Mid-Atlanticism
- CARAVAN HALEN
- Jul 22, 2019
- 10 min read
Fancy seeing you here again! I suppose you’ll be wanting to know what we’ve been up to for the last week or so in the Mid-Atlantic region, won’t you?
The genesis of this crazy old trip was to continue our quest to visit every state in the US together, the tally of which stood at 32. At some point in trip planning this blew out into a mammoth roadie loop, taking in the missing 18 plus a bunch of others. The route we chose meant the first half of the trip was new parts of states we’d visited before, but we’re now into uncharted waters: Virginia was the first new state on the trip, and number 33 on the tally.
After a very long post-holiday-weekend drive from the Outer Banks, we made it to Williamsburg, VA for a dose of history. Nearby Jamestown(e) was the first permanent English settlement in the US in 1607, when a party of soldiers and lackeys crossed the Atlantic and built a fort and village with the express intent of creating a colony for settlers to follow. It’s a fascinating story, including trading, skirmishes, and intermarriage with the local tribes, and the near collapse of the whole enterprise after famine and disease wiped out ¾ of the colony and led to incidents of cannibalism, before further ships from Britain bearing food got things back on track. The NPS preserves the site of the fort and colony, with a whole lot of archaeological riches and a nifty Pocahontas statue. Mo proudly completed the work for another Junior Ranger badge.
Jamestown was the centre of the new government for a while, before that honour moved to nearby Williamsburg, which was a major settlement in the colonial era before the War of Independence. Colonial Williamsburg is now run as a very slick, and pricey, tourist attraction, with a mix of original and reconstructed buildings, and hundreds of actors in period costume, many demonstrating trades and practices from the era: it’s basically the Howick Historical Village on steroids, and it’s a fun experience. There are various add-ons for extra cost, from dressing up in period costume, to axe throwing lessons; Bo and Mo enjoyed a horse-drawn carriage ride around the town. Kitty, who has now decided she wants to walk everywhere, at pace, particularly enjoyed romping around the old Virginia Capitol building during our tour.
On the way back from an after-dinner trip to the playground at our campsite in Williamsburg, Mo and I saw fireflies, which is a really quite magical thing regardless of whether you’re 4 or 39 years old. We’ve seen a few more at subsequent campsites in this part of the country, and it doesn’t get any less cool; someone should try and make our glow-worms a bit more social.
We headed inland to Shenandoah National Park, founded to try and create a National Park close to the big cities of the Eastern seaboard that could rival the western Parks. The park is long and skinny, with Skyline Drive as its spine: while there are some hikes, most visitors just partake in the scenic drive. There are a lot of overlooks, and the views are decent, but nothing compared to the big western Parks (or NZ for that matter). There are nice wildflowers and butterflies, and we saw deer, but unfortunately/fortunately none of the bears that apparently like to amble across the road from time to time.
The Appalachian trail comes through Shenandoah, and I wandered down a very small slice of it while the kids napped in the car. My ¼ mile was about 1/10,000 of the 2,150 mile (3,500 km) distance, but you get a sense of the appeal of it: the silence and solitude of the backcountry trail, and the mental and physical challenge of such a ridiculous distance. Walking the full distance from Georgia to Maine (or vice versa) in one hiking season (spring to autumn) is called thru-hiking, and a few thousand people set out to do it each year, with about a quarter succeeding. I’m really rather taken with the idea of trying to do it one day, and have just started reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, the tale of his failed attempt to complete it.
We popped in briefly to West Virginia, and the town of Harpers Ferry on the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, and on the border of Maryland and both Virginias. Harpers Ferry has a few mentions in Civil War history, and some lovely original buildings, and another portion of the Appalachian Trail runs through the town and over its historic railroad bridge.
We headed to Maryland, our base for exploring Washington DC. We had 3 full days here, but you could spend weeks and weeks. For an American, this must be a truly awe-inspiring place: it’s pretty special as a foreigner, even an Americanophile. We caught the train in from our campsite, and went straight to the White House. It was less busy than we expected, with a lot of security, and a roughly even split of MAGA hats and slightly feral protesters. A short walk south is the National Mall, and historic monuments galore. It’s a slightly surreal experience, like walking into the set of a familiar movie, but in mid-30s heat, with ice-cream-van jingles, selfie sticks, and Trump/Pence 2020 t-shirt vendors everywhere you turn.
