By: Ethan Levine
6/30/03 – 7/2/03
Finally, the big day arrived. Marc and Megan arrived in Livingston the day before we embarked on our epic journey through the wonderful place we call our homeland (and when I say we, this only applies to those that own American passports). We finally set off  for our journey around 2:30 in the afternoon on Monday, June 30th. Clearly, we would have left an hour earlier, but Marc needed to take an hour long shower after having surgery on his teeth.
Before I indulge you all with our exploits, let me fill you in on exactly who my two faithful sidekicks are. Marc Bressman (yes, this is Bressman, not Breastman) and I attended nursery school together back in the day. We went a good nine years attending different elementary schools and middle schools before attending high school together. We’ve stayed close over the years visiting each other at school, hanging out  over breaks, and just doing other “fun stuff.” Marc is the type of ‘kid’ that is a 40 year old trapped in a 22 year old’s body. He was the first to own his own blackberry, have the newest cell phone, have a full time job, etc. He’s got a great sense of humor, but will go nowhere without a glass of chocolate milk. Yes, we will have to learn how to scout out the best stops for nice glasses of chocolate milk.
Megan E. Lewis originates from Liverpool, NY. For all of you have never heard of Liverpool, NY (I really don’t know how that’s possible), it’s right next to Syracuse. We met during our freshman outing trips before starting classes at Dartmouth. She may not have remembered my name from that, but I did and so I asked her to join me on this road trip and surprisingly she said yes. Seriously, we’ve been close friends since freshman year and she’s a bit on the tiny side, but she puts up a pretty good fight. We’ll try to make her drive the least amount possible.
Having said that, she was given the keys from the start (see Picture #1). By the way, for those of you that were so unlucky as to not have been part of my voyage on the other side of the Atlantic, I try to include digital photos relevant to the parts of the updates and you can match them up accordingly when I include the title of the photo in italics and parenthesis.
So we set off for our journey, and after traveling no further than exit 7A on the New Jersey Turnpike, Marc felt the necessity to stop off at the first rest stop. No worries  though, because we got to experience a guy get in a fight with the geeky 16-year old Pizza Hut Express cashier about standing in line too long and some dude giving lewd gestures behind me and Megan towards Marc snacking down on a Roy Rogers chicken sandwich.
Surprisingly, we hit next to no traffic the entire way to Washington, DC. So, Marc was trying to get in touch with this friend of his (I had met her previously as well and thought her to be extremely weird….I recall meeting her and remembering a story about having a boyfriend from Mexico and after they broke up, she went out with this new guy once and never saw him again…a year later they met up and he  mentioned that he had been kidnapped, naturally she suspected her ex-boyfriend). We stopped just north of D.C. for a packed dinner (see Picture #2) which hit the spot at the time, but this girl that Marc was trying to get in touch with never called back even though he left numerous voicemail messages. Nonetheless, we decided to drive into D.C. and walk around the mall. We saw a bunch of the cool buildings that really make us proud to be Americans (again, American passport thing from before). Some of the places we saw were the Capitol (see Picture #3), Washington Monument, Smithsonians, etc. We maybe spent an hour or two walking around, but had yet to hear from the wonderful, oh, let’s call her Julie for lack of a better name (for those of you that don’t understand my sarcasm, in that last line, I actually meant that her name is Julie, just a disclaimer). Yea, she was worthless…she never called back….never….and had originally told Marc it was cool to stay with her…oh well….luckily for us, Marc’s family friends lived in the area, Olney, Maryland.
So, his family friend’s told us to get to get to their ASAP as in 30 minutes. Now, we had to walk back to his car, which took a good 20 minutes. Their place was about 30-40 minutes away. Needless to say, we didn’t make it by the deadline. No worries though, Marc got yelled at (even though Megan and I made a pit stop for  about 10 minutes in search of postcards). It ended up working out quite well; we inflated the air mattresses and had a peaceful night sleep.
At least Marc and I did. You see, Megan was sleeping upstairs in the extra bedroom. After waiting for her to peacefully fall asleep, Marc and I snuck upstairs quietly and on the count of three jumped on her. She let out a high pitched scream as if some was assaulting her. To just quiet her and not wake up our generous hosts, I muffled the cry by covering her mouth with my hand. Funny, at the time I did not realize that someone unaware immediately of the situation would probably think that she really WAS being assaulted if her mouth were covered. So, she continued  her scream a bit more. Like a little wimp, I ran downstairs to not get in trouble. I left Marc to get in trouble. We went to sleep afterwards :).
The following morning, we got an early start, and then made our first trip to a wonderful supermarket and realized I can just take cash out of the supermarket instead of getting charged at ATM’s…sweet! We got a little lost, fortunately I had the map and found our way back to the road on our way to Shenandoah National Park and the Skyline Drive.
Along this road trip we don’t have to worry about paying entrance into the National Parks because we are fortunate enough to have obtained a National Park Pass courtesy of a Mr. Drew McConville. So, if anyone from the Park Service asks, Marc instantly becomes Drew. I wonder how that works with Megan (note: for those of you that don’t know Megan and Drew are going out).
