Summer Travels - 2008 Style

Left Vero with gas @$3.98 if you hunt. For the first time ever, we plotted probable destinations for refueling along I95. The lowest price was $3.829 in South Carolina; the highest near my dad's in Bellerose NY $4.199. For the first time I saw several open gas stations without prices posted. The number of young people driving motorcycles was another new sign of the times. 

If you haven't tried Blenheim's hot ginger ale, you can't appreciate why day one had to end in Florence SC so that I could be at the 8 am opening of the Pee Dee Farmer's Market on Tuesday. A charming couple sold me three 6-packs of eye-watering liquid heat and a was off for another 600+ miles to Long Island. By the time I made it through afternoon rush hour in DC, I was exhausted. To my delight I discovered an amazing fast food concession stand in a Maryland rest area called Phillips Seafood that had a super crab cake sandwich. The skies were blackening and as I approached the Outer Bridge Crossing, there was a windstorm to equal those only seen in the desert. Sheet of debris blew in whirlwinds and as the winds picked up, I worried about taking a van over the Verrazano Bridge.  Then the skies opened and as I drove along the Bronx/Queens Expressway, bolts of totally awesome lightening light Manhattan like a scene out of an end of the earth movie. Arrived at ten exhausted.