Park Hoppers

My second favorite road trip I’ve taken with my family so far is probably the trip we took from Georgia to Maine. Our first stop on the trip was in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. I feel like this national park gets overlooked a lot, but if you’ve never been here you definitely should add it to your list because it is absolutely beautiful! We explored the park for a little while before getting back in the car and making the long trek up to Niagara Falls. We made it just in time to see the sunset and how beautiful the falls are at night. We stayed the night just a few blocks from the falls and went back to see them the next morning in the daylight. It is definitely worth it to see Niagara Falls both during the day and at night; two totally different experiences that will take your breath away. After spending some time admiring the falls, we got back in the car and drove to Boston. We had been to Boston before on a previous road trip and knew we had to at least go back for a few hours while we were so close. We arrived around dinner time and explored the Hay Market, saw the Cheers restaurant, and set off to find Boston’s “little Italy”. There is a section in the city that has some amazing Italian restaurants that we knew we needed to check out since we didn’t get to our previous time in the city. So, we just started walking around and following our noses until we found La Summa Ristorante; an amazing authentic Italian restaurant that is definitely worth the trip. We continued driving and spent the night in Freeport, Maine. The next morning we checked out the L.L. Bean store and ate lobster rolls at a small restaurant right beside the store before we continued our trip to Acadia National Park in Maine. That evening we explored Cadillac Mountain and hiked The Bubbles down to this beautiful lake area before hiking back up (not greatly thought out on our part) and checking in to our bed and breakfast in Bar Harbor. The next day we did some more exploring of the park. We went to Sand Beach and hiked Great Head Trail before heading over to Thunder Hole and wandering around for a bit. We continued to drive around the park and stop for beautiful scenery pictures or a hiking trail we wanted to wander down for awhile. While driving, we found a place called The Wild Gardens of Acadia, so we stopped and roamed around the gardens looking at all the pretty flowers and landscaping before heading back to Bar Harbor for the night. We ate at a restaurant right on the water where we could watch the sunset and see all the boats on the harbor which made for a great ending to our day. The next morning we set out to head back south, but before going all the way home we had one more place we knew we wanted to go, Shenandoah National Park. We arrived later in the afternoon and hiked a few trails before checking into the Skyland Resort for the night. We had an amazing dinner at the resort that night and even better breakfast the next morning before starting back out into the park. We drove through the rest of the park, getting out to sightsee and hike a little bit on our way out of the park and back on the road towards home. This trip definitely was one to remember and I hope to be able to travel to some of these beautiful places again in the future.