CT, RI, MA, ME, NH, VT

After Beacon, NY we drove on to New Haven, CT -apparently Connecticut is the nutmeg state and home to Yale University- what fun things we get to discover! Leo & Gem we’re excited to go for a walk by the Long Island Sound. We learned all about horseshoe crabs and saw some folks fishing off a pier. We encountered a horseshoe crab skeleton after some local bird must have feasted on it. Those things are incredible. Did you know that horseshoe crabs have blue blood? It was amazing to find this natural area filled with so many interesting things right in the heart of the city.

We drove through Yale’s campus and discovered it wasn’t as big as we expected. The buildings and houses surrounding the campus were large and very old. The architecture of the area was impressive. We saw this outside one of the buildings!

The next day we headed toward Rhode Island. We drove through Mystic, CT a quaint little seaside town and stopped for lunch at a park in Rhode Island.

We almost missed taking this state off our list. We say you can’t count a state unless you stopped and did something fun there. We pulled off the highway at the last possible exit before entering Massachusetts. We had only been in RI for 45 mins!

After that we headed into Boston. This city is crazy busy! It felt a lot like Seattle – tons of traffic and lots of people. We have been here before for the Boston Marathon in 2012 but it was good to be back. We went for a run downtown near the finish line of the marathon and loved that the Adidas store has free lockers and showers.

We got to catch up with Brad 2.0 and hear all about the success that SAME is having under his leadership. We also got to visit the Sam Adams small batch research and development brewery while we were in town. It was quite a feat trying to locate it and a place where we could park the van as the brewery is nestled in the heart of a residential neighborhood. Another brewery to add to the list.

Lunch was at Panera Cares downtown. Before their corporate buyout, there were as many as 5 Panera Cares locations around the country. Ron Shaich, Panera’s founder and CEO at the time, saw SAME Cafe on the news one night and was inspired to use his restaurant experience to help those in need. In 2010, Panera Cares open multiple locations to tackle food insecurity in the communities where Panera’s were already operating. Today Boston is the only one still operating.

When Panera initially came to us and asked us about the concept, we wondered if it could work for a corporation to operate a pay-what-you-can cafe. We didn’t know if a corporation could take on a social challenge as complex and intimate as food justice. We worried how people would respond. At the heart of the concept is care and concern for each human being. Could a corporation show that? There are a couple of interesting articles on the web that address why the other locations may have closed. We were just happy to get to experience this location and were proud that Panera Cares is still working on food security. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.fastcompany.com/40582757/why-paneras-experiment-with-pay-what-you-want-dining-failed

A check light came on in our van and we had to stop to get it checked out. It just so happens that a cousin lives in this town too! (Yes, we even know people in Maine!) We got to hang out with Wil, his husband Rodney and their friend Russ. And the van is just fine – thank goodness!

The drive to Acadia National Park was just incredible. We passed a sunflower field, lots of shore line and crossed amazing bridges.

The park itself was even prettier! The weather cleared for us and it was a gorgeous day. We visited Thunder Hole, Otter Bay and tried to drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain but we didn’t get to see anything as it was fogged in. All our other views were amazing.

It was great to be at the ocean today as we got the news that Aunt Katie Elsbree had passed away in the night. Aunt Kate lived in San Diego and we have loved visiting her and going to the ocean with her. We spent most of the day playing in tide pools as that is one of Libby’s favorite memories of visiting Aunt Kate’s as a child.

From Acadia, we began our trip back across the country. Our first stop heading west is Gotham, NH. We pretty much stopped there because while researching we saw that there was a cafe called Libby’s Bistro. It was amazing!