This year we as a family, took a long weekend trip to Vermont & New Hampshire. Every year my wife’s extended family has a get together up there. Called appropriately the Belden Pig-Out.
I haven’t seen some of these folks since we made the trip in 1993 to photograph a wedding. Then my father and I stopped in to see some of them in 2006 when we rode up to the BMW rally in Vermont.
Each year Claudine tries to go and generally takes one kid with her. It’s just too expensive to fly everyone, plus a hotel to fit us all, and a rental car capable of hauling us all around.
So this year I agreed we’d just Iron Butt it up there. It’s just a tick under 1000 miles from our door to the hotel we were staying at.
We bugged out of here around 7pm on Wednesday. Driving at night has lots of advantages. The kids sleep, or mostly sleep, which keeps them off my last nerve and traffic is significantly reduced.
We loaded up the family (everyone except Michael who didn’t want to ride with us all and decided to stay at home to house sit. He did a mighty fine job).
![IMG_2017[1]](http://www.dishers.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_20171.jpg "IMG_2017[1]")