Monday April 12, 2010 - Hanover, Maryland to Newark, New Jersey

After a week in Maryland it was time to pack up and head north. When we began thinking about the possibility of a long road trip, Alec had two things he wanted to see - the Statue of Liberty, and Mt. Rushmore. Why these things had captured his imagination I can't say. But we had assured him that we would see the Statue of Liberty at the very least. Those discussions seem so long ago, that it was very surreal to think that we were heading to fulfill the first of these wishes.

The drive north was mostly along I-95. Gena improvised an alternate route for us as we prepared to leave Pennsylvania and enter New Jersey, which saved us the rather cumbersome time of circling completely around Trenton in order to hook up with the New Jersey Turnpike. We were on more toll roads Monday than the rest of our trip combined. Part of me likes the idea of a direct toll on a road - the people who use the road the most are the ones that support it directly. But it's gotta get expensive as well!

We passed briefly through Delaware, so that all told we were in three states Monday - two of which were new for us all. As I had suspected, the directions to our hotel were somewhat confusing and inadequate at the end. But we were able to circle around and find it without too much fuss.

We made our reservations Sunday night (no sense planning too far ahead, right?) through Priceline. We opted to stay in New Jersey and find cheap transportation into New York City. The hotels in NYC are much more expensive, and rumor has it that their quality isn't as good unless you're staying in a pretty shwanky place. New Jersey seemed like the smarter, cheaper bet. And after our experience with staying outside of DC and taking the train in for relatively cheap, it seemed like a no-brainer. Though I'll admit there was a strong temptation to pay out some bigger bucks to be able to stay in the City and just walk out into it in the morning.

Monday night we checked in to the hotel, and Gena and I hunkered down after the kids fell asleep to plan our entry to NYC. It was then that we began to suspect my brilliant plan for how to save money might not be so brilliant after all. We couldn't find reasonable fare into the City. The train option - our first choice - from the Newark airport across the freeway from us turned out to be quite a bit pricier than we would have guessed. There was a city bus option, but we weren't in the best of neighborhoods and worried about traveling on the city buses after dark as a family. Light rail in New Jersey didn't cross over to NYC. We began to get worried.

However, to delay painful and expensive decisions, we decided that we would see the Statue of Liberty first. We were pleased to see that there was a departure point for the Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty tour from New Jersey's Liberty State Park. And it wasn't too far from us! At least for Tuesday, we wouldn't need to cross over into the City at all. We could brainstorm for one more day on how to get to the city.

We bought our tickets for the excursion to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, discovering the next surprise. Tickets to go up to the crown of the statue were very limited, and apparently sold out months in advance (the web site indicates you can purchase those tickets up to one year in advance). So we wouldn't be going all the way up - but we'd still be able to go up on to the base of the monument. How exciting Tuesday would be!