We’re home after a quick (hey, it’s all relative…) month-long trip to visit my mom in Florida. Although it’s not our preferred pace, we took just 3 hops to get back to Vermont from there. The timing for the whole trip allowed us to see friends on the way down, visit 2 National Parks we’d never seen, and spend a week with my mom. However, the timing of events and appointments between Florida and back home required a northbound skedaddle. Fortunately, on a previous trip we’d scouted out the best/shortest/most direct route should we ever need to get to my mom’s in a hurry, and we used that route in reverse to get back north.
It’s actually a pretty nice route! We spent the first night at a Walmart in Columbia, SC. Although we didn’t have time to jam, we did get together with our musician friend Susan for dinner and catch-up time. Coincidentally, her favorite restaurant is 0.5 miles from Walmart!
Getting to the next stop, a Walmart in Shippensburg PA, includes the long climb up from the SC and NC midlands to the Blue Ridge Parkway and then running parallel to the Blue Ridge Parkway through VA and WV. After crossing a corner of MD, the route follows the Great Valley with the Blue Mountain Ridge always in sight (not to be confused with the Blue Ridge Mountains – those are further south).
North of Shippensburg, the route climbs up and over that same Blue Mountain Ridge, dropping into the Poconos. Once in NY, the route follows the beautiful Hudson River Valley to Albany and Troy, one of our former stomping grounds. From there, we make our way through VT in whatever route suits us that day.
Enroute to Florida, we traveled at higher elevations and caught peak foliage most of the way south. On our way home, lower-altitude driving let us see bits of late fall foliage the whole way.
It’s good to travel. It’s good to be home.
For anyone who’s interested, more pix from scenes along the way…
