I left fairly early, around 7.30 or so, headed for the RV park in Jersey City, about four and a half hours away. This involved driving through New York City, which I was a bit nervous about. I was going south, so I didn’t need to go through Boston, and I didn’t have trouble with traffic.

I headed inland on I-93, before getting onto I-95, which was where most of my trip was spent. I entered the small state of Rhode Island, and drove through the capital of Providence. This was the only state I visited that I didn’t set foot in, I just drove through it. The highway went towards the coast, and entered Connecticut. I drove straight through except for a brief stop part way along.

Eventually I entered New York State, leaving the coast and I-95, and got onto Manhattan Island, going across to the Hudson River. The road seemed to go over bridges and through tunnels, and then onto smaller streets. There was a stretch that went along the edge of the river for quite a while. In one place, the lines between the lane I was on, and the next one, disappeared completely. I assumed that lane was going away, and started to get across to merge, and someone tooted me. After a while the lines appeared again. It seems that they had just completely worn away. I’ve never seen that before.

After going a fair way along the river, Google directed me through the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River to New Jersey. It got a bit quieter on the New Jersey side. I had marked out a service station to fill up the van, not far from the RV park. There was another van parked at a pump on the other side of the lane when I went in, and I just squeezed by, going over the kerb next to the pump a little, to get in. I didn’t want to wander around trying to find another service station. This was my last stop for the RV, and I was keen not to drive in New York and New Jersey more than necessary!

After filling up I drove along an increasingly quiet road down to Liberty Harbor RV park. I was surprised how quiet it was. Monday was a public holiday, at least for some people, and so perhaps that was why traffic hadn’t really been a problem on any of my journey, but that road never seemed to be very busy. I think the New Jersey side was just less busy in general. I checked in, and they gave me some useful information about how to catch the subway into New York, and some information handouts.

The RV park was almost just a large parking lot. The spaces were fairly decent in size, because it was designed for much larger vehicles than mine, but everyone was just parked next to each other, and there was no privacy. But it was a great base to explore New York from, just five minutes from the subway, and most people seemed to stay in their vans rather than outside. Though it was by far the most expensive RV park I’d stayed in, at US$150 a night, even a bed in a shared dormitory in New York City was going for $120 a night, so it was good value.

I wasn’t sure what to see first. I got to New York about 1, and decided to look at Central Park. I found the subway terminal near the RV park. The train ran under the river, and went fairly slowly and a bit uncertainly it seemed. I knew when we were going under the river because there had been two or three stops, then quite a few minutes without any stops, when we went under, then more stops. A few stops later I had to get off, at 42nd street, and change trains. The subway under the river was run by a different company to the one on Manhattan Island, and I think this was the end of the line for that company.

I had bought a card that I could use on the train turnstiles, and put some money on it. I could transfer between trains on Manhattan Island and that service, but I had to pay two fares, one to take the subway from near the RV park, then the subway on Manhattan Island itself. The card worked on both services, but there was no transfer.

I Googled what train to take to get to Central Park. I found the right platform and caught the train with the right number, but the next stop wasn’t what I expected. I got off and realised that the train services had “uptown” and “downtown” routes. Uptown was going north I think, and downtown going south. Google had actually said to take, I think it was the uptown route, but I hadn’t noticed the distinction. Another train came pretty quickly, and I got to the stop at the southernmost end of Central Park.

Exiting up into New York, I was struck by how noisy it was. People were continuously tooting their horns, and there were often sirens. The city seemed to be in permanent gridlock. There were a lot of food trucks at the entrance to the park, and I got a philly cheesesteak for lunch and ate it at the entrance. The day was partly cloudy, with bursts of sun sometimes.

Then off into the park I went. It was quite large, about 2.5 miles (4km) long, though only about 0.6 miles (1km) wide. There were a number of streets intersecting it, but most of them seemed not to have any cars on them. I’m not sure if this was just because it was a public holiday, or if they had permanently closed them to cars. There were people cycling on them, and some horse-drawn stage coach type things going along. There were still traffic lights at the crossings. The crossings at traffic lights in New York had a button to press, as Australian lights do, but I’m not sure if it activated anything. Once pressed, there was a stern voice saying, “Wait!” every so often until it went green.

