Volant to Virginia.

Glen Allen, Virginia – Between brick homes with more history than my country, cicadas shrill like car alarms. The air is heavy, but breaks at dusk. Richmond, Virginia carries itself with an understated charm: a tall marble and brass statue of (Southern) civil war hero, General Robert E. Lee, looms over a central roundabout and the streets are lined by mature trees and magnificent colonial homes. Incongruously, a significant number are boarded up. Virginia Commonwealth University’s buildings branch out into the community’s narrow, streets and past a disproportionate number of tattoo shops.

It was a nice evening for a drive, particularly as the sun set across a vast sky, wispy and coloured like cotton candy.

We arrived in Virginia after 688 kilometres of driving through Pennsylvania’s gorgeous rolling hills, a brief jaunt into Maryland and a slow crawl through Washington D.C.’s traffic. Here, a crab cake sandwich awaited.

Earlier in the day, we visited the community of Volant, PA, which purports to be an Amish community, but really seemed only to be an attempt at commodifying the ‘other’ (how many true Amish products contain xanthan gum?). It was quaint, but seemingly manufactured, with kitschy crafts and manicured window boxes.