May 28, 2024

RN. When I was a child (between 6-8 yrs old) growing up in Southern California, my parents bought me a puzzle of the United States made of wood with each state as a puzzle piece.  I had to fit the pieces into an outline of the contiguous states without any guides.  It was amazing how different the sizes of the states were.  Some states were easy to place; for example, Florida, California, Texas, and Maine. However, I had to learn how to fit the other states based on their possible location and their shapes.  For example, Nevada fits into the crook of the eastern side of California, and Arizona’s wiggly lines on the west side fit perfectly into the southeastern sides of Nevada and California.  Particularly curious to me was the collection of states in the northeast that were so tiny I had to be careful not to lose them.  

Today, we drove through many of those tiny states.  We started in Massachusetts, then traveled through Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and ended up in Maryland.  As a kid I could not imagine how you could possibly travel to more than one state in a day. Awesome!!  This was the longest stretch of our trip; 470 miles and we made it in 9.5 hours with 3 stops for charging our Tesla.  The traffic gods were with us! 

Leaving the Cape

FE. We live surrounded by the ocean here on Cape Cod and our drive down to the Washington DC area took us down along the coast for the longest distance in one day of our entire trip (over 450 miles). Amazing how many rivers empty into the Atlantic along the way, and how many different types of bridges we crossed. Here are some for you:

Cape Cod Canal, Bourne Bridge, we crossed it and we were on the mainland. No photo- we see it too much!

Taunton River, Braga Bridge on I-195 in Fall River. Wow, how many other bridges have a battleship parked under it?

Connecticut River, RE Baldwin Bridge on I-95 Sorry, no photo

Hudson River, Tappan Zee Bridge on I-287, way better name than Governor Mario Cuomo, the most recently built of the bridges we crossed (and the most beautiful)

Delaware River, Delaware Memorial Bridge on I-95 (such an imaginative name)

Susquehanna River, ME Tidings Bridge on I-95– a very boring bridge on pylons- not worth a photo!

Finally we arrive at Alan Willard’s house in Kensington MD and relax in his backyard…there is more use for water than building bridges over!