You must be trippin'

It's hard to believe that our first real road trip was almost four years ago. Traveling from Virginia Beach to Maine and back again in my '96 Chevy Cavalier with a broken driver's side window over a span of four days was quite the adventure. A friend suggested we take along a GPS and offered to let me borrow one of his; however, I decided we'd be fine without one and what would be the fun in a road trip if we knew exactly where we were going. Of course, ever the planner we did actually book lodging along the way so we had to be at certain places each night along the way.

During the course of our trip we made stops at Dover Downs, Philadelphia (though we got lost and barely found our way to a cheese steak), West Chester, PA (where we spent our first night camping and canoeing), Salem & Boston, MA (where we stayed at a "haunted" inn and I enjoyed my first - several - shots of Patron Tequlia before missing the last train back to Salem and having to take a cab ride back), Southern Maine (got to visit some good friends of ours, ate lobster for the first time, and enjoyed a quaint pizza restaurant that I would gladly go back to again), and our final stop before the long ride home was Foxwoods Casino. Along the way we flew past NYC where I ran a 10.00 toll right in the middle of the Bronx and the pink fluffy bunny gang was born! I also fell in love with Connecticut due to the beautiful scenery we drove by, not to mention the state smelled good. Seriously, it actually smelled good! Fresh air is an amazing thing when the stench of Jersey has been seared into your nose. While there were many highlights to the trip and several laughs, there are two things I won't forget. Getting to spend time with people I adore in the most interesting of places and having to open my door every time we had to pay a damn toll. You can bet after this trip I broke down and had my window fixed.

We tried to recreate our road trip experience the following summer and decided to make a grand tour of the south since we had already had some northern exposure. Due to poor planning in the financial realm we ended up taking a few days in Savannah, GA which was absolutely wonderful though not quite the same experience as the summer before.

Check out one of my best photos from our northern road trip... taken from our campsite in West Chester, PA.