11 AM - in our driveway - on our way!
Eleni's pre-school lent us some monkeys to take on the road! Here they are in West Virginia! You can barely see them, but there are haystacks in the background.
June 25, 2008
Here we are on the road! Neil arrived home from China last night at 1:30 AM. We just left our house at 11 AM. It’s all happening…
Checking in with gas prices in Madison, New Jersey. 4.05 a gallon.
However, before the narration takes over, I should start with a preamble of sorts. We designed this trip with the purpose of fulfilling our life-long dreams of taking the great American road trip. For Neil, it appeals because of the books he has read and the movies he has seen. For me, this trip is meaningful because both my mother and father instilled their journeys into my consciousness. In 1957, my mother (age 10) took this trip while sitting in the backseat with her grandmother and brother. Her parents kept to a pre-planned 40-day schedule. In a very different style, my father retired from teaching in 1990, bought a truck, found a dog, and headed westward for 6 months. I believe his path was rather aimless. Our journey is a mixture of the two. We have some spots in mind and a few reservations, but mostly, we will be making this up as we go.
How to pull this trip together thematically? We originally planned to investigate the word freedom and all that it means historically, environmentally, anthropologically, and personally. So some of the routes and more lofty and academic places we explore are specifically tied to this Search for Freedom. However, the reality is that most of the roads and sites we visit may be purely for the fact that there are great playgrounds nearby…
For, of course, there is a bit of a challenge to all of this. Our children are 3 and 7. We’re in a small (yet so much trunk space!) car and we’re traveling for two full months. We have no recourse as our house is inhabited until August 24th. There is no real back up plan.
Some caveats for the reader to consider:
We thought it might be fun to take other people on this trip with us vicariously. So we’ve welcomed quite a crew to observe this trip via our blog. But, one of my shortcomings includes the fact that I’ve only visited 2 blogs so I’m not sure I have my head round what the etiquette is on a blog. If anyone wants to comment on this, go ahead. Perhaps it is best that I just write as I would anyway…we’ll see how it goes.
On that note, the only way that I can truly share this experience with such a wide audience (family, close friends, acquaintances, neighbors, Newark Academy faculty and staff, students, parents, alumni, Eleni’s child care center, Alex’s elementary school) is if I write as I would write in my journals. In my efforts to stay as genuine as possible in my writing and not give anyone the impression that I’m posing as a travel writer, I will write fairly quickly and play around with grammar as I usually do. If you have a poor stomach for imperfect writing, please do not read this blog. My goal is to capture the moments of the way we are today, not spend hours perfecting the script.
Finally, my muse. Who am I writing to? In my notebook journaling, I usually write for posterity; I write for a future me, I write for my children, and I write for the off chance that my journaling will be found useful (and does this have something to do with my history background?).
Here we are today…11 AM – 6 PM – 7 hours on the road – 450 miles
Route 287 South, 78 West, 81 South
Lunch stop in PA. Hex signs.
Rest stop in PA. 3 hours into the trip. I ask Eleni to drink her cup of water. Eleni - “I never talking to you again, Mommy.” Excellent start.
Route 81 Maryland. 4 hours into the trip and the kids are crazed. Neil asks, “Do you think it’s too late to turn around?”
Rest stop in West Virginia. 5 hours into the trip. It’s hard to make any anthropological observations yet about being outside of New Jersey. Highways and rest stops are somewhat universal on the east coast so far.
George Washington National Park, Virginia. We are slowly maneuvering the curves and hills of the road in the shadow of this gorgeous forest. For 5 minutes Eleni yelled for her favorite deer, “Bambi! Bambi, where are you? Come see me!” No, we did not find Bambi.
In a way, I cheated a bit by saying we begin our journey today. Unlike the rest of the trip, we have a definite destination: Luray, Virginia. We are meeting up with some of my family and we’ll be staying in a cabin in the woods for five days. We will be in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Here we are. Photos are further below and not in order - I have not sorted this all out yet. But, the people at 58 West Cafe in Luray are kind.
Leaving Madison!
Bethlehem, PA
Lenhartsville, PA. You can buy live bait or hex signs here. We did neither. We just ate lunch across the street!
