Day Twenty-Five: Page 148

So it's the end of Day Twenty-Five, and we're sitting in a nice hotel, in a beautiful king-sized bed, between beautiful king-quality sheets. There is a little balcony to our room that opens out to the inner courtyard of the hotel where, even now at midnight, there are the happy splashes of handsome young people in an expansive pool. Things here are nice. How nice? Well, sure as hell not nice enough for the room to cost twice as much as our room last night, that's for sure. But we're paying for location and, insanely, our hotel is located right across the bridge from Manhattan.

I happened to flip open the front cover of our trusty road atlas today to that helpful map that tells you on which page to find the roads and cities of which state. For some reason, that's when it really hit me: we are a full country away from home right now. What the heck are we doing here?

I haven't really had cause to look at that front cover page guide, because we haven't been jumping from state to state, we've been crawling mile by mile to the end of pages and then on to the next page. Most days I track our little car onto three pages (or more, depending on our trajectory). And now, suddenly, we've arrived in Newark, New Jersey. We're in that famous metropolitan area that's not Los Angeles, and we earned our way here bit by bit. It's kinda incredible, and I'm torn between really really wanting to be back on a familiar page and really really wanting to keep going, to see what happens when we drive off the end of the last page in the book and don't look back.

Today we saw a couple hours' worth of Philadelphia, which we soon learned isn't the way it's meant to be seen. Everything in Independence Hall National Historical Park either required a ticket (which were sold out), a ridiculous fee, or a place in a line wrapping around the building. Maybe it would've worked for us under different circumstances, but as two weary travelers who had just spent three days cavorting around DC's abundant and free and very awesome museums, we weren't buying it. We snapped some pix through some windows, took in some of the free sights, and got back in our car with our eyes set on the New Jersey Turnpike. (We've all come to look for America...)
Tomorrow, we see my awesome big brother and enjoy frustratingly chilly New England from the comfort of his co-op for a few days. Then we start the long and detour-ridden trip homeward. Page 52, here we come!!

Today we listened to: On the Road, The Essential Simon and Garfunkel (with a double-play for "America"), The Grey Album (Jay-Z/The Beatles), and the theme from Rocky playing in our heads as we ran up the stairs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fo reals.

Words to mystery by: "And one of us should hold her hand in case there's violence."

Mike! Read his thoughts on the trip & congratulate him on his 366th story in 366 days!!!: astoriedyear.blogspot.com