Made it home safe and sound.
Was surprised to find that getting from upstate New York to Jackson, MI took a lot quicker than I realized. I guess I forgot that the Erie section of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a narrow one, and so I spent a few hours napping outside of Cleveland before shot-gunning home. Got home about 9-9:30, took a four-hour nap, and spent the day getting reacquainted with real life.
“That’s fine,” you say,”but Jesus, man, how much did you spend on gas?”
I have answers to that and more questions right here.
- Gas: $324
- States visited: 10
- Miles traveled: 2,800
- Money spent on toll booths/parking alone: $50-75
- Favorite part of the trip: Walden Pond
- Hardest part of the trip: My knee hurting when I needed it not to
- Nights I drank beer for dinner: Every single one
- Best meal: “The twins” – lobsters at Taste of Maine
- Funnest fact: Everyone in Rhode Island speaks like Peter Griffin in “Family Guy”
- Best roads for driving: Connecticut
- Most interesting thing learned: Benedict Arnold was a heroic guy, despite his flaws
I haven’t had time to process the whole trip just yet. I’m still thinking thoughts along the lines of, “A week ago, I was in New Jersey.” It kind of feels like I never left, which is a feeling that plagues me whenever I return home.
I’m glad I did this trip the way I did (with the Revolutionary War stuff as the focus), and I’m not sorry I missed seeing some of the sites. There are some points to return to, and some to avoid, and these kind of “greatest hits” trips make it easy to figure out what’s to like and what’s not to like.
But it does back up my thought the whole time: that we live in an amazing country, with an amazing history, and a lot of people rose up and fought back right when they needed to. These days, one can’t escape the feeling that a lot of what the Continentals and minutemen fought against has returned. America is in a weird spot right now. I feel like if every American took a trip to Old Philadelphia, or walked the Freedom Trail in Boston, or remembered the words of Thoreau, they might not be willing to put up with so much abuse or neglect or bullshit.
Hope springs eternal, my journalism professor and mentor Dr. Renner always told me, and so one can only hope that those men who stood atop Bunker Hill and went looking for a fight in Lexington aren’t being taken for granted.
Tags: boston, bunker hill, fee, gas prices, new england, philadelphia, revolutionary war, thoreau, toll, walden
