Porter Fail.

Religion tends to be a little fuzzy for me.

Breezewood, PA – The peak-lined sky shimmers, translucent like vellum, layered and folded-over in Pennsylvania’s mountains, adding a depth to the panorama rising before us.

At the corners, the sky narrows in, smudging in depths of charcoal.

It’s a surreal evening on the roads.

That’s right: the roads.

After a week in D.C., we received an email alert two hours prior to our Porter Airlines flight home we had been cancelled until Monday. Yes, two-and-a-half days from now. No explanation: just cancelled. Hotels in the American capital aren’t cheap.

Looking for answers, we called the long-distance number, which doesn’t appear to work in the U.S., despite the airline servicing several American cities. Still no explanation.

Do I look angry?

We had gone for one last wander through the city – up to Embassy Row, and to Washington National Cathedral, which suffered more than $34 million in damages from a 2011 earthquake that affected the eastern seaboard – but now found ourselves on our way to Reagan National Airport to rent a car.

Our taxi driver repeatedly got lost, and twice nearly had his tires spiked trying to navigate the parking garage. I watched the clock tock toward six o’clock, thinking of the road ahead.

Meanwhile, neo-Nazis clashed with protesters two hours away, leaving a woman and two police officers dead. Get me out of this country.

We had debated driving through the night, but with the skyline’s teeth now melted into black, the winding tape before us whispering to be prudent.

Hello, unexpectedly, Pennsylvania.

Thank you for having us.

Vitals:

• Time: Two hours, six minutes.
• Distance: 200.8 kms
• Weather: Sun, rain, fog, nightfall.
• States: Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania
• Wildlife: None

Memorial Day.

Washington D.C. – Cicadas rub wings to their legs, adding a sonic electricity to the lush gardens serving as feather boas to the grand dames of historic houses surrounding historic Dupont Circle.

It’s a liveliness lost for most of a day spent reflective, awed and as silent as the marble and stone memorials dotting the city. Emerging at an angle from the earth, the Vietnam Memorial reads like the black pages of a phone book. Such gravitas: so many names and so much youth lost in the jungles of a country where I made very different memories.

Later, bells ring out over Arlington National Cemetery, which gleams like a perfectly arranged smile in the early morning light. A single red bouquet breaks up the repetition, like having something stuck between its teeth.

Changing of the guard has taken place here since 1937, and sentinels’ boots now clack with precision in the pin-drop silence facing the tomb of the unknown soldier.

Lincoln, Martin Luther King, FDR, Jefferson. The National Korean War Monument, with its ghost-like sculptures of faces haggard by war, seem to seep through the foliage. It’s one of the most evocative memorials I’ve experienced.

Finally, the Holocaust Museum and the Air and Space Museum.

I’ve taken more than 41,000 steps today and have still seen more memorials than I’ve taken steps.

No doubt I’ll remember both tomorrow.

Clowning Around.

"Don't be one, drink one."

Savannah, GA – As we set out for the day, the sun beat down on the Blue Ridge mountains, which lay before us like crumpled green paper.

Such is the ever-changing origami of a road trip, which unfolds into new shapes and designs before your eyes – unlike the map, which lay twisted and torn beside the seat.

Abandoned, wood-planked houses stood in the valleys, missing the teeth that have since allowed years of stories to escape. Vines grew in strands over their roofs like a long-overdue haircut.

They stood, in most cases, proud, but saddened.

In the distance, cows dotted the hills like pepper.

Billboards and signs provided a break from the repetition of trees and hills. One truck stop offered "Tattoos and Department of Transportation Express Approvals." No thanks.

Others recommended we "Buckle up...for the next million miles," or advertised "Guns & Ammo & Wedding Supplies." Talk about a shotgun wedding.

Our arrival at a North Carolina visitors centre offered a pamphlet and the intrigue of a small detour. After a glance at the North Carolina Brewers Guild’s offerings, how could we not stop at a craft brewery called Ass Clown Brewing Company? Really.

