Wednesday May 19, Day 70, NYC

Woke up this morning and found out that the pops we heard last night were in fact fireworks over the statue of Liberty (Luke woke up and looked out the window!).

We started off planning not to go to New York City, but when we got up in the morning and noticed a ferry terminal 100 yards from the RV, we decided to go get on it!

We bought a ticket for pier 11 around the other side, but since we were tourists we got on the wrong ferry. So we started our New York tour at the financial trade center instead. Merrill Lynch was one of the first buildings we passed, then American Express, before finding ourselves at the construction site where the World Trade Towers used to stand. Amanda and I had both been up in the towers years earlier, so it was something to stand there and consider 9/11, and then try to explain that to the kids. We walked around the site, and passed a memorial on the wall of the fire station, which was sobering, and chilling as we remembered that day.

We navigated across Broadway and onto Wall Street, running right into the Federal Hall National Memorial, where General George Washington took the oath to become the first President of the United States. We hurried on to catch the last published ferry back to our RV spot, only to find that the schedule was wrong and we missed the last ferry by a few minutes. So we took an extended walking tour of the city as we made our way back to the financial trade center to catch a train across to Jersey City. Along the way, we stopped at the famous bull (along with a bus load of persistent picture taking Chinese tourists), and the departure point for the statue tours, as well as a few other sites along the way. We also figured out that the funny looking building we could see from the RV spot was actually Ellis Island!

Since we actually planned to make our way to the Boston area today, we jumped in the RV and hit the road. It turned out to be a state crossing day. We started in New Jersey, went to New York, back to New Jersey, then New York, on through Connecticut, Rhode Island, and finally Massachusetts. We found a place near Plymouth Rock, and found that as we move further north, we are moving back to being early tourists. Not to mention flowers are blooming again. Another long but good day. We have now completed 10 weeks on the road, and we are starting to feel it a little bit as we head into week 11.