The Back Again Begins

This is my fifth day of meandering about the eastern seaboard. I’m on a round trip to Portland Maine from Little Rock, Arkansas, for my niece’s wedding. I’m driving and poking my head in places along the way. Currently, the wedding done, I’m headed back. For previous entries, see below.

I was up late watching the stream for our ongoing Kickstarter (that was a blast), heading off to bed somewhere around 1 am. I planned to sleep in a bit, till about 7:30 and then Kathy and I would hit the road to Newark to pick up Rachel and Fin. For some idiotic reason I woke up at 6. My attempts to return to the land of nod succeeded only in waking Kathy. We mused about sleep in silence for a while, but I knew she was ready to get started. Without further ado we trundled out of bed and gathered our whereabouts and hit the road.

The drive south out of New England proved pleasant enough. Good roads, light traffic till 495 around Boston and sunny weather. Passing through New Hampshire and into Massachusetts we trundled along. We hit Connecticut like a bullet and I have to say, those folks are the first I’ve seen on this whole journey who leave the passing lane clear for passing vehicles. Not sure if that is common or not, but the road opened pleasantly enough for us.

The drive congested a bit in the south of that state and began to really gum up closer to New York. We angled for the George Washington Bridge to get over the Hudson and into New Jersey.  The traffic thickened like sap on a limb so that we slowed and crawled, sped up, slowed and crawled on and on through late morning. The ride up to the bridge was a twist of turns to the top until we were high over the street and water. I’ve not been on that bridge in 25 odd years, more probably, and I had no memory of it being that large. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever been on it. I passed this way once before back in 94 or 95, when I left Portland and Tim on Higgens Beach. I thought I took this bridge, though maybe it was another. Regardless the bridge is a monument to human ingenuity.

Driving didn’t allow me to see the skyline very well, but the few glances I stole of Manhattan were breathtaking. I was some distance away and the buildings lost in a late morning haze, but even so it was amazing. That massive, old city, claws up into the horizon like a shattered dock whose only memory are the uneven, weathered, mooring poles, that once held the decking in place. Even the brief glimpse left a lasting impression.

Note: our attempts to photograph this across several lanes of traffic, the bridge trestles and distance proved fruitless. Sometimes its best to just look and remember. The picture here, was taken from the NJ turnpike on the other side of the river.

We crossed over into New Jersey and it was different than I remembered from my previous trip. A mad cap sprawl of highways, seemingly laid one next to the other in an impossible row, traffic flowing in the opposite direction on both sides of me. All this chaos an orchestrated distraction caused the first vague hints of irritation.

All that soon passed as we swept into the Newark Airport and retrieved our stranded daughter and her boyfriend. Loading them in the car we rushed out of there. Two hours of city traffic, turns and twists, flying cars and madness ensuing left me needing the open road. Once directed to Interstate 78, I was off running for the hills of Pennsylvania. This was our first actual meeting with the Englishman and we were once again impressed with our daughter’s life choices. The four of us carried on into the west, chatting and joking.

A sudden storm hammered the hell out of us in Harrisburg and rolled on like a mad cap thought until it hammered the east coast, where it stranded all the planes of the wedding party, scattering them far and wide with delays and procrastinations. My sister called me about the time we pulled into the battlefield at Gettysburg to ask if I was enjoying my drive as they sweated it out on the tarmac. I told her I was enjoying it immensely and promised we’d rent a bus next time and all drive together.

This unplanned jaunt to this massive Civil War battlefield came late in the afternoon and gave us some purpose as we wanted to get there before it closed. We failed in that, though the gates were open till sunset and we drove around to see, got out and looked about. It proved quite enlightening. I had no idea the area the battle covered. The sun was warm and the air damp and a bit heavy. I could only just see the canon smoke and the lines Confederate Gray melting away. Reading one monument’s inscription “Grapeshot at 10 Yards” brought the struggle home like nothing else. The whole experience was enlightening and will probably take up a bit of today’s trek.

We found a hotel shortly after that, ate at a small tavern called Gettysburgers, and I had a Confederate Burger stripped of its trappings with a basket of fries. It was very good, much more than that I cannot say. A bit of ice cream and then off to the hotel to get ready for the next day’s travel.