“If you have a car and a map, you don’t need a plan” pretty well sums up the primary lesson my parents taught me about traveling. I remember being shaken awake during the wee hours of the morning and told we were going to go somewhere (usually Disney World or Silver Dollar City) and to hurry and pack our things. My parents don’t like to dedicate their time to something in advance (What if a better opportunity comes up and we’ve already made plans?!) and so most of our vacations were last-minute rush jobs. And that was just fine by me.

Where I diverge from my parents, in terms of road trips, is that they hate to “get lost”. Getting lost could mean making a wrong turn, going the wrong way, exiting one exit too early or too late from the freeway, or really going any more than the least possible miles between points A and B. My philosophy has always been “You are still in the car and it can turn around”.  The story I am about to tell is heavy handed with a bit of both.

At 2pm the Friday before spring break my Sophomore year I was sitting at Jaspers, where I ate lunch every Friday that year, listening to some friends discuss their plans for spring break. Our numbers were fewer because some of us had already left for the holiday but I had one last class.  I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but riding back to campus I texted Laura “Road trip to New York City?” and 2 hours later we began our 3,533 mile six day road trip. You read that right - 3000+ miles on a whim. (I love my younger self!)

We spent that night near Dallas with Laura’s parents who gifted us an atlas for the road. This was not before smartphones, but I sure didn’t have one, and I guess Laura didn’t either. We carefully mapped our proposed route:18 states + DC. We would stay the next night in Huntsville Alabama at Laura’s brother’s house ten hours away. From there I would call my parents and tell them I was in Huntsville for spring break, and it wouldn’t technically be a lie.

From Huntsville we drove to DC, another ten hour drive. We arrived late in the evening and our map was not exactly helpful. If you’ve ever lived in DC (as we both later did) or even visited, you know that the road signs are sorely misplaced. If you happen to be in a position of power to change things in DC, the following are not helpful practices: announcing the exit/entrance to a freeway after it has passed; having a road sign over the wrong lane; posting a road sign where it is completely obscured by and overpass. These blunders abound in DC, to the point that it is better to know where you are going and ignore the road signs altogether if you can. We couldn’t.

Our initial plan was to sleep in the Georgetown hospital or it’s parking lot (we were college kids after all). We had an awful time finding it. Searching until we were nearly out of gas, we stopped at a station we believed was in the vicinity of the school (per our map) and filled up the car. Inside we looked for a more detailed map, which we would obviously need for this city, and asked if the attendant could tell us where we were or where we were going. The attendant was distracted with another customer but told us both, separately, that we were not close to Georgetown and gestured eastward. I was vaguely aware of a car pulling up and depositing one of its riders who wore loose sagging jeans and a dark hoodie with the hood pulled up. He ambled slowly around the store. The attendant didn’t take his eyes off him and seamlessly went inside the bullet-proof glass and locked himself in. Meanwhile, the car that had dropped off the man was circling back around in the parking lot. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but I wasn’t hanging around to have the station attendant’s suspicions confirmed or denied. I quickly ushered Laura, who was oblivious I soon learned, out of the store and into the car. No map, no answers but east. About an hour of driving later, we found Georgetown. It was maybe half a mile WEST of the gas station. Of course.

Turned out the Georgetown Hospital charges to park your car. All that searching was wasted and we headed back south to the suburbs of Virginia looking endlessly for a place to stay. We passed a few heavily populated all night diners but couldn’t decide if having a lot of people moving about all night was a good or bad thing when sleeping in the car and ended up staying in the parking lot of a 24 hours LA Fitness which we turned into illegally after driving miles in the wrong direction without an option for turning around.

The next day we drove into the city, opting for suburban streets instead of the overcrowded and stalled “express”ways. We drove past the narrowest house in the US and ended up getting an automatic speeding ticket somewhere in DC (but we didn’t learn that until later). The city was jammed with traffic once we got there, and we spent a good hour in front of the same statue (the one above) before opting to just park on a side street and walk everywhere.
On this side street there was a free space for parallel parking. I had passed this portion of my driver’s test but hadn’t ever had to parallel park since then. Didn’t matter though, because there was a car parked in the street, adjacent to the open parking space, with its lights flashing. We were flabbergasted at the time but I am now well aware that this, though maybe not exactly acceptable, is a completely normal part of east coast life. The owner of the vehicle was getting a haircut. NBD. Maybe she also didn’t know how to parallel park, or maybe she was running late for her hair appointment. Who could say? While waiting, another spot opened and I got the chance to try my hand at parallel parking. Let me tell you, Honda CRVs have an AMAZING turning radius. 1-2-3 and we were in!

I know we spent the day walking around the nation’s capital. I know we went to the White House, the National Mall with all its monuments and museums (a few of which we visited), China Town, and Union Station. I know this because I have pictures. But honestly, since we later lived there, I have a hard time separating what happened that first time - except the gas station, traffic, parallel parking, and that we were asked if we wanted sparkling water with our meal (a first for both of us).

The next day we went to Philadelphia where we walked around some more. More monuments, more statues, more neat American history. We saw the fake liberty bell and learned that it was fake which was a bit of a let down. We asked the woman at the tourist office her recommendations for things to do/see (the national mint - very cool!) and where was best place to get a cheesesteak. She told us that while Pat’s and Geno’s had an infamous rivalry, all the locals go to Jimmy’s, and off we went. The line was out the door. We missed the sign that said cash only until we got to the front to pay. We had to get out of line and get money from the ATM, which wasn’t working. We found another and were back in line again for cheese steaks. They were fine but I wasn’t overly impressed. However, that should reflect poorly on Jimmy’s. I don’t really like any of the ingredients in cheese steak so thinking I would like them all piled together was misguided. While eating cheesesteak, I learned that Laura had never had crab rangoon before, a childhood favorite of mine. What could we do then but head straight to ChinaTown and search every menu on the street. We got them to go and ate in a nearby park. I was obviously excited because I have this amazing photo of Laura eating one (and spilling it on herself) on a park bench.

If you’ve been to Philadelphia, you know the Philadelphia Art Museum with it’s Rocky Balboa statue is not near everything else downtown. Being naive adventurers, we opted to drive to it before we left the city. This was a mistake. We literally drove around the building four times because, right in front of the museum, is an eight-lane circular monstrosity of civil engineering. The map doesn’t look nearly as chaotic as it was in real life. Our only destination was “a cheap motel between here and New York City” which didn’t narrow things down much. At least half the exits had to be going West or South which was obviously wrong. But which ones? After nearly crashing (probably more times than we realized), we threw up our hands (not literally!) and picked one, thinking we could use landmarks or ask for help (because that worked so well last time!) to figure out where we were when traffic was less dense.

Did we succeed in finding our way? After so many mishaps did we come to hate road trips? Come back next week to read about the rest of our trip!

Until then, I’d love to hear from you! What epic road trips have you been on? When was the last time you took a road trip with a paper map? What is your favorite road trip memory?
-Ff

check out part 2!