Let’s Drive to
Maine

The Dragon first — no Killboy photographers this time. Then the Blue Ridge Parkway, started too early in fog so thick it registered as a WTF moment on the Android radio screen.

Stop at the Zentrum in Spartanburg — again. Then Wake Forest, UNC, and Duke. Wake Forest won the daughter’s vote. Size 18 Air Jordans at UNC, off the shelf.

The Wright Brothers Memorial. Similar in layout to the Flight 93 memorial — both built around aviation, perspective, and scale. A lighthouse tour. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore as the path there.

A Modern Marvels bucket list item. Over and under the water in the same crossing. Bridges make him nervous. He did it anyway.

Stayed with an old friend in Norfolk. Jamestown, the White House tour — 12 minutes inside, self-guided, shorter than the security line. Waze shaved I-95 both ways. The FBI headquarters tour fired the daughter up.

Wife arrived at BWI. Annapolis first: the Naval Academy, a bay cruise on the Chesapeake. The daughter noted the Navy’s golf, soccer, and lacrosse programs. She bought the shirt for her favourite sport.

The Rachel at Herschel’s. Lorenzo’s on South Street. Rita’s. Love Park. A walk that required ParkMobile in $2 increments. The Reading Terminal Market is reason enough to return.

A hotel shuttle driver said: you’re ten minutes away, you have to go. He was right. The Hudson River chain — 13 links for 13 colonies. The million-dollar view over the river. Roads so quiet and tree-lined the X5 barely wanted to leave.

The destination. Sand Beach. The cliffs. The carriage roads. The sandbar at low tide. The shuttle system. The kind of park you return to. Bar Harbor for kitchy shopping and good meals. The wife flew home from Bangor.

$40 for eight miles of gravel with no guardrails. The summit: 52° in July, fog so thick visibility was 15 feet. A NH state trooper on the descent for overtaking. Warning issued. Conversation about moose. Vermont next, then home.