What’s the point in planning if plans rarely work out, eh? There we were… taking a leisurely pootle towards the Outer Banks islands, ‘planning’ a summer overlanding the east-coast cities of DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and up the north-east coast. Then, it turned out, we needed to pick up the pace a bit, making a dash to Nova Scotia to ship out… pronto.
Outer Banks
The Outer Banks Islands are so small, they disappear into the coastline on most maps. But zoom in on North Carolina and you’ll see a string of tiny islands running down the coast. They’re little more than sandbanks and are mostly beautiful deserted beaches. But there are a few spots of development here and there.
We took the ferry out to Ocracoke, an isolated and little beach village at the southern end of the archipelago. You want idyllic dunes and beach walks? Here’s your happy place! It’s remote, but not too remote. One thing we’ve realised in our travels through all terrains and climates is that mountains are scenic, deserts are peaceful, jungles are exciting, but beautiful wild beaches are where we are happy. Beaches where you can walk for miles and see no sign of development. The waves are a constant TV, the wildlife is constant entertainment, the sunrises and sunsets are colourful theatre.
Here is not really an idyllic climate. Atlantic weather can be harsh, and it hit us for several days. It rained. Then it rained hard. The it rained a bit more. Oh… and then there was a bit more rain. With the rain came flooding. They’ve had much (much) worse in these parts, so the locals were pretty blasé about it. But the ‘mainlanders’ flocking-in for their pre-Memorial Week breaks were a bit miffed to find the reserved camp-spots completely under water!
Outer Banks Gallery
Island-hopping northwards, we took another ferry and a series of long causeway bridges up to a place where real history was made. It was here, in a sandy field at Kitty Hawk North Carolina in 1903, that the Wright Brothers made man’s first ever powered flight. It’s a historic site, beautifully preserved. Marcus, having had a career in aviation and having built and flown his own aerobatic aircraft, found Kitty Hawk particularly interesting. But even if you’re not an aviation-nut, it’s well worth a visit.
The northern end of the Outer Banks is far more developed and accessible than the southern end, but it was also far less to our taste. So it wasn’t really a wrench to leave the north island and head inland for what originally was going to be a Tale of Four, but turned out to be Three Cities.
Overlanding Cities
Okay… so cities aren’t the easiest of places for us overlanders. Unless they’re particularly iconic with something special to offer, we tend to avoid them in favour of mountains, deserts, jungle and beaches. For us, city-time often depends on whether we can find an acceptable place to park-up. It doesn’t need to be scenic. It doesn’t need to be peaceful. It doesn’t need outdoor space for any camp-kitchen. It just needs to be: (i) legal (we don’t sleep well fearing a knock on the door by local law-chaps); (ii) respectful to local residents (nobody likes their view marred by a blue monster-truck outside their window); and (iii) safe (no point risking the dodgiest part of town).
We’ve been lucky enough to have found some more-than-acceptable park-up spots in some of the world’s most iconic cities: Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, Mexico City, LA, Cape Town, Barcelona, Panama City to name a few. Now, overlanding the east-coast cities we got lucky too and can add DC, Philadelphia and New York to that list.
Capital Time
If you have even the teeniest interest in American politics and recent history… it’s there, all around you in Washington DC… done artfully and with style. It’s a beautifully designed city, purpose-built, with memorials to America’s greatest: the ‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln is our favourite. But for endless hours of fascination, you can’t beat the Smithsonian museums. Here you can find out about anything. Anything. You wanna know something? It’s in there somewhere!
Washington DC Gallery
For us, towards the end of a great tour of the USA, we found Washington DC brings together the strands of education and stories that we had picked up across the country. It brings together aviation from Kitty Hawk, and space travel from Canaveral. It brings together nature from Oregon, and wildlife from the Everglades. It brings together outlaws from Las Vegas, to law enforcement from the FBI. It brings together the Founding Fathers, with the Civil War, with the 2020 storming of the Capitol.
Philly Time
Next stop was Philadelphia. Modern America started here and it’s about as historic as American cities get. Here, if you’re prepared to queue for long enough, you get to see the Liberty Bell, and the room where the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were signed. You get to learn about Ben Franklin’s life and how Betsy Ross sewed the very first Star Spangled Banner. Just as importantly, you get to sample a crucial part of America’s heritage cuisine: the Philly Steak Sandwich. Nowhere else in the world do they do a shaved-ribeye roll quite like they do in Philly!
Philly Gallery
Big Apple Time
Just up the road from Philly is New York… you know… the place so good they named it twice. We’ve been here before, but it was so long ago there were still two iconic World Trade Centre towers standing in lower Manhattan. So our first stop was to take in the ‘new’ skyline over the Statue of Liberty from across the river in New Jersey. Next morning, we headed into Manhattan.