Eleni's pre-school lent us some monkeys to take on the road! Here they are in West Virginia! You can barely see them, but there are haystacks in the background.June 25, 2008
Here we are on the road! Neil arrived home from China last night at 1:30 AM. We just left our house at 11 AM. It’s all happening…
Checking in with gas prices in Madison, New Jersey. 4.05 a gallon.
However, before the narration takes over, I should start with a preamble of sorts. We designed this trip with the purpose of fulfilling our life-long dreams of taking the great American road trip. For Neil, it appeals because of the books he has read and the movies he has seen. For me, this trip is meaningful because both my mother and father instilled their journeys into my consciousness. In 1957, my mother (age 10) took this trip while sitting in the backseat with her grandmother and brother. Her parents kept to a pre-planned 40-day schedule. In a very different style, my father retired from teaching in 1990, bought a truck, found a dog, and headed westward for 6 months. I believe his path was rather aimless. Our journey is a mixture of the two. We have some spots in mind and a few reservations, but mostly, we will be making this up as we go.
How to pull this trip together thematically? We originally planned to investigate the word freedom and all that it means historically, environmentally, anthropologically, and personally. So some of the routes and more lofty and academic places we explore are specifically tied to this Search for Freedom. However, the reality is that most of the roads and sites we visit may be purely for the fact that there are great playgrounds nearby…
For, of course, there is a bit of a challenge to all of this. Our children are 3 and 7. We’re in a small (yet so much trunk space!) car and we’re traveling for two full months. We have no recourse as our house is inhabited until August 24th. There is no real back up plan.
Some caveats for the reader to consider:
We thought it might be fun to take other people on this trip with us vicariously. So we’ve welcomed quite a crew to observe this trip via our blog. But, one of my shortcomings includes the fact that I’ve only visited 2 blogs so I’m not sure I have my head round what the etiquette is on a blog. If anyone wants to comment on this, go ahead. Perhaps it is best that I just write as I would anyway…we’ll see how it goes.
On that note, the only way that I can truly share this experience with such a wide audience (family, close friends, acquaintances, neighbors, Newark Academy faculty and staff, students, parents, alumni, Eleni’s child care center, Alex’s elementary school) is if I write as I would write in my journals. In my efforts to stay as genuine as possible in my writing and not give anyone the impression that I’m posing as a travel writer, I will write fairly quickly and play around with grammar as I usually do. If you have a poor stomach for imperfect writing, please do not read this blog. My goal is to capture the moments of the way we are today, not spend hours perfecting the script.
Finally, my muse. Who am I writing to? In my notebook journaling, I usually write for posterity; I write for a future me, I write for my children, and I write for the off chance that my journaling will be found useful (and does this have something to do with my history background?).
Here we are today…11 AM – 6 PM – 7 hours on the road – 450 miles
Route 287 South, 78 West, 81 South
Lunch stop in PA. Hex signs.
Rest stop in PA. 3 hours into the trip. I ask Eleni to drink her cup of water. Eleni - “I never talking to you again, Mommy.” Excellent start.
Route 81 Maryland. 4 hours into the trip and the kids are crazed. Neil asks, “Do you think it’s too late to turn around?”
Rest stop in West Virginia. 5 hours into the trip. It’s hard to make any anthropological observations yet about being outside of New Jersey. Highways and rest stops are somewhat universal on the east coast so far.
George Washington National Park, Virginia. We are slowly maneuvering the curves and hills of the road in the shadow of this gorgeous forest. For 5 minutes Eleni yelled for her favorite deer, “Bambi! Bambi, where are you? Come see me!” No, we did not find Bambi.
In a way, I cheated a bit by saying we begin our journey today. Unlike the rest of the trip, we have a definite destination: Luray, Virginia. We are meeting up with some of my family and we’ll be staying in a cabin in the woods for five days. We will be in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Here we are. Photos are further below and not in order - I have not sorted this all out yet. But, the people at 58 West Cafe in Luray are kind.
2 comments:
I love this! You are going to have a fantastic and memorable summer......in more ways than one!
Aunt Diane
I NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN, MS. MORIN!!!!
hehehe
good luck...
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