“Ten days, 7 states & 1,647 miles. It may not have been as epic in scale as what’s gone before it, necessitating the omission of the word ‘epic’ from the road trip title, but this stateside jaunt was epic for other reasons, least of all the company. US Road Trip 2018 was a bite-sized US family affair.”
“Towards the very top of the Northern Hemisphere and about as human as the High Arctic gets, this is as far north as one can venture without being a scientist and the furthest north man has managed to settle permanent communities inhabited year-round…People can live the Arctic here. They can experience it, understand it. Yes of course it’s out of the way, and no it’s not a location for the dilettante traveller, but it’s (relatively) straightforward to get here… and, with a bit of savvy planning, not as expensive as you might think.”
“From South Africa to North Korea, Canada to Greece, I somehow found the time to travel 10 countries in 2017 (yes, Kosovo is a country), a rather convenient number for the purpose of an end-of-year review. So here are 10 from 10, ten pictures from ten countries presented in chronological order from the year in travel & photography that was 2017.”
“The heavy-hitting pioneering & groundbreaking history; the beaches; the lighthouses; and the swashbuckling maritime vibe of North Carolina’s Outer Bank were enthralling & educational. But even they, and if you’ll pardon the oh-so pathetic pun, played a very distant second fiddle to the 4 days of foot tapin’ & VIP mingling that was the Outer Banks Bluegrass Festival at Manteo’s Roanoke Island Festival Park, known for 4 days every year as Bluegrass Island.”
“The culmination of the wider road trip, leaving the best to last… nothing quite compares to the fantastic foliage display one is treated to on a late September to early November foray into rural New England. And it – an autumn foray into rural New England – is quite the attraction. It’s estimated that some 8 million people descend on the region every year with each New England state tourism website doing its utmost to provide some kind of ‘Fall Foliage Tracker’ to highlight the best of the spectacle for visitors, a.k.a. leaf peepers, ‘leaf peeping’ an established and informal term for the activity of travelling to view & photograph the foliage. Don’t mind if we do.”
“Just passing through. Four days, 4 States & 1,506 miles of passing through… It got chillier day by day and what leaves we saw as we approached a New England fall enticed. Yes there were highlights, a return to rural Kentucky, a quick box-ticking foray into (& out of) Michigan, the shores of Lake Erie, the shrine to America’s beloved National Pastime that is Cooperstown’s National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum & the lake-heavy forested wilds of Upstate New York’s Adirondacks the notable highs from this portion of the wider road trip. But the feeling that we were only passing through never really abated, not until the job was done and were were perched by the shores of Upstate New York state’s Lake George on the very edge of New England itself…”
“After 2 weeks of driving south, a right turn in Jacksonville, Florida on Day 14 saw us turning our back on the pioneering history of the Eastern Seaboard. From there on out the 1,575 miles of ground we covered over the course of a week in travelling first in a westerly & then northerly direction through The South was all about the slow and inexorable return back towards the cooler climes of New England, sill the depth of a rather big country away…”
“Virginia, the Carolinas & Georgia. From Arlington, Virginia in the north to Savannah, Georgia in the South. Over 1,200 miles with the ocean never too far away. There was a lot of history, a lot of water, a lot of bluegrass and a whole lot of photogenic highlights.”
“The ruefulness of the tragedy that was the infamous Civil War Battle of Gettysburg… stepping back in time among the Amish of Pennsylvania’s Amish Country. Reliving the birth of the nation in historic Philadelphia… stepping out on the iconic boardwalk of New Jersey’s brassy Atlantic City… Quaint little Delaware. The nautical niceties of Maryland’s Annapolis. And the instantly-recognisable monuments, those venerated altars to democracy, in Washington D.C. 450-plus miles, four days and as many states.”
“… the US probably warrants more than one epic once-in-a-lifetime road trip experience. So, and a year-plus after our 9,500+ mile US Road Trip 2016, we’re hitting the US road once again. Welcome to Epic US Road Trip part II, the 2017 edition… this one is all about history; music; (more of) the Deep South; and rural drives and leaf peeping the vibrant hues of a New England fall/autumn. And yes, it’s gonna be epic all over again.”