made it back home, and everything looked great.

That next morning, after we'd packed up and hopped in the car, Bethany mentioned how much exhaust seemed to be coming out. Not really paying attention, we took off. A few hours later, we saw the gauge

climbing again, and nursed it to a town. This pretty much put a head gasket issue at the top of our list of likely culprits.  We received some help from a local man and his grandson who ran a repair shop, got us back on the road, and we cautiously made our way through the mountains of Vermont [without cell service], realizing that we needed to schedule time for the vehicle to get fixed.  We started phoning repairs shops, learning that many of them won't even touch a head gasket repair because it's so intensive.  Our plan was to get it looked at up in Brunswick while we're out at Jesse's island.  We only just made it to a campsite outside of Portland, ME, meaning we ended up doing a full 8 hour drive day, something we wanted to avoid.   We topped off the water again, and planned to just chill out in Portland Thusday, sleep in the airport, and deal with our issue the following week. 
 We struck camp this morning and made our way into Portland.  We putzed around, enjoying the city and soaking up some fun shops, including some stellar wine and spirits.  We returned to our vehicle to move it and spend our afternoon wrapping up this blog post, but everything changed when we tried to start the car.  It sounded rough.  That meant likely water in the cylinder, and our luck had run out.  We canceled our appointment up in Brunswick and called the local Toyota dealership.  They had us call a tow agency, and the wait began.  45 minutes they said, but then poof! 15 minutes later we see a truck with their logo come up....and continue on.  30 minutes later, he's back, but with a truck that couldn't tow us.  He was shaking his head at the miscommunication [I was adamant that, hey, FYI, we have a hitch platform, are facing backwards in our parking spot along a major route in Portland, and the car will not start]  The guy apologizes, goes back to get the other tow truck [the one he started with!] and we waited another 45 minutes.  Doing research, we're realizing at this point [and with 260k miles on the engine], we may just need to scrap this one and get a new one.  WOOOOF.  So tonight we cracked the nice bottle of wine we'd been saving in the hotel room, and said, "Hey, at least it can't get worse!"

BONUS PIC: Bethany rocking a TMNT band-aid!