Days 0 - 3 Brunswick ME to Woodstown NJ

Maine to Oregon and Back
Days 0 - 3 Brunswick ME to Woodstown NJ

Friday 29 May 2015 - Day 0
We finished making a bed platform to go in the back of our 2011 Sienna minivan. 

It provides room underneath for plastic and wooden storage boxes and enough space above to sleep on a 3-inch thick foam mattress 48 inches wide by 76 inches long. (That's 7.5cm x 122cm x 193cm for our friends in the rest of the world)

Miraculously, all of our stuff fit in under the bed with a very small bit of free space.
We had our farewell dinner with Ed's brother, Hal, his wife, Cynthia, and my mother, Louise. Hal and Cynthia made a great pizza.

Saturday 30 May 2015 - Day 1 (305 miles)
Left Mere Point, Brunswick, Maine at 0720h. Except for a few stops at Interstate rest areas, our first stop was at Stockbridge, Massachusetts to see the Sedgewick Pie. This is an arrangement of stone monuments in the Stockbridge Cemetery. At the right-front are Theodore and Pamela Sedgewick's monuments. Their children and later descendants radiate from the center to the periphery with their grave markers all facing the center. Theodore and Pamela are Ed's four-times great grandparents.

Someone suggested the circular arrangement was so that on judgement day the Sedgewicks would only need to speak to other Sedgewicks. An recent account of the family is in the book In My Blood, by John Sedgewick.
After a brief look at the town of Stockbridge, we left for Rensselaer NY to meet up with Ved Shravah, whom we last saw in 1973 when we were in the Peace Corps in Ba, Fiji. Also there was Ved's son Aashu and Aashu's wife Devika. Here are Devika, Aashu, Midge and Ved at dinner.

Naturally, we had a lot of ground to cover: the 42 years since we'd last seen each other. Aashu had a picture on his iPhone -- it was Midge holding him in Fiji in 1972. 

Sunday 31 May 2015 - Day 2
Yesterday it was in the high 80's (ca 30°C). Today was cold and rainy with a high in the 50's (12°C). Ved took us to the New York State Museum in Albany where there were two special exhibits, one on the Shakers, especially those in New York State, 

and the other on 9/11 and the World Trade Center attack.

There were many other exhibits, even a 100-year-old working carousel.

Tonight we went with Ved to Hana, a Japanese restaurant where the chefs prepare meals at the table.

Monday 1 June 2015 - Day 3 (255 miles)
After breakfast went to the old Shaker community at Watervliet, next to the Albany Airport. It was closed on Monday, but we could look at the buildings from the outside.

For lunch, it was another meal out, this time at Shining Rainbow, where we said goodbye to Ved ...

and headed south to see Midge's mom in Woodstown, southern New Jersey.

.oOo.