I have to admit to being a bit underwhelmed by Central Park. The autumn colour really hadn’t started yet, which I found a bit surprising, and there weren't many flowers. There were mainly large ovals, trees, a couple of lakes, and areas for playing sports. It was truly amazing to have an area that size in the middle of Manhattan Island, and I think if I lived in the city I would probably appreciate it a lot, but having been spoiled by the autumn splendour of the Adirondacks, and Butchart Gardens, this left me a bit flat. But it was nice to explore it, which I did for around three or four hours.

There was a large oval where people were eating, with the skyscrapers of New York in the background. Further along I found one of the lakes, which some people were boating on, and a fountain in front. The lake was pretty with the trees surrounding it, and the reflections, with peeks of skyscrapers here and there. There were a lot of deciduous trees everywhere, and I think the park would be a spectacular place when they changed colour.

A bit further along was a lake, with a small castle in the background, called Belvedere Castle. I climbed stairs inside the castle and looked out at the view below.

Further north again were basketball courts, with plenty of people playing on them. There looked to be areas for golf too, and baseball. Towards the northern end was a large lake, called Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. I walked along one side of that, then got to the northernmost section of the park. There were less and less people as I got further along. After a while I came to a stream and small waterfall.

I was looking in vain for a toilet, and eventually found a single one, which seemed to be occupied and stayed occupied for a while, so I moved on. I did eventually find a toilet block. They were not very plentiful. I realised after a while that not having many people around, though peaceful, might be a disadvantage. I was at one spot where there were a few people who looked a bit unsavoury, and one wanted to know if I had a cigarette. I didn’t feel entirely safe there, and was glad to get back to areas with more people around.

I walked across out of the park to a nearby subway stop – there were plenty of them – and went back south to the area where the Empire State Building was. It was interesting to see it towering above. As I walked around the city, one thing I noticed was that there were large heating vents every so often under the footpaths, pumping out warm air. It wasn’t especially cold, but they were going nonetheless. Manhattan Island has a huge steam heating system running through it, so perhaps they were something to do with that.

I took the subway back under the Hudson. The New Jersey station was near a mall, and I got a couple of donuts from Dunkin Donuts for snacks – they had donuts in the colours of the local football teams – then walked back to the RV park around 6.30, a little after sunset. I passed a marina on the way back, which was pretty. The park was close to an inlet off the Hudson River, with a large car park next to it, which I think was for people taking some kind of cruise from there, or for people parking to use the marina. I never noticed it very full. It wasn’t possible to walk very far along the bank of the inlet, so I walked back and set about making dinner, trying to use up the remaining supplies I’d brought.

It was remarkably quiet there at night, especially considering how noisy New York City was, and I slept pretty well. There were tall buildings around, which looked nice lit up at night, and the Statue of Liberty was just visible from some spots.

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We got going fairly early to go to Mary and Charlene’s local church, Fort Square Presbyterian. Mary parked on the street next to the church. Opposite was a little triangular grassy piece of land covered with American flags on poles, with people attending to them. I’m not sure if that was a permanent thing or in honour of something. The pastor had arrived fairly recently, and was getting to know the congregation. He was quite an enthusiastic preacher.

After church Mary made salmon sandwiches and brought some other snacks, and we went to the place we’d spied out the previous day. It was a sunny afternoon, and we went walking there for about half an hour, up to the top of a hill. There was a peek of a view across to the city. We ate our lunch, and did a bit more walking, enjoying the sunny weather. We met a few people coming and going while we were eating.

When we got back to the car, Mary had the idea of going to a lookout at the top of a hill nearby, the Blue Hill Observatory. We all started walking up the hill to the Blue Hills Observatory. It was a bit of a climb, and Mary and Charlene wanted me to go on up without them, as they were going slower, and the observatory might have been closed by the time they got there.

I got up there, and the bottom floor had a little shop where you could pay to to onto the roof and look at the view. I went up through a room with measuring instruments in it, then onto the roof, which had a great view all around. In the distance you could see the buildings of Boston, and a little strip of sea. There was an instrument up there which concentrated the sun onto a strip of paper that was slowly pulled through, leaving a burnt line, and how much it was burnt as it went along told them how much sun there had been. The sun was concentrated through a kind of glass sphere, which was quite expensive, and the guide mentioned that one had been stolen one time.

There was very little autumn colour in the surrounding area, except for one very bright strip, which I think was probably what I had seen the day before, along some kind of river or marsh. I came back down, and rang Mary to see where they were. They hadn’t gone to the top in the end. We were having a bit of trouble finding each other, it was hard to work out where each of us was, but we sorted it out in the end. It was a lovely walk.

