From Sea to Shining Sea (Part 2)
Part 1 left off with us heading out of Missouri and toward Memphis, Tennessee...
We drove from mid-Missouri to Memphis in one day. That night we went out to Beale Street, which is like Bourbon Street in New Orleans in a lot of ways: they shut down car traffic at night; there are a plethora of bars and nightclubs and live music; and drinking is allowed out on the street. While New Orleans is the home of jazz, the birthplace of greats like Louis Armstrong, Memphis is the birthplace of the blues. Greats like B.B. King, Johnny Cash, and Roy Orbison got their starts in Memphis, and Memphis was where Elvis Presley lived in his gaudy Graceland mansion and accompanying private airport.
We walked down the length of Beale Street and then hopped into the Blues Hall Juke Joint to listen to Memphis mainstay Dr. Feelgood Potts and his band play tunes from Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, and other well-known blues artists. The doctor was an entertaining individual. When the band was playing songs where his vocals or harmonica weren't needed, the good doctor was out on the street, inviting passer byers to come on in and have a sit down.
After one night in Memphis we drove across the state of Tennessee and camped in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. This was our first visit to an eastern national park; all of our stops at parks on this trip and in the past have been to ones in the western half of the country, where there is more space and more focus on nature and keeping the park wild, in a sense. And the Great Smokey Mountains park itself held true to this philosophy, but the area right outside the northern entrance of the park was dominated by tactless tourist destinations: AS SEEN ON TV! shops; mini-golf; Dollywood. These attractions also greatly congested the traffic. In retrospect, we should have entered the park from the south, coming up from Georgia.
After staying a night in the park, we started our drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is a National Park that extends 469 miles from the southern entrance of the Great Smokey Mountains to the southern entrance of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and winds through classic Appalachia scenery. We spent two days traversing this road (as well as driving through Shenandoah), spending one night at a campground in North Carolina.
After Shenandoah, we drove to Baltimore and stayed with a relative for a few days. We explored the city of Baltimore one day and then went down to Washington, D.C. the next. We happened to go to D.C. on a Sunday and, thinking that there would be a lot of foot traffic and long lines, we arrived at the city early in the morning. Problem is, most of the Federal museums and buildings (like the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and so on) are shut down on Sunday. And those that are open usually don't open their doors until 10:00 or 11:00 AM. Live and learn. Since we had both been to D.C. before and done the gauntlet of museums, we spent this visit walking to some of the monuments we had not yet seen and exploring parts of town outside of the mall, like Chinatown and Union Station.
From Baltimore we drove up to New York City where we stayed for three nights and four days at a hotel in the heart of Manhattan. Since our drive up to the Big Apple took us by Philadelphia, we stopped in south Philly for cheese steaks at Geno's Steaks (we got one with Cheez Whiz, which was surprisingly good, and one with provolone). Before we arrived in New York City I was worrying about driving to the hotel in the minivan, but my worries turned out to be unfounded. The only difference between driving in NYC and any other major city is that in NYC there is a much, much greater volume of pedestrian traffic. This can make turning right or left on a green difficult as you have to wait for the throngs of people crossing to clear the intersection, but other than that it was no more stressful than driving back here in downtown San Diego (although, obviously, there were many more cars on the road).
Over the next few days we walked much of Manhattan Island. We'd start our day by taking the subway to a far end of the island and then walk back to our hotel, exploring the various neighborhoods. On the first full day there we took the subway to Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan then walked through the Financial District, across the Brooklyn Bridge and back, over to the World Trade Center site, into Chinatown, Greenwich Village, Times Square, and so on. On the following day we took the subway north to Harlem and then walked back through Harlem, the West Side, through parts of Central Park, over to the Lower East Side, down to the U.N., and so on. The only real non-walking tourist thing we did was go to the top of the Empire State Building. Unfortunately, the day was a bit hazy so the view wasn't as impressive as it usually was (or so we were told).
Following our stay in New York City, we drove up to Providence, Rhode Island to visit a friend of my wife's. She and her boyfriend gave us the Providence tour one day and then took us up to Boston on another. In Boston we did much of the Freedom Trail, a self-guided walking tour that takes you through the heart of Boston past many historic sites, including Boston Commons and Bunker Hill. We met some friends of theirs and enjoyed dinner in Chinatown before returning to Providence.
From Providence we drove up to Maine and along the Maine coastline to the very scenic Acadia National Park. By this time we both came down with a cold so we spent two nights there in a hotel in Bar Harbor: the first day was spent pretty much in bed, resting; on the second we got out and hiked some trails on Acadia. What was nice about Acadia National Park is that it is one of the few National Parks that allows dogs on its trails. Virtually all of the National Parks allow dogs, but only on roads, campground, and picnic sites, and not on trails. So it was nice to finally visit a park where Sam was welcome on the trails!
After leaving Acadia, we drove west from Bangor, through New Hampshire, and to St. Johnsbury, Vermont. St Johnsbury is home of the Dog Chapel, a church set in the rolling Vermont mountainside as a spiritual place for canines that was created by artist Stephen Huneck. The sign on the front of the chapel reads: "All Creeds, all Breeds... No Dogma!" In addition to the chapel there's a pond for dogs to swim in and several miles of trails. Covering the walls of the inner chapel are touching pictures and heartfelt messages from owners whose dogs have since gone to doggy heaven.
From St. Johnsbury we drove to Waterbury, Vermont and stopped by the Ben & Jerry's factory, a popular summertime tourist destination. The factory is composed of one building, and the majority of the square footage seems dedicated to tour- and gift shop-related activities. We took the 20 minute tour, which involves a video on the company's history, views into the factory floor with accompanying description, and - the best part - FREE SAMPLES! 
Interestingly, all Ben & Jerry's pints of ice cream are produced in this one factory, which only had two rather small production lines (therefore they only produce two unique flavors in a given day). Regardless, they output 250,000 pints of ice cream per day. Ben & Jerry's employees may take home up to three complimentary pints of ice cream per day.
We continued cutting west across Vermont and into upstate New York and into the immense Adirondack State Park. Over the next couple of days we made our way to Buffalo, New York, where we stopped for a couple of days to visit Niagara Falls. The Niagara Falls are a series of giant waterfalls between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and serve as a border between the United States and Canada. We walked through much of the areas alongside the falls in both the U.S. and Canada (there's a footbridge to cross from one side to the other; one thing that stuck out to me was that while the United States let you cross the bridge free of charge, Canada charges 50 cents Canadian (or American) per person to leave Canada and cross back over to the U.S.
After our visit to Niagara Falls we drove through Ohio and Indiana into Chicago and stayed three days with a friend of mine who lives in the city. I spent part of my childhood in the suburbs of Chicago, so growing up my folks had taken my brother and I to many of the museums and tourist sites, but this was my wife's first time to the Windy City so we hit up the tourist spots. We went up to the sky deck of the Sears Tower, rode the ferris wheel on Navy Pier, went to Millennium and Grant Parks, and so on. We also got a nice tour of Wrigleyville from my friend, who has been a die hard Cub fan since he was old enough to throw a baseball. The Cubs were not playing as it was All Star week, but they had the gates of the park open and we talked to an outgoing employee from the security staff who had been working at the ballpark for years. He had some neat anecdotes and stories to share.
Following Chicago, we continued heading west, on our way to western South Dakota to see the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore... I'll continue with that leg of the journey in a future posting...
UPDATE: Read Part 3...