We left on our New England Fall trip at 12:12 from Tom’s house in Downingtown.  Scott had the jeep at his house, so he drove it with his luggage and some food to Tom’s for it to be reunited with Khan (the RV.)  After he was 5 miles away from his garage and it’s air compressor, he noticed the dashboard display showing two of the tires were low.  Tom managed to find an ancient Sears car-battery-powered pump in his home and we got that taken care of.  A great home-cooked hamburger lunch was enjoyed before we hit the road for Fort Lee High School at the foot of the George Washington bridge.

Why Fort Lee High School?  Because Tom’s brother Gary is joining us for two days.  He is Tom’s brother – an accomplished skier and mountain biker who will find a way to spend time with us comparative couch potatoes.  After Tom maneuvered Khan into a nearby ACME parking lot (taking up 7 car spaces – tying our record,) we met Gary as soon as his class was out.  Gary teaches robotics and computer programming, and had two days of vacation this week.

We drove directly to our first campsite – Sun Outdoors in Mystic Connecticut.  We ate dinner at a local restaurant and spent the night with 3 people in Khan for the first time in a while.  Tomorrow we would sample the many attractions of Mystic…

Readers of our blog may recall our first guest, Scott’s “little,” Anthony, who joined us on the entire MATE trip. Very astute readers may wonder we we consider Gary to be our second guest since we did pick up two Lithuanian girls on their way to Calgary during our Northwest Corner Trip – “Don’t pick up hitchhikers,” or so Mama Said. But Gary is our second “overnight” guest.