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From DC we drove to Gettysburg. I loved this stop. There’s so much rich history here about the civil war. We went to the visitor center and explored some of the displays.

The National Parks app has some great self guided audio tours. We turned it on and did the tour of the park. The park its self is quite large. I never realized how big this area is.

The statue of Lincoln and learning about the power of the Gettysburg address was informative. Lincoln stated with succinctness in minutes, what an orator attempted to say over a period of two hours.

We could have spent one more day there. We didn’t do the museum because at this point the kids were a bit burnt out on museums. We decided that this stop wasn’t the time to insist on that.

From there we headed to New Jersey.

New York City, NY

We arrived in the ending to New Jersey. The kids and I stepped away from the campground (who wants to drive a camper trailer into NYC) and had some pizza! Our campground was a twelve minute ferry ride to the World Trade Center or twenty minutes vis subway. I was anxious to see where those stops were, so our adventure included that.

We walked to Liberty State Park. The RV park we stayed at was also a marina. In order to get to the state park, we had to walk around the marina. The bridge offered to the most beautiful view of the NYC skyline.

We found the depot where we would catch our ferry to go to Lady Liberty and Ellis Island.

The next day we left camp pretty early and walked to the state park. We caught our ferry and went first to Lady Liberty. We had tickets for the pedestal, so we had to get there by a certain time. This was a really cool stop. We learned about the creation and history of the statue.

From there we went to Ellis Island. This was so interesting! I could have spent the entire day there. We learned about the process that the migrants through to enter the country. We learned about why they left and sought refuge in America. The kids really got into one of the displays that highlighted different people. Their reasons for coming to the United States were diverse.

After Ellis Island, we came back to the campground for some downtime and dinner. We caught the subway to go to the theater district where we watched Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. This was a great play! The pyrotechnic and the stunts were really fun to watch. After the play was over, we caught a Lyft and drove back to New Jersey. Driving with a New Yorker was terrifying!

The next day, we met a tour guide at the World Trade Center and did a tour of the 911 Memorial. We saw the little church that stood, The oculus, and the 911 Memorial. We opted to not do the museum, we felt like it would be a little too much for our nine-year-old.

The tour guide we had her mother worked on Wall Street. The night before the attack, She had worked all night long in her office. When she returned when she finished her project, she let her boss know that she was going to go home and take a personal day. She came home and slept, and the planes hit her building.

The tour guide talked about her how her dad came and picked her up and brought their bikes, which was really smart. All of the subways were down for that whole time. So they rode their bikes and walked back to their apartment.

She told us several stories from that day. One of the stories that stood out to us was the story of Rick Roscorla. He was a security guard, head of security of Morgan Stanley, and he didn’t like that the company was in the World Trade Center.

This guys was a rock star! he served in multiple branches of the military, and he could see the vulnerabilities for if there was attack. In fact, he and a buddy did a security assessment and predicted that there would be a bombing prior to the 1993 truck bombings.

He approached the administration to move from the building, but they wouldn’t. So they compromised with him and allowed him to do a monthly security drill with the employees.

When the first plane hit, the announcement came that everybody should stay still in the building. Instead, he told the employees to follow the drill and evacuate. They had practiced how to get out of the building quickly down the narrow staircase.

The majority of the Morgan Stanley employees all survived. Shortly after the first plane hit, 17 minutes later, the second plane hit, but the majority of the employees under his stewardship had already escaped. He however, did not. He wouldn’t leave the building because he went to other floors to inform them to also evacuate. He is credited with saving upward of 2500 people that day.

Another story that was shared was a statue that found on Wall Street of a man sitting in a tie with a briefcase next to him. It was a long-standing statue that existed prior to the attack, but when rescuers were working on helping people, they saw the statue and mistaken it for a man. When they realized it was a statue that had survived the attack, it grew it developed new meaning to New Yorkers. Prior that it was seen as a statue representing the busyness of Wall Street. Now it seen as a statue of those who survived the attack. The locals will bring the statue different, a different holidays. 

We headed back to our camp so that we could get ready for the fourth. The fireworks were happening on the Hudson River. We offered to stay at our campground to watch fireworks instead of going and watch from the Riverside. We could see the Jersey shore fireworks from our campground. All around us fireworks were going off because there were multiple fireworks shows throughout Jersey and New York City. 

The next day we rode the subway to Grand Central Station. We stopped at a Barnes and Noble. Lillian really wanted to go to one in New York. She had been looking for a book for months and knew they carried it. Rather than order it, she held out until the trip!

We wanted the kids see how big something could be under the ground. From there, we walked to Central Park, and we met a tour guide who took us briefly around Central Park.

It was supposed to be an hour and a half long tour, but because of the heat, he was able to only take out for a short time. But in that time, we were able to see the bridge from enchanted, the friends fountain, Some of the sky scrapers that are close by the park, the Lennon Memorial, the rock from the snowball fight in Elf, and we learned about the celebrities that lived in the skyscrapers across the street from the park.

There was a fun horse that kept sticking his nose into the back of our cart. It was cracking us up. In all honesty, I’d rather do a bike tour.

At that point we were so stinking hot! It was upward of 95° with around 80% humidity. We were dripping wet. Most of us had run out of water. We just wanted to find a place with air conditioning where we could sit, eat, and drink water. We chose the best option! We walked to an Olive Garden, it was absolutely amazing! Our poor server had to refill our cups so many times because we just kept dumping our ice water into our thermoses. Breadsticks and salad have never tasted so good.

Once we were sufficiently hydratedand cooled, we walked to the Rockefeller Center. We stopped at Fao Schwartz first, saw the ice rink filmed commonly in movies (it’s a lot smaller than it looks) and the we did the top of the rock for you. It was a really beautiful view! We had a 360° view of the city.

Daniel’s favorite part of this was Lady liberty and 9/11 Memorial.

Janell’s favorite part of this was the energy of the city!

Lillian’s favorite part of this was EVERYTHING! She’s absolutely loved New York. She loved the books, window shopping and the Olive Garden.

Ephraim’s favorite part of this was Lady Liberty and the broadway play!

What were wish we would have known:

Taxis are often cheaper and faster than the subway-especially with a family.

Ellis Island needs more time than what the website recommends.

The New York pass is definitely worth it! The Big Bus is not. The line for that thing was insane!