We had a route planned and navigated easily through Jersey City towards the tunnel under the Hudson to Manhattan. But a wee snagette that we hadn’t realised, is that RVs aren’t allowed in the tunnels. Bugger. A bit of a detour was required up the Jersey side of the river to reach the Washington Bridge, eventually crossing into the Upper West Side of Manhatten. There, we found a super-convenient city park-up spot. Not peaceful. Not scenic. But legal, respectful and safe. Best of all… it’s just 300m from the Subway. Bingo!!
The next three days were full of hopping on/off the Subway and walking miles, catching all the big-ticks of NYC. First, we had to see the site where the twin towers had stood when we last visited to the city; the redevelopment really prompts reflection. Then we zig-zagged around the city, took a walk over Brooklyn Bridge, and even a trip out to the seaside suburb of Coney Island, where New Yorkers go for fun days out to the beach fun-fair.
Big Apple Gallery
In Midtown we caught a tightly-gathered group of photographers on Tudor City Bridge, all standing by their tripods supporting very hi-end professional-looking cameras. Ooooh… maybe a bit of celeb spotting??? Turns out, they were there for ‘New York Henge’. This is a time when the setting sun aligns perfectly with 42nd St, allowing iconic photos of the Chrysler Building and the NY skyline. This happens around 20:30 hrs and we saw them gathered at 11:00hrs. Some of them had been there since before 08:00 hrs to grab their spot. Now that’s commitment to getting the shot!
Memorial Day
Our first day in New York was Memorial Day. Until then, we hadn’t quite appreciated what Memorial Day is to the USA. In the period running up to Memorial Weekend, we started to realise something was curiously afoot: the busy campsites in the Outer Banks, the number of coaches lined up at Arlington Cemetery, the special-free museums in Philly, and the jam-packed parks in New Jersey along the Hudson were all clues. You didn’t need Sherlock’s detective skills to realise something’s going down here! Finally, on Memorial Day itself in New York, there was very little traffic (now that’s a clue if ever there was one!). The 9/11 Memorial Site was particularly poignant. And the flashing billboards of Times Square reminded anyone whose mind it might have slipped.
Memorial Day is a day that America has set aside to remember those who have given their lives in service. It’s not, like 11th November in UK/Europe, a wholly sombre day with solemn services. In USA it’s a day to gather, reflect and celebrate what Service means. Like 4th July, like Mom’s Apple Pie, it’s a very American thing, part of history and culture. It’s a thing we’re chuffed we got to witness and share.
Out Bound
Back-tracking a little while… we heard from family in UK that Marcus’ Dad’s health was suffering. Not critical, but deteriorating slowly. We changed our schedule and instead of taking 6 months in north-east USA leaving in Oct/Nov, we aimed to be shipping out and heading back to UK by mid-July. But as we approached Boston, we received news from UK. The deterioration was a little faster than originally expected and we didn’t want to wait until July.
We contacted our shipping agent, Martin at IVSSUK who was brilliantly supportive, leapt into action and rearranged Cuthbert’s shipping with just 4 days to go. All we had to do was drive around 1,100 km to Halifax, Nova Scotia, which would leave us just two days to pack and prepare Cuthbert for shipping.
Now… if you’ve never RORO shipped an overlanding vehicle, that might not sound like much of a challenge. But there’s a bit more to it than meets the eye. Particularly in the case of our Cuthbert, we weren’t just cleaning and prepping him for shipping, we were prepping him for the exacting standards of an MOT (vehicle annual certification inspection) too. He will be returning to UK for the first time in almost 9 years and he has never been through an MOT process before. Under English road rules, when he comes off the ship, we’ll need to take him from the port directly to an MOT test station.
So after overlanding the east-coast cities, we used our last days with Cuthbert in the Americas to clean and prep him for his forthcoming luxury cruise. This wasn’t much time, and it wasn’t helped by the unseasonal torrential rain. Marcus got soaked to the skin as he ran around fixing minor issues and re-packing the lockers.
Finally, we dropped Cuthbert at Halifax port and said our farewells. Our Americas trip has ended a little more abruptly than we would have planned. But plans never work out. At the moment we have far more important priorities than overlanding the east-coast cities. And in the end, we only cut it short by a few weeks. It’s been a fabulous 2,772 days since we shipped into Montevideo. There’s a whole lot more of the world we haven’t seen yet. It’s time now to spend a bit of time with family and prepare for a new European adventure!
Keep your fingers crossed for Cuthbert’s voyage and catch up with us again on the other side of the pond!🤞
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