I had another look at the beautiful autumn foliage while it was sunny, walking along a small road taking photos, while Mary was driving after me for a few minutes as I got some good shots. They also drove through a very affluent area, where there were enormous houses. I had my usual Bible study at 8.30 with everyone, but this time with Mary and Charlene in person, which was lovely.

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In the morning, we got off to a lateish start. It was a grey, overcast day. Mary was working, and Charlene shouted me breakfast at a cafe which sold a lot of different kinds of pancakes, where she sometimes went. I ordered three pancakes, and bacon and egg, but I wasn’t prepared for the enormous size of the pancakes!

This was the last stop for the van before getting to Jersey City where I would return it, so I had to clear out everything except the bare essentials of what I would need for the three days in the RV park there. So I left the sleeping bag, food I hadn't used and other supplies. Also I had to leave some clothes there, some of which were still in the box that I’d taken to Phoenix, because I would be over my luggage allowance – I had flown over with 28kg, and I was taking a lot of flights from there before I went home, and some at least had only 23kg allowance, so my plan was to post some stuff back to myself.

I swept out as much of the accumulated dust as I could, and threw out some rubbish that had built up. I would be going to New Jersey with just three tins for dinner, some milk and oats for breakfast, 23kg of luggage, and otherwise only what had been issued to me in the van. It took quite a while to get all that done. I was rather sad to be dismantling my nice setup that had served me so well, in preparation for saying goodbye to the van, though it was also nice to look forward to staying in houses too.

Mary got home from work around 4, and drove us to a few scenic spots nearby in an area called the Blue Hills Reservation, including Houghton’s Pond, which was actually a lake, and had a small beach, and was surrounded by trees. After the colour in the Adirondacks, there was very little autumn colour in this area. Different areas seemed to lose their leaves at quite different times. There were a few people fishing in the pond, and a smaller pond with water lilies on it next door.

We visited an area on the reservation where there was a forest, which we thought would be good to go to the next day when there was more time, and hike there. There were small areas that did have beautiful autumn colour, which seemed to be along some kind of marsh. For dinner we went to Chick-Fil-A, a restaurant chain founded by a Christian, which doesn’t open on Sunday. I had been rather wanting to try it out, so it was nice to be able to eat there.

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I had chosen this place to stay overnight partly because it was near to the Kancagamus Highway, which was said to have spectacular autumn colour at this time of year, with many sights and walking trails along its roughly 35 mile (55km) length, between the towns of Lincoln and Conway. The run of sunny weather had come to an end, and it was a cloudy, misty day. The colours were still beautiful though.

It was only 15 minutes to the first stop, Lincoln Woods Trail. I arrived about 7.45, and set off along a footbridge over the Pemigewasset River, which was beautiful with the coloured trees along the sides.

I walked a little way along a trail that ran near the river, though without views of it, where the trees formed a kind of very high tunnel. I hadn’t planned to hike very far along this, so I turned back before long.

About 10 minutes further on was Big Rock Campground, with very striking colour at the entrance, then on I went to several lookouts, or overlooks as they are called in the US.

The road wound up to the highest point, Kancagamus Pass. There were mountains visible in the distance from the overlooks, though the tops were covered in cloud, and hills covered in colourful trees.

The CL Graham Wangan Overlook and Sugar Hill Scenic Vista had particularly lovely colours.

About 8.50 I got to the walk to Sabbaday Falls. Apparently, many moons ago, workmen had been working on the road nearby, near the start of the winter season when no more work was done, and hid their tools there so they could collect them in the spring and wouldn’t have to carry them home. They left them there on and headed back on a Sunday, hence the name Sabbaday Falls.

It was a short walk up the river to the falls, which were quite pretty, pouring down into pools and over rocks, down over several levels, with a quite big drop in the middle. There were steps and observations platforms, and a number of people around, though it wasn’t crowded.

I could see the parking lots were starting to fill up already, though there was still space. It was the Friday before the Columbus Day long weekend, when a lot of traffic would be expected. I had wanted to make sure I was there before the long weekend to avoid as much traffic as possible, and the moody weather probably helped with there being less people too.

I particularly wanted to see Rocky Gorge, which was about 10km further on – the photo I used as my background screen was labelled Rocky Gorge, and I thought it was likely it was this one. I had a hike planned at a spot before the gorge, but drove past it and had a bit of a look at the gorge first in case the car park was full when I came back.

