Song of the Open Road

From the very beginning, I wanted to keep a record of our great adventure, a voyage across America in our Mini Cooper, here in this blog.  But we knew we were packing light and would not have very much time, so we decided to leave our laptops at home.  We used our iPhones to keep in touch to some extend (Martha posted some photographs on Facebook from time to time, and we both checked our mail) and also to take photographs.  We both took so many photos that we ran out of room on our antiquated 8gb iPhones and had to delete some of them.  I decided to reconstruct a day-by-day account after we returned, and I relied on this small journal I bought a day or two before we left at the Stone Lantern in Highlands.

At the end of every day, I would scribble an account of the day's journey, usually the last thing I did every night before falling into a sound sleep.  Yes, we slept well! - our days were long and were filled with activity.  We traveled long and sometimes difficult distances across huge landscapes that unrolled relentlessly before our trusty little car, and every day we were filled with a sense of awe and gratitude.  What a strange and beautiful country this is, from sea to shining sea!

So I am writing this blog retroactively, a little bit at a time, from our home port in Highlands reached safely 30 days and 9,000 miles after we set sail on this adventure.

"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me . . ."

- Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"