The Northeast City Tour will be a quick recap of the cities we stopped at and friends we saw.
First stop on the Northeast City Tour, Boston.
Northeast City Tour: Boston MA
In Boston we opted to stay in a hotel so we could be close to the city. For some reason Boston doesn’t have any good places to park a van in the city…
Joe has been working with a Boston based company called InsideTracker for years. In fact, it’s one of his favorite things to talk about whenever the topic of health comes up.
So, we definitely had to stop pop InsideTracker to visit with his buddy Jonathan Levitt (who by the way has a super fun and funny Instagram/Twitter).
The InsideTracker office was very cool with a stunning view of the Charles River.
After leaving InsideTracker we walked through Cambridge and Harvard.
The following day we walked Boston’s Freedom Trail and went out to dinner with our good friend Victor. He is a fantastic person that used to go on Joe’s Costa Rica Fitness Vacation trips. Victor is insanely fit!
Cape Cod
Leaving Boston we took a quick day trip to Cape Cod to see the National Seashore. We were so close, so we just had to. It was beautiful and very windy!
Our next stop on the tour was Newport RI.
Newport RI
We didn’t initially plan on it but we stayed in Newport for two days, after finding a CrossFit gym (Spartan Fitness) we really liked.
Newport looked amazing, but unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate so we didn’t get to walk around as much as we would have liked. Both Joe and I would like to head back here to explore in Spring/Summer months.
Northeast City Tour: North Haven CT
After Newport we rolled into North Haven, visiting our friend Kurt and squatting in his parking lot at North Haven CrossFit. And doing squats in his gym. Haha!
We met Kurt a year or two ago through the Seattle CrossFit scene (his brother Chris owns a CrossFit gym in Seattle). He has an amazing gym in North Haven that he graciously let us camp at.
While in North Haven, Kurt showed us around the area and took us to Pepe’s for some white clam pizza and to Louis’ Lunch for the original hamburger.
Staying in Kurt’s gym parking lot we got some good fitnessing in and got to catch up with Kurt and his family. They are fantastic people!
While in North Haven, Joe took a bus to NYC and flew back to Seattle for the weekend . Which meant I had the duty of driving the van from North Haven to New York City by myself to pick him up at the end of the weekend.
By a stroke of luck one of our best friends, Teal, was in NYC that weekend. And I was able to spend some quality time with her while Joe was in Seattle.
The big city, New York City
Let me tell you… Driving the van from New Haven to NYC probably took two years (at least) off my life. I was so stressed. But fortunately I found a hotel outside the city that I was fairly confident I could get to.
Note: don’t drive over-height vehicles on Parkways in New York. We will come back to that later.
So, Teal came out to the hotel and spent the night with me. We lounged around catching up and grabbed coffee and had a nice walk Sunday morning before she had to fly back to Seattle.
Joe flew back to NYC that afternoon. And after taking a series of subways and trains, he made it from JFK (in Queens) to a train station north of the city that was just a few miles from the hotel I was staying at. I think it only took him 2 hours…
The next day we worked at a coffee shop and met up with Joe’s friend Eric.
Eric graciously let us stay at his apartment for a few nights. And one of the days we rode the train into the city for an epic 23 miles of walking/running.
Northeast City Tour: NYC
While in the city we:
Looked at the ceiling in Grand Central Station, ate bagels, went to Central Park, rode the subway, drank coffee, went to Rockefeller Center, saw Times Square, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, ate Pizza at Grimaldi’s, saw the Empire State building, went to the Museum of Natural History, saw the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park, walked The High Line Park, ate more bagels, went back to Times Square at night, went to the World Trade Center Memorial, and ate more pizza.
In NYC we saw so much and it was really fun for me to see where Joe spent a few years of his life!
From there we drove from Eric’s home (north of NYC) out to Long Island, where we stayed with another of Joe’s friends, Emily Chu and her family.
The Parkway of Death
This is where we ran into the Parkway problem and almost ripped the top off our van, which made it a stressful drive out to Long Island.
Here is the problem, there is no height limitation signage when entering the Parkways, and actually not at all until you are about 50 yards from the short overpass. No other warnings at all.
While driving down a New York Parkway we saw a 9 foot bridge coming up and had to slam on the brakes to pull off the road and wait for traffic to clear before driving down the middle of both lanes under the highest part of the bridge. Thankfully that bridge was an arch and 9 feet was at its lowest point.
Joe was literally looking for a way to drive through someone’s backyard, or to back up on this 50 MPH road to the last exit before we realized we could make the clearance by driving under the middle of the bridge.
From there I navigated on the fly avoiding Parkways and after an extra hour of driving we safely made it back to the highway. Phew.
Long Island
It snowed while we were on Long Island and it was great catching up with Joe’s friend Emily (and family).
We also visited Sagamore Hill which was an amazing experience. Sagamore Hill was Teddy Roosevelt’s home and they have preserved an impressive amount of his belongings.
After one more trip into the city for dinner with Samantha and David (Joe’s brother from another mother, ultra marathon and Ironman buddy) we were ready to get out of the big city.
Last stop: Washington DC.
Northeast City Tour: Washington DC
The cool thing about visiting DC was that we found a National Park run campground, which was a quick metro ride from downtown Washington DC.
In DC we met up with Joe and Maraea (our traveling friends) and took a day trip into downtown DC to explore the National Mall. It was a long day of walking and touring monuments, and we had a nice dinner and went back to camp (aka our home on wheels).
Although seeing everyone and experiencing all the cities and iconic sights was amazing, we were ready to be back in the woods. All of these cities are so stressful!
We headed out away from the cities to Shenandoah for Thanksgiving!
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