Annapolis, Maryland

We made a quick trip over to Annapolis, the state capitol of Maryland. It's only about 45 minutes from Columbia where we are staying. The Maryland State House, as it is known here, is the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use, dating to 1772.

We went to Annapolis harbor, which sits on the Chesapeake Bay, hoping to find a fish market so that we could bring home fresh fish for dinner. Unfortunately, the big fish market that used to be there many years ago was apparently wiped out by a flood caused by Hurricane Isabel in 2003. It has since been replaced by a food court and there seemed to be no other options. We asked around and no one knew of any fish markets in the vicinity. Very sad. A harbor town with no fresh fish. There were a few seafood restaurants, but even those seemed to be importing their fish from inland sources. This was evident by the seafood delivery trucks from Jessup, MD, a town about 25 miles inland from Annapolis.

Destination achieved!

Mile 3885

Well, we FINALLY reached our destination in Columbia, Maryland last night! We will spend a little over a week here and down in Calvert County visiting family. Unfortunately, Yvette already caught her flight this morning to return home, and won't be joining us for the return trip. It was nice having her company on the way out. Thank you, Yvette!

We didn't cover a whole of ground since our last post, but we sure did see a lot! Here's how it happened:


We got up Tuesday and had a leisurely morning, having breakfast with Steve at his home. We are so fortunate to have friends open their homes to us! Thank you all who have offered to have us over or have met us along the way of our trek across America. We are sorry that we didn't get to see everyone, but we had to get to Maryland so that Yvette would make her return trip in time. After breakfast, we packed up and made the very short trip into downtown Richmond to visit the Virginia state capitol.


After that, it was about 100 miles to the Washington, D.C. Luckily, we found parking right next to the Washington Monument which was our first stop. For those of you who have been there, you know how rare that is to find. There are more famous landmarks in this city then anywhere we have been. So we did our best to see the big ones.

Lincoln Memorial


Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial


The Capitol Building which had some nice cool grass.


We did our best to see the White House, but security is so strict around there now, we couldn't find parking close enough to walk over to see it. By the time we got to it, it was rush hour. Rush hour in D.C. really limits your parking options. If you are parked on the street in a restricted area after 4pm, they actually ticket you and then tow you car up onto to the curb to open up traffic lanes. There are so many cars to move that it's too difficult to tow all of them away, so they just drag them all up onto the curb. Anyway, we only caught a fleeting glimpse of it the White House. Maybe we can go back and see it later while we are here in Maryland.

Unfortunately, we left D.C. in the middle of rush hour so it took awhile to get out of the city. The spectacular thunderstorm at the time probably didn't help matters much either. Once we got out of the city, however, the roads opened up and the sky cleared. So we had a pretty nice drive the rest of the way to our destination, arriving in Columbia, MD around 7pm.

While we were out for dinner with family that night, Yvette caught very first firefly. Like many of you west coasters, she had never even seen a firefly before last night near Richmond, let alone caught one before. For those of you don't know, during the summer, this is a favorite activity for children (and adults!) in the evening. Fireflies, or lightning bugs as they are sometimes known, come out just as night falls and use bioluminescence to emit a yellowish glow to attract mates and prey. They fly slowly enough so that anyone can easily catch one. Little biology lesson there. You can read more about them here.

With a belly full of Maryland crab, we were able to settle down for the evening and get the full nights sleep we had been missing on our week long journey. No need to hit the road so early the next for a long day's drive this time.

We will be here for a little over a week and will continue to blog if anything significant happens. We will get back into the full swing of things on our way back west, this time taking a more northerly route. So keep an eye out on the blog to follow along with us on our way home. Our friend Jen had posted a message asking why there are no people in the pictures we post. So here's one from the road:


The front seat is usually dog-occupied on these road trips, and there was no reason for it to be any different on this road one just because there was an extra person along for the ride!

Richmond, Virginia

Mile 3710

Another night with a real bed and a hot shower last night! We are in Richmond, Virginia staying at our friend Steve's house. What a nice house and a HUGE yard. Lots of room to run around! Steve was kind enough to treat us to a late night supper when we arrived. What great friends we have! It's been a couple of days since the last blog so let's get caught up:

We checked out of the motel in Mobile at around 7am Sunday morning and soon found ourselves crossing into Florida an hour later at mile 2506. We drove along the gulf coast of the Florida panhandle from Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach, then cut up north to get back into Alabama.


We took a VERY nice drive off the Interstate up through central Alabama passing through many small rural towns. Those drives are always so interesting. We like small towns. We got to Montgomery, Alabama at mile 2836 and took the obligatory state capitol building picture. What a quiet town Montgomery seems to be. Perhaps being Sunday in the bible belt keeps things mellow like that. The streets were almost deserted in the downtown area.



By mile 2923, we found ourselves in Georgia at 3:29pm. We rolled into the huge city of Atlanta a couple of hours later and headed straight for the state capitol. The statue in the picture is John B. Gordon, a former Georgia Governor and Senator. There was a Braves game about to get underway, as we saw the fans headed for the game as we drove past Turner Field. In stark contrast to Montgomery, Atlanta was as busy as a big city should be. Hundreds of people were gathered at Centennial Olympic Park watching a fountain show set to classical music. Not quite the Bellagio, but it sure drew a crowd on this hot Atlanta day. We spent awhile driving around downtown Atlanta, looking for interesting things to take pictures of. I think we found one. Atlanta seems to be a great city and regret that we only spent a couple for hours there. But as it is with every other stop, we had to keep on going.

As night fell, we crossed the state line into South Carolina at mile 3108, and then North Carolina right after that at mile 3182. A little over an hour later driving up toward the mountains, we mistakenly made a wrong turn while looking for a campground. We ended up in the city of Asheville. What a great discovery! It sounds funny, but even though everything was closed, it looked like such a fantastic town. We couldn't wait to revisit it in the morning!

We eventually found the campground by close to midnight Sunday night, quickly made camp, built a fire and even managed to cook some dinner. We camp the way you are supposed to do it with a tent and sleeping bags. Oh, and of course, the laptop for blogging. (This campground has free wi-fi access!) Sleep came quickly as we had covered a lot of mileage that day.


Monday morning, we made a camp breakfast of coffee, oj, bacon and eggs. We broke down camp and then went into Asheville to check out the town in the daylight. We were right! It was a neat little city. Lots of cafes, coffee shops and people on the streets. We finally got onto the Blue Ridge Parkway at almost 11am at the Asheville entrance. We covered close to 300 miles on the Parkway, exiting at Roanoke, crossing the border into Virginia along the way at mile 3428 of our trip. Unfortunately, we were not treated kindly by the weather gods and could not enjoy the beautiful views we had been expecting. Most of the day was cloudy with heavy haze obscuring the mountain scenery. However, it was still a very pleasant drive, taking us almost eight hours to complete. We cut eastward across Virginia via Highways 460 and 360 into Richmond and arrived at Steve's house around 10:30pm.