Season Six!

For our sixth summer road trip, the Finkels are heading east for a combination of American history and outdoor activity. Our stops will include Civil War sites like Gettysburg, Antietam, Harpers Ferry, and the Appomattox Courthouse. We’ll pick up two National Parks – Shenandoah and New River Gorge; we’ll sample sections of the Appalachian Trail; and we’ll round things out with visits to Jefferson’s Monticello, Madison’s Montpelier, and a campus visit to UVA.

Trailer travel is never without its mishaps, and we managed to start things off with one right out of the gate this year. At our very first gas stop, Norah noticed a prominent exterior piece of the trailer had gone missing. Our exterior refrigerator panel had blown off somewhere between South Bend and Elkhart, Indiana.

The Season One Finkels would have been a little panicked about this development. But Season Six Finkels simply asked a guy if he could gift us a piece of cardboard and proceeded to duct tape it to the trailer. I can report now, six days later, that it’s holding fine so far – and we have plenty of cardboard and tape to spare. We’ll get the right size replacement panel when we’re back home.

Trailer travel is also never without a singalong or two and with alternating kid DJ’s we made our way through Indiana and Ohio while crushing several musical soundtracks and nineties throw-backs. As expected, Flora got in on the singing, and even Toby couldn’t hold back from participating in the concert.

We spent our first night at a surprisingly peaceful KOA just outside of Cleveland where our next-door neighbors also had a Beagle-Basset who could have been Toby’s twin and a resident beaver in a little pond who delighted us.

By mid-afternoon the next day, we had arrived in Gettysburg ready to conquer our itinerary in earnest.