The Washington Monument dominates the Mall visually, but the Lincoln Memorial is the most impressive: up many stairs and out of the heat, the giant marble figure stares down at you from his throne inside his Greek temple, surrounded by the enduringly wise words of his Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural speech. Despite the selfie madness going on around you, it’s a humbling place to be, and one of many sites in the city where you really wonder how the heck we got from Honest Abe to the current inhabitant of the White House.
The western end of the Mall also features most of the other notable monuments. Mo loved the Second World War Memorial, centred around a fountain: it’s tradition to sit with your feet in the water, as the G.I.s did in fountains around Europe to celebrate victory. When you’re four and it’s a very hot day, you are more than happy to pay your respects in this manner.
The Martin Luther King Memorial in the Tidal Basin just south of the Mall is relatively new, and features a striking relief of MLK bursting from a rockface, Rushmore-style, with the surrounding park featuring excerpts from his speeches. The next Monument along is the equally quotable FDR, my personal favourite president. As well as many of his wonderfully wise words spanning the New Deal through to WW2, there’s a sculpture of him with his dog that is very appealing to the younger political tourist. It’s impossible to spend time in the MLK and FDR memorials, immersed in the words of two of the greatest leaders in history, without comparing their quotes to whatever spiteful junk has most recently been tweeted by today’s best known American politician: he would do well to put his phone down and take a silent and reflective wander through the monuments to some of his elders and betters.
Outside of the monuments, the Mall is lined with the wonderful Smithsonian museums, all of which are free. We visited the Air & Space Museum first. It’s currently having a much-needed renovation: it’s the most popular museum, and is looking very worn-out and tired. Currently, the reno just means the same number of visitors are crammed into half the space, and it’s a little chaotic. Mo still loved getting to walk inside Skylab and see the space station exhibits. The Natural History Museum has had a recent revamp and is much more user-friendly, but still has a pleasantly old school stuffed-animals-in-a-glass-case feel. Kitty enjoyed trying to hug every single one of them through the glass.
There’s a lot of fantastic art to see too, way more than you can manage in half a day with kids. We hit up the Portrait Gallery to see the Presidential wing: traditional portraits until Kennedy, who went for a more impressionist approach, and most subsequent presidents have also tried to put their personal stamp on it, including this truly awful effort from Bill Clinton. On another floor are the famous civilian folks, with the latest entries including Michelle Obama and, obviously, LL Cool J. The Mall also has two outdoor sculpture gardens, including a splendid pumpkin from Yayoi Kusama, also known for the Obliteration Room (lotsa dots), recently at the Auckland Art Gallery.
We were in DC for the Cricket World Cup final, which started at 5.45am. I set my alarm and snuck outside to watch most of the Caps’ innings on a dodgy stream on the laptop, then when the battery ran out, listened to the rest on the radio. The England innings was followed via Cricinfo while in various museums. We were having lunch in the Air & Space Museum’s temporary café, devoid of high chairs or toilets with change facilities, for the end of England’s innings and the Super Over, which meant chasing a crazy toddler with a poopy nappy around in circles while hitting refresh every few seconds to read about whatever fresh nonsense had just happened at Lords. A family of English tourists were huddled over a phone, and they whooped with delight as Guptill was run out, just as I was intercepting Kitty from running headlong down a flight of stairs. Quite a game.
DC also has the Smithsonian National Zoo, best known for its pandas. It also boasts a lovely carousel (Mo chose to ride on the hummingbird), and two orangutan enclosures a few hundred metres apart, joined by the "O-Line", an overhead cable that they can swing along, above the heads of passers-by (they were snoozing rather than O-Lining when we stopped by, unfortunately).
Next state on the list was Delaware, on the way to Philadelphia. We had a bit of a shocker leaving DC, and our caravan slipped off its chocks, bending one of the scissor-jack stabilizers. Fixing that, and then having a few Google Maps issues getting through Baltimore meant we were running a few hours behind, so only got to spend five minutes in a rest stop in Delaware.
Philadelphia was home to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and is peppered with historical sites, including Independence Hall, where the Declaration was signed, and the Liberty Bell, which hung and rang in the Hall from the 1750s, but wasn’t rung at the Declaration. The Bell was only recognized as symbolic following an 1847 novel that referred to it, and its famous crack appeared sometime between those dates.