I am still not entirely sure if the gorge was the one pictured on my screen background, but I think it was. I didn’t find a scene that looked completely like the picture, but the area had a lot of the same elements, rocks, river and autumn trees, and I think cloud was hiding the tops of the mountains that were in the photo I had. The gorge was very pretty, along the quite wide Swift River, with trees on either side.

From there I set out to find the spot where the hike was, going to Hedgehog mountain. It turned out not to be so easy to find. I was looking for a signposted turn-off for the mountain, but I didn't see anything mentioning it around where I thought it should be. I stopped at one spot and met another guy who was also looking for the hike. I had seen a map on a billboard at one of the stops which gave me an idea of where it was, and we discussed exactly where it might be, then headed off.

I eventually did find the spot, with a sign that mentioned a different trail, but was also for the one I wanted. It was down a narrow road, to a parking lot which was already nearly full around 10am. I parked the van just outside the parking lot, manoeuvring it to get it on the side of the road out of the way of traffic as much as possible. I met the other guy there who was glad to see I had made it too.

The hike was fairly steep in places, and quite a few people were taking it. There was a stopping place part way up where you could go out on a rock and enjoy the views. Two or three small groups were resting there. The beautiful view looked across a fair sized valley with autumn foliage, to cloud-covered mountains in the distance. It was still quite cool, misty and cloudy.

I kept hiking and got to the summit, to find it clouded in. There was nothing really to see, except cloud. I asked the Lord if He would lift the clouds. After a while there were some breaks in the mist, and I saw vistas of large hills and colourful valleys. The clouds lifted enough to start to see a bit of a distance away, though the far distance was still hidden.

I found another spot near the summit which looked like it would have a good view, and stayed there quite a while, but it didn’t clear much again after that. I headed back down to the van again, it was about two and a half hours for the hike. By this time there were cars parked quite a distance along the road to the car park. I had been thinking of doing a longer hike up a higher mountain, but was glad I hadn’t – there wouldn’t have been much to see there either probably.

From there I went back the other way again, skipping a second look at Rocky Gorge, where the car park was looking pretty crowded, and found a spot where I could pull off the road and take my folding chair down near the river for lunch. I had a look at Lower Falls, only about a mile down the road from Rocky Gorge, with similar views, and quite a few people walking around enjoying the scenery.

A little further along was the Albany Covered Bridge, one of many in New Hampshire. It was a fairly narrow enclosed bridge, dating back to 1858, with the occasional car driving across it (I think to get to a campground on the other side of the river), and quite a few people walking along it.

I figured I should get going after that, as I had a lot of driving left to do. My destination was south of Boston, where I would meet my second cousins Mary and Charlene in person for the first time. New Hampshire is a long narrow state, and I drove through Conway at the other end of the Kancagamus Highway, then down to the coast towards the bottom of the state at Portsmouth. There was a scenic route mentioned, which I gathered was meant to have beautiful rivers and autumn colours. It was quite a dull day, and I didn’t see anything too special driving along it, but then I had been spoiled by incredible autumn scenery that week!

My plan was to drive along a 12 mile (20km) or so stretch of coastline off the main highway, from Portsmouth to the border with Massachusetts. I got to the coastal drive about 5.15, after navigating through Portsmouth itself. It was an interesting drive, but quite muted because a coastal mist had come in, and though sunset wasn’t for another hour or so, it was starting to get a bit darker. There were houses along most of the road, though the northern part was a bit more countrified. As I went south, some areas were very built up, with large paid parking lots by the beach. Clearly this was a very popular area in prime season.

At a little place called Rye along the way, there were some of the most enormous mansions I have ever seen, huge places by the sea, on large areas of land, that must sell for a mint. At the end of the coastal drive I crossed a bridge that could open for boats, and entered Massachusetts, then drove inland to the main highway, I-95 which I stayed on for quite a long while as it got dark.

I drove on the highways through what looked like almost the centre of Boston - I could see the city buildings . Until then the traffic hadn’t been too bad, but as I got south of the city centre I found myself in traffic that was almost stopped, and would inch along every so often. My cousins later told me this was people getting out of the city to Cape Cod, a popular holiday destination south of Boston, for the long weekend. Even at 7.30pm or so, the traffic was terrible.

Eventually I got to my exit, off to Braintree a little south of Boston, and then found that Google told me I had reached my destination when I clearly hadn’t – I was on a main road, and they were on a side street. There was some weirdness in its mapping there, and I turned off another road and found my way to their street. Charlene was there with a torch to guide me into their driveway. It was so lovely to see them! Mary had prepared some dinner, so we ate and chatted, and then headed off to bed.

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