Shenandoah National Park allows us to drive South via a scenic drive called the Skyline Drive. We stopped into the visitor center to buy some postcards and try out the uniform (see Picture #4). Along the route the Park Service has about a 1,000 different overlooks of the valley area below. It was cool to stop at a couple of them (Span of Shenandoah National Park Overlook), but it’s beyond me why some of these cars would stop at every single one. It’s about the same thing each time, but apparently they need about a 1,000 of the same picture. When they get them developed, they aren’t gonna remember which one was “The Rocky Stairs” or which one was the “Skyline Elevation” anyways. Kudos to them.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic area which had such a force of bugs, Marc was backed into the car, he didn’t know where to go. It was a war zone out there. Megan and I were able to brave it out, but I think Marc might have a shot next time against those intimidating flies. After lunch, we decided to take a hike down to the closest waterfall to the road (believe me, we almost didn’t make it back from this 1.4 mile hike). It was a heavily traveled hike and we came along many different travelers. There was the typical, rugged hiker that had the backpack and walking cane. There was the tough father who would carry his baby in a backpack up the incline. There was also the type of hiker that stopped every 5 minutes to take a picture of the dirt. And finally, there was the type of hiker that would stop every 5 minutes because they got too tired. Everyone was friendly though and we managed well both down and back up. We came across a beautiful waterfall (see Picture #5).
Afterwards, Marc fell asleep and I took advantage of that. Well….I mean I flew down the rest of the Skyline Drive, passing two cars at a time in the 2 lane road (one each way). Good thing he was asleep. We drove all the way down to Roanoke, Virginia to grab some pizza. After passing the first pizza place we saw, Pizza Hut (Marc dislikes Pizza Hut, he dislikes a lot of things), we drove around for like 25  minutes (I was getting REAL hungry, and I don’t mind Pizza Hut). Apparently, pizza isn’t too big in the South. This came as a culture shock to all of us. Eventually, we happened upon a Papa John’s, which met Marc’s standard of approval. I felt like the car was becoming some bureaucratic form of government.
Afterwards we flew down to Bristol, Virginia to spend the night. Bristol is right on the Virginia, Tennessee border and we found a pretty sweet Econo Lodge for $39 a night, not bad? It even had a fridge and microwave in it. And to top it off, they had Krispy Kreme doughnuts for free in the morning! We shared a bottle of wine, played some cards, looked at some maps and went to sleep. Oh yea, I freaked Marc out real bad my jumping out at him coming back from the bathroom in the dark. I think he’s gonna get me back later in the trip.
Ring, Ring. The clock read 6 AM and sure enough the wake up call for the morning rang. If we had specified 6 AM, I wouldn’t have been too upset, but we specified 8 AM. If they had made just a silly mistake of 6 compared to 8, it wouldn’t have been a huge deal. BUT, the guy came to bring towels the night before and asked if it was at 6 and we made a point of correcting him and making sure he had 8. I mean I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but I guess people from Southern Virginia….well, you get the point :).
The following morning, we were so money. We started out a little after 9 and drove straight to Nashville making fabulous time. We first stopped at the Grand Ole Opry. The plaza it was situated in was really beautiful. It seems as if Tropical Storm Bill passed us by without too much bad weather and most of it occurred while we slept at night. Right there was a museum for free, imagine that! It wasn’t all that interesting in that I don’t really know anything about country music nor really interested in learning much about it…but it was a cool museum going through the history of country music. I got to take some fun photos (see Picture #6, see Picture #7).
Afterwards, we hit the largest hotel in the world Opryland Hotel. Who would’ve thought the largest hotel in the world would be located in Nashville, TN? I mean Nashville is cool and all, but it is in Tennessee. I feel not too many people pass through Tennessee (although we just did). They said they maintain 80% occupancy during the year. I mean I guess Tennessee is a stop for most tourists. Anyways, we went inside (see Picture #8) and it was beautiful. It was almost like a mini town with lots of shops and restaurants. It actually had a river running through the whole place and was completely indoors as you can see. We almost felt as if we were in a futuristic colony.
For lunch we decided to drive into downtown Nashville to Centennial Park. For Marc, the food we had bought the previous day was of course not good for him, so he decided to walk and wait at the Mariott for a sandwich he ended up not liking anyways. At this park, they built a full size replica of the Parthenon (see Picture #9, see Picture #10).  Megan and I played Frisbee while we waited for Marc to get back from his ‘food shopping.’ The building itself was tremendous (see Picture #11) and pretty cool. After seeing it and hanging around for a bit we decided to head out towards Memphis to find a room there for the night and see Graceland in the morning.
Along the way to Memphis we decided to stop along the way at an adult book store to find adult Mad-Libs. We saw a sign and just stopped off at this sketchy rest stop where across the street from each other were two adult bookstores. One was in an abandoned gasoline station, that’s the one we decided to stop at. The stuff there was pretty raunchy and pretty expensive. I was wondering how these truckers driving 20 year old trucks that appeared to be falling apart could afford buying $200 sex toys. I dunno, but the people that walked in seemed to be pretty sketchy. Couples checking out the newest “Debbis does Nashville” DVD or something. Needless to say the guy missing a few front teeth at the counter had no idea what Mad-Libs were when Marc asked. We got outta there ASAP.
Thus concludes my first update for the cross-country road trip. I hope you enjoyed it. I must admit, I tend to embellish a few things a bit, but all events are inspired by true stories.
Please respond because I enjoy hearing from everyone.
Hope everyone is doing great.
Talk to ya’ll lata,
Ethan
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