One of the best known stories about cross-country road trips began in Paterson, N.J. Now here I am, another Jersey native headed out into the great wide open.
The road trip is a great American pastime that will go on and on forever – just like the pavement that makes them possible.
Of course, Jack Kerouac’s America has passed into the pages of history now, but through classics such as On the Road, he helped to infuse future generations with a sense of adventure. This country spans a manifested destiny of 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
I dreamed of hitting the road to go from the East Coast to the West and back for years. With months of planning behind me, there’s nothing but open road ahead.
And being on the go, I immediately appreciate that I would never have wanted to set out to do this without my trusty sidekicks (ie. my GPS navigation device and my iPod), because they make life on the road so much easier to live. Ever spent eight hours in a car with the radio stations tuning in and out for hundreds of miles?
What’s that you say? CDs? Tell me, how many of the CDs in your car could you listen to over and over and over again during a 9-hour day locked in the car the whole time? (Then, there’s Day Two…) And how about pulling over to check the map on the shoulder or at rest areas?!
What is with the whole Interstate “loops” system anyway – why does every major city have a beltway with no fewer than five other Interstate highways emptying onto it? No wonder Interstate belts form identity crises. (I’m sure some can appreciate the simultaneous genius and mind-numbingness of watching signs go by reading I-95, I-295, I-495, I-695…)
More seriously, these loops probably help diffuse a lot of major traffic flow issues into each area of the city. More notably, I don’t care about that when I have to switch lanes nine times in 10 minutes just to stay on the same road I was already on for about a hundred miles…
Speaking of the D.C. area, that brings me to the first day of my road trip.
Upon leaving Jersey, I headed right for Washington, D.C. And I have to admit, I wasn’t too keen on paying tolls for a bunch of highways and bridges and tunnels when I get all the joy of that at home. (Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of getting away from the bridge and tunnel rat race?)
Ever think, “There’s gotta be a better way to do this?” Though it may be well-known to some already, I took the highway less traveled. Cutting west through Pennsylvania then south to Baltimore, I bypassed all tolls except one after crossing the Delaware River into the Keystone state. Total tolls for first day’s travel? $0.75. Meanwhile, going the most heavily trafficked route, it’s about $5 just to get off the Turnpike!
D.C. has a lot of beautiful sites and a lot of history (being the nation’s capital and all that jazz), but I’ve been there before, so I opted for a Virginia satellite just off the beltway; Falls Church, population approximately 11,000, much of it very blue in the voting booth.
Virginia allows municipalities the choice of being independent of counties surrounding them, and Falls Church is just such an independent city. The city’s paper, The Falls Church News-Press, is distributed throughout D.C. and has been hailed by one of the district’s biggest papers as the “last remnant of the liberal media” in the area, according to publisher and owner Nick Benton.
Around the corner from the building that houses the paper is a sushi restaurant called Koi Koi. If you’re a regular at Komegashi in Jersey City, this is your stop for their elegant and delectable sushi roll creations. A few particularly superb selections from the menu include the Kamikaze Roll, which is spicy tuna with cucumber, avocado, and eel on the outside drizzled with a sweet and sour sauce, and the Sunset Roll, which is spicy tuna, crab and cucumber, wrapped in salmon.
Not far away is Natalia’s Elegant Creations, which makes breakfast and dessert treats along with their own strong and satisfying coffee. The café has a small town feel and its walls are lined with the original works of local artists. The freshly made bagels are very soft without being too chewy or thick – a simple cup of hazelnut coffee and a plain buttered bagel lightly toasted from Natalia’s was the best breakfast I’ve tasted in a long time.
Only being able to stay one day and one night in Falls Church, Va., I had to keep on moving…
Next stop: Knoxville, Tenn.! Columnist Mary Paul is a former staff writer of the Hudson Reporter and New Jersey resident. Comments on this piece can be sent to: current@hudsonreporter.com.