I recently had a chance to explore New England. This was part of an adventure for my husband to complete his 50 states bucket list. (I have seven more to go!) I love to travel, see new places and observe how others live in other parts our country and our world. We visited Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Concord, Massachusetts. (We previously visited Boston and Newport, Rhode Island.) The weather was 75-ish most of the time with a little rain here and there. All the places we visited were uniquely interesting and beautiful. It was amazing to visit places founded in the 1600s!

Laura Schultz Pipis, executive director of the United Way of Monroe/Lenawee Counties

We flew into Hartford, Connecticut, and rented a car to tour New England from there. We visited the state Capitol and the Mark Twain house. Both were models of unique architecture. Mark Twain was a great writer and even greater wit, I think! Vermont was pretty rural with lots of farmland and the Green Mountains. We stayed in Stowe, Vermont, a ski resort town centered around Mount Mansfield, and also home to the Von Trapp Family Lodge. We took a gondola ride up Mount Mansfield. The gorgeous Green Mountains are beautiful in the summer, and I bet even more beautiful in the winter ski season. We also visited nearby Waterbury, Vermont, and the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory. Getting to taste a new Cinnamon Crunch flavor was fun!

We drove through New Hampshire, which appeared to have less farmland and more woods. Finally in Maine, we stayed in Bar Harbor, a beautiful harbor town on the Gulf of Maine. One of the highlights was Acadia National Park with the impressive Mount Cadillac Summit. And we took a whale watching tour 25 miles out in the Gulf of Maine to find two humpback whales who hung around our boat for about an hour! Maine was the most beautiful of the places we visited and reminded me of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, both rural and rustic with spectacular seacoast settings.

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Lastly, my childhood dream of visiting Concord, Massachusetts, to see Louisa May Alcott’s home, Orchard House, was realized. I love the Little Women series, and the house itself did not disappoint. The bonus to staying in Concord, at a 1716-era Colonial Inn, was to find out the Alcotts were friends and neighbors with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the town’s Sleepy Hollow cemetery, all these literary families’ plots are near each other. AND the Revolutionary War’s first skirmish, “The Shot Heard Round the World,” took place at Concord’s Old North Bridge. I took photos of the bridge and the Minuteman Statue. We didn’t have time to explore all that the colonial-themed Concord had to offer, but how I wish I could have!

It was great to experience another part of the country, but it was also great to come home to Michigan. Many people on our trip asked us where we were from, and when they heard “Michigan,” most of them said they would like to visit our state. I told them they should because Michigan is beautiful, too. Going away and coming home again makes me appreciate our little corner of Southeast Michigan even more. It is pretty special, too, with Lake Erie and the River Raisin Battlefield National Park in Monroe County and the beautiful Irish Hills and picturesque inland lakes in Lenawee County. I wish for all to have the chance to travel — it makes us better understand and appreciate the diversity of people and places in other parts of our country. And coming back we are reminded once again to appreciate the beauty of home and love where we live, too.

The United Way currently funds 27 local agency programs in Monroe County. See our website (www.unitedwayMLC.org) for a list of those agencies. We appreciate your support to help fight poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, mental health and substance use disorders, domestic violence and other important community needs. Additional direct programs and services provided by our local United Way include the 211 Health and Human Services Hotline, Project Ramp, Health Check and the 21-Week Racial Equity Challenge.

For more information about living united, please contact us. Call us at 734-242-1331, email lpipis@unitedwaymlc.org, contact or visit us at 216 N. Monroe St., Monroe, MI 48162, or visit our website at www.unitedwaymlc.org. Visit our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok social media platforms, too.

Laura Schultz Pipis is the executive director of the United Way of Monroe/Lenawee Counties.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: United Way of Monroe/Lenawee Counties: Love where you live