While the company with a possessed-looking Ronald McDonald logo may be located in a non-descript business park, a sample flight did all the necessary talking: dark chocolate sea salt stout, Amarillo hemp IPA, bacon oyster imperial stout and a cinnamon hazelnut sour that was unlike anything I’ve ever had.

It smells like a cookie, but really hits you with the sour.

The mad clown obviously hides an alchemist’s kitchen.

Vitals:

• Time: 10 hours
• Distance: 881.5 kms
• Weather: Hazy, and sunny
• States: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
• Wildlife: None

Cure for What Ales You.

Tapped out: Some of the 100 beers at the Capital Ale House.

Harrisonburg, VA – With daylight still stitched into a mourning shroud, fog curled over the highway like a veil covering a crooked smile.

And then the tears began to fall.

It was appropriately sombre weather as we inched along the QEW, which had been completely shut down for a fatal accident that had torn up the pavement, left two transport trailers twisted into steel origami and claimed a pair of lives.

As frustrating as it was to sit, unmoving, for two hours before we had even left the country, it remained easy to be grateful. Things could be a lot worse – our journey would continue.

Through Pennsylvania, fog clung to the base of trees in a slow dance, and the hills offered more rain.

While we had intended to finish our day in Richmond, VA, the morning’s two-hour delay had left us short. Instead, we arrived in Harrisonburg, which is home to James Madison University and a quaint historic district where vintage signs adorn the facades.

Amazingly for us, it is also home to the Capital Ale House, and its 100 taps of craft beer. (According to Beer Advocate, this is apparently a top-10 place to have a beer in America.) Mind, effectively blown.

A couple nice selections, later – paired with fried cheese curds and ancho chilli aioli, and a burger topped with a halved bratwurst – and the day had ended on a high note.

Happenstance, indeed.

Vitals:

• Time: 13.5 hours
• Distance: 905.5 kms
• Weather: Rain, fog, giving way to sun
• States/Provinces: Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia
• Wildlife: None

Boogie-ing, But Not Bored.

Nags Head, NC – The mercury crept north to a thick 27 degrees even without help from the significant humidity. And the clock had only just struck 9 a.m.

With that notice plastered in sweat to our arms, we knew were in for some heat today, but it was nothing a dunk in the ocean boogie boarding at Nags Head couldn’t solve.

The day began with a drive through Virginia, where we stopped at the Calvin L. Adams Country Store, an eclectic little shop in an area where the first peanuts were grown in the United States. With antique cleavers, farm implements and cigarette labels lining cluttered walls, there was plenty to look at. And, to an outside observer, much of it seemed pretty random. Cardboard boxes of country cured ham (heads) rested by the front door, giving the air a spicy smell. Stuffed dear and bear heads stared back at us, their gaze frozen despite word bubbles taped below. Groceries, peanuts, baked goods and small boxes of seed cotton filled every nook and cranny.

We also chuckled at a couple signs along the way:

• A sign between Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia advertising a “Pork, Peanut and Pine Festival.”
• A gun store in Ivor, Virginia with a sign that said, “If size is an issue, get a bigger one. Get a .45.” (Got to love the right to bear arms.)
• A bumper sticker that said “Hunt WITH your kids, not for them,” in Windsor, Virginia. (Let’s hear it for family values.)
• Another bumper sticker with "Oh no no no" and a crude caricature of Barack Obama with an X through it. (Could it be we're in the south?)

After a fun drive through the Virginia country- side and along the North Carolina coast, we arrived in the Outer Banks and promptly found our great bed and breakfast, the Relax Inn, in Nags Head. Highly recommended. After an oyster po’ boy for lunch and a trip to the beach to boogie board and otherwise succumb to the crashing waves while large pelicans swooped in for a snack, the day was complete.

Not to mention a success and, at long last, an opportunity for a break.

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.