We had a fun walk around the U.S. Mint, one of four round the country casually pumping out a total of 28 billion coins a year. Mo’s favourite part was getting to design your own quarter on a computer; I’m pretty sure she’s expecting to see her horse and butterfly effort in circulation later on the trip. Another of Philly’s claims to fame is the ‘Rocky steps’ at the Museum of Art. Traffic madness and napping kids meant we only did it as a drive-by, but we got to see a lot of people do the same pose for a photo opp in front of the Rocky statue as we crawled past.
Philadelphia’s contribution to the culinary world is the Philly cheesesteak: a soft bun with thinly sliced roast beef, cheese, and optional extras: it’s pretty darn tasty as long as you choose actual cheese rather than Cheese Whizz (apparently this is popular: philly-stines, I tell ya).
Philly was the first major city we’d driven into: we stayed in the middle of Vegas, caught the train into DC, and haven’t really been anywhere else that sizeable. We were reacquainted with traffic, roadworks, terrible drivers, and rude people. There are some fun parts to being in these bigger Eastern cities , but I much prefer the space and scenery out West, or the charming slower pace and politeness down South.
Our campsite for Philly was actually on the New Jersey side of the river, and we followed the border north to the Delaware Water Gap, confusingly nowhere near the state of Delaware, but a National Recreation Area along the Delaware River. I’m still a little confused as to what a ‘water gap’ actually is, and Google hasn’t helped me a great deal by telling me it’s when a river cuts through between two mountains, which I thought was a canyon. Anyhoo, the Delaware Water Gap is pleasant enough, but there aren’t any mountains to speak of: it’s just a river that goes through some woods, and is popular for kayaking and toobin’ (I want to put a ‘g’ on the end but it just doesn’t feel right). Some overexcited marketer on the internet once called it the Grand Canyon of the Northeast, which it most certainly isn’t.
Pennsylvania and Jersey seem to have more cricket fans that the rest of the country combined: in the last few days I’ve had quality cricket chats with the Indian owner of a Subway, and a Guyanan pastor from New York holidaying at the KoA, plus bowled an over of untidy off-spin in an Indian family game, breaking a jandal in the process. All these people can’t stop talking about how much they love Kane Williamson.
Bloody hell, it’s been hot and muggy. There’s a bona-fide national emergency heatwave for 2/3 of the country at the moment, and a former New York Giant and superbowl winner just died of heatstroke in Arkansas. It’s not been quite that hot up here, but it’s been mid-30s and very high humidity, and we, in the immortal words of Justin Timberlake, are bringing sweaty back.
We’re now at 38 states, with Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey added to the list. Connecticut ho!
BEERWATCH: Maryland breweries seem to love high-gravity IPAs, with seemingly nothing under 7 or 8%: maybe you need to de-stress real quick after a long government day in DC. Bronze goes to Flying Dog, who have distinctive artwork by Hunter S Thompson acolyte Ralph Steadman, and a rather moreish Belgian IPA with the rather questionable name of “Raging Bitch”.
Silver goes to Delaware’s Dogfish Head (now owned by Boston Brewing Co as of a couple of months ago, beer business fans). As well as their reliably delish “SeaQuench” sour, which we have partaken of muchly, they’ve just released a couple of interesting musical collabs: “American Beauty”, a Grateful Dead-inspired pale ale with granola in the malt bill, and “Dragons and YumYums”, a Flaming Lips-endorsed pale ale with (deep breath) dragonfruit, yumberry, passionfruit, pear, and black carrot juice. The latter is pink, sweet, and rather tasty, and Wayne Coyne has written some songs about it, so I kinda have to give it the gong.
Gold heads to Pennsylvania and Victory Brewing, who have various Belgian-inspired drops, including a tripel called “Golden Monkey”, and an even better brett-soured version of it called “Sour Monkey”, which weighs in at a cheeky 9.5%. You’d think that would make it somewhat niche, but the 6-pack seems to be a big seller at Walmarts across the Mid-Atlantic. Go figure.
MO’S PLAYGROUND REVIEWS: A tough one, this. Mo really liked the playground at Shenandoah KoA, where she made friends with some sisters from Georgia over a game of tetherball. She’s an even bigger fan of the “jumping pillow”, a slightly more OSH-friendly giant trampoline setup, so the Williamsburg and Philly KoAs score highly, with Philly edging it based on having an air hockey table too. Honourable mention to the Delaware Water Gap KoA for having a hayride (a tractor pulling a trailer with haybale seats) which Mo was highly impressed with.
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