Hopewell Junction to Washington D.C.

Back on the road! Willie Nelson would be proud. Maybe. I don’t know Willie Nelson. He seems nice. Anyway, after about two weeks in Hopewell Junction we began our journey back home. We spent a week longer than we expected to at my parents house, mostly because we were having such a nice time and there was no need to turn around and rush into 3,000 more miles of driving. It really was very nice to spend a little extra time with my family and some friends from home. Every time I go back the gravity seems to get stronger. Maybe one of these days I’ll go back for good, but for now we’ve still got some business to attend to on the west coast. So this morning we packed up the car and headed south to our nation’s capital.

First though, we had to pick up our third voyager Understanding, at his childhood home in central New Jersey. If you watch any of season 3 of the Wu-Tang show, it’s the red house featured throughout the season. Unfortunately we had a little mix up in our schedules and Bryana and I had to find a way to kill sometime before Un got back and was ready to go, so we headed to Princeton to have some lunch. It was my first time there and boy do I wish I was smarter sometimes. The Ivy League? That’d be pretty sweet ya know? We got some sandwiches at Hoagie Heaven and walked over to the campus to have lunch on one of the lawns. Lots of beautiful stone architecture and we even got to see where Einstein used to teach. I was going to look for that pond in Oppenheimer but Un was ready to go and I didn’t want to get to D.C. too late. So we left Princeton for Millstone and the Avengers were assembled.

It’s only about three hours from Un’s house to D.C., so the drive was fairly easy. So many tolls though. It cost about 20 dollars to get here, which I think is kind of absurd. It took us all of fifteen minutes to drive through Delaware so like, is it even real? We played the theme song from The Wire as we drove through Baltimore. Driving through D.C. itself felt a little strange for a reason I can’t really put my finger on. I think it probably has something to do with the juxtaposition of all these colonial mansions from the establishment of the United States and newer luxury apartments and retail spots. I don’t know, I’ll have to spend more time here. Tomorrow we’ll get over the the National Mall and see some of the famous monuments before we head out.

Seven more days ‘til Bronson. Here we go again.

-J.P.