DAY 1: Today was the Marine's birthday so we had plenty to celebrate this week! We left home quite early and arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, at around 10:30am when our 7-state
adventure truly began. After picking up our rental car at the Manchester airport, we made a quick stop and found a cache (our first cache in New Hampshire and the first cache we'd found together in quite a while). Then off we went to find a New Hampshire Historical Marker in Bear Brook State Park. However, on the drive there we spotted a couple of fairly new local historical markers, one of them about a 1790 
Milestone. We stopped to collect coords and photos for them and continued on to the state park. While at the historical marker we originally were targeting, we spotted another one across the road. Wow, New Hampshire is full of history and a beautiful place as well (in spite of all the white stuff on the ground -- we don't get that in Florida)!After leaving the state park, we started making our way to Maine where the Biologist had found out about an unclaimed Maine Historical Marker in York County. On the way, on the backroads of NH, the
Marine spotted a Quadrivia! He's excellent at spotting waymarks! After stopping to waymark the Quadrivia, we continued on to Maine. Shortly across the state border, we stopped to find our first Maine cache and had to slosh through some slushy snow to get to it (eek!). Then off to the York County Courthouse and its nice historical marker. Unfortunately that's all the time we had for Maine this trip, but we'd like to come back some day to truly appreciate it, preferably when there's no snow on the ground.Next we headed to Massachusetts and stopped to find a cache at the Welcome Center rest area. Then off to the city of Lowell to find some Massachusetts Historical Markers. This was a nice town and we spent a little bit of time wandering around the downtown area, then off to Tyngsboro, MA, on a short detour to visit an already posted Bailey Bridge. After this short detour, we made a stop along a section of the Concord River that's part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers system (in anticipation of that new category getting approved) then off to Rhode Island via I-95. We hadn't gone far and were starting to skirt around Boston when the Biologist's eyes got wide and she screamed "Is that a Bailey Bridge?!! Oh my gosh, it is!" It was a Bailey Bridge under construction alongside the Winter Street overpass over I-95 in Waltham, Massachusetts! And it hadn't been claimed yet! What an unexpected find! Of course, by the time we agreed it was a Bailey Bridge, we'd already passed the exit for it and had to get off at the next exit and make our way back, but well worth the effort.
After the excitement of finding a Bailey Bridge, we were absolutely worn out, although maybe the 3:30am wake up to catch our flight this morning had more to do with it. We started looking for a place to spend the night and found a Hampton Inn in Raynham, MA. And are we glad we did. The hotel receptionist recommended we try the StoneForge Tavern for dinner and we had a fabulous dinner and birthday celebration for the Marine before heading back to the hotel and getting some much needed sleep.DAY 2: This morning we made our way bright and early to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where we
wandered around some historic mills that were nicely preserved. We took photos and coords of several Rhode Island Historical Markers and plaques with plans to start a new category for them. We couldn't believe there wasn't already such a category! Then off to Newport to find a cache and a Portuguese society hall named after Vasco da Gama. You just never know what you'll find if you do a little bit of googling!It didn't take long to make our way through Rhode Island (it is the smallest U.S. state after all) and before we knew it we were in Connecticut and making our way
west. We stopped to find a cache and also to take coords and photos at a few unclaimed Connecticut Historical Markers we spotted along the way. We especially enjoyed our stop at the Willington historical marker where we wandered around checking out the nearby historic meeting house and WWI memorial. Then, we continued making our way through CT, but before leaving the state we made a short detour through Enfield to check out the old Shaker Village there and its Lavoir (Wash House).We made a quick pass back through Massachusetts and passed by a historical marker posted by
BruceS so of course we had to make a quick visit, then on to Vermont. We found a cache and then spent a couple of hours trying to locate a few official Vermont Historical Markers with no luck. We decided to try for one more historical marker the Biologist had placed on the list and lucked out with this one! It was titled "Vermont is a State I Love." We had to agree. It was really beautiful and we decided we'd really like to come back here in the fall.By now, it was finally time to start making our way over to
New York State. We found a few unclaimed New York Historical Markers in the Albany area and made our way south to Kingston where we found another Hampton Inn (we love their comfy beds and pillows!) where we could lay our weary heads.DAY 3: Being only about 2 hours away from New York City, we decided to
sleep in a little before making our way to the city of Hyde Park to have breakfast at the Eveready Diner, a restaurant that had been featured on the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-ins & Dives" (one of the Marine's favorite shows). After eating we braced ourselves for the drive to JFK Airport where we had arranged to turn in our rental car. Did I mention the Eveready Diner had a Neon Googie Sign?We passed through Poughkeepsie on our way south and what did we see but a marked Cycling Route along Highway 9 -- another unexpected find! Then
back on the road to NYC -- who knew there would be so much traffic there on a Sunday morning?! It was a bit tense during the last 45 minutes of our drive, but the Marine did a great job and got us to the airport without any trouble. We then took a 3-hour shuttle trip to our hotel (you don't even want to know about THAT adventure, but suffice it to say that we arranged for a car through our hotel to get back to JFK Airport for our flight home). We checked into our hotel in midtown Manhattan and by then it was time for dinner and we made it an early night.DAY 4: Our first day of exploring New York City! We purchased 2-day tickets for a sightseeing "hop on, hop off" bus tour around Upper and Lower Manhattan. We had a wonderful time going up on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building. It was very windy and cold up there but the views made it all worthwhile, plus we found a virtual cache up there.
Next we headed to Battery Park to catch a ferry to Liberty Island to see the amazing Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to see the historic entry facility for immigrants entering the United States. After spending an absolutely amazing afternoon at these two National Monuments, we caught the ferry back to Battery Park, where we spotted a Peace Memorial and 9/11 Memorial Site, as well as a Maritime Memorial. What a wonderful day!DAY 5: Today was our 1st wedding anniversary! This morning we got back on the sightseeing bus and hopped off at the Port Authority Bus Terminal where we found a Rolling Ball Sculpture. Around this time we also decided to hoof it to an unclaimed Toynbee Tile the Biologist had found out about through a Google search. It was in fantastic shape! Then as we were passing through Lower Manhattan, we spotted four Fireworks Trees on the roof of a restaurant & bar. We saw another Fireworks Tree in Manhattan and it's still out there waiting for someone to claim it. That night for our anniversary dinner, we went to Coppolas, a wonderful little Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from our hotel. We had a nice romantic dinner and marveled how fast the year had passed.
DAY 6: Today we decided to spend some time wandering around Central Park and looking for some of the caches there. We found a physical cache, an Earthcache, and a couple of virtual 
caches, as well as a Dog Statue and a few Statues of Historic Figures, before our feet and legs finally gave out on us and we decided to call it a day. On the walk back to our hotel, we spotted a Shake Shack. We had just seen an interview of Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi from the Bravo Channel's "Top Chef" on a TV in the JFK Airport and they were asked what restaurant each thought had the best burger. Padma said hers was the Shake Shack so in we went to see if we agreed. The Marine had a ShackBurger and the Biologist had a vegetarian 'Shroom Burger. They were both teriffic! We wish we had a Shake Shack in Jacksonville!DAY 7: This morning we slept in a bit, then got up and packed for our ride to the JFK Airport.
Thanks to the car we had arranged, it only took about 45 minutes to get from our hotel to the airport. Although our flight was delayed by an hour, it was a direct flight home and we were so happy to finally get there. We'd had a wonderful adventure, but it's really true... there's no place like home.
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