Welcome to Vermont!

If you’re thinking about taking your RV to New York City, don’t. There’s only one RV park anywhere nearby, and it’s a parking lot on the Jersey side of New York Harbor. When I say parking lot, this is not a poetic interpretation of a relatively plain RV park. This place had half the charm of your average rest stop. It was next to a marina and an empty, overgrown lot, and the RVs were so close to each other that you and your neighbor could reach out and shake each other’s hands. Public transportation was very close, and it was damned close to the city. The City. But still.

The experience also illustrated how crippled we are without an Internet connection. Liberty Harbor RV Park did not have wireless. Hence our long absence from the blog.

We did have Internet last night at the Quality Inn in Albany–hard won Internet. We were pretty road-weary after a stop at the outlet mall to get Frances some warmer clothes, and were having trouble locating an RV park that wasn’t closed for the winter. So we decided to use Hotels.com to get a room for the night. Luxurious two-star hotel style.

The Hotels.com app was working poorly with my Edge connection (really, AT&T?), so I called. After touting the Internet connection and the price, the operator talked me into a night at the Red Roof Inn. So when I got there and found that the Internet required an additional fee–times two, for two computers, I was pretty upset. I called and got my money back; we checked out, and the helpful phone operators of Priceline.com found us the Quality Inn. I don’t have much to complain about there, except that the pool gave Frances a rash. But I guess that could have happened anywhere. I guess. And the nurse line says it doesn’t require treatment.

Art by Bethann Shannon, South Street Cafe, Bennington

Currently I’m writing this from the South Street Cafe in Bennington, Vermont, surrounded by Mexican-inspired pop art canvases of multiple sizes and shapes. It’s pleasant, and the homemade bread is amazing. We ran into a couple from San Francisco and their five-month-old son, Henry. We talked babies, breastfeeding, and marriage equality. Nobody here has looked twice at us except to admire Frances in her outlet mall finery.

Something I’ve been thinking about: what legal marriage means as far as how we’re seen. At the Quality Inn there was a group of junior high school cheerleaders in town for a competition. Maybe because of their age, the parents of the girls seemed standoffish and stiff around us. I don’t know where they were from–maybe there aren’t many queer families there. We certainly didn’t go out of our way to come out, but it’s hard to miss that we’re a family. I kept thinking, but we’re married here. And we were–New York recognizes marriages legal in other states. But it doesn’t have marriage equality for its own state’s residents. Yet. More on that later.

Maybe a group of pre-teens decked out in short skirts and their overly-protective parents would have been just as standoffish here in Bennington, Vermont where Bob can marry Bill and Ruby can marry Ami. But I think I doubt it. My theory is that once something is the law of the land, people can more naturally accept it. I don’t have any evidence, but it’s my mission to collect at least some anecdotes while we’re here in Vermont.

But it’s cold here, and most of the RV parks are closed. The ones that aren’t are shutting off their water. So I’m not sure how long we’ll be here.

So far, Vermont, so good. And hey, nice leaves.

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