Coming Soon: Route Fifty’s Crazy One-Day City-County Summer Roadtrip
Get ready to explore east central Ohio! Jim Pruitt / Shutterstock.com
A trip through Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania was strangely inspired by a recent visit to a Seattle library.
Thanks to the Seattle Central Library, I’m gearing up for an odd one-day roadtrip through Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio on my way to Michigan.
Huh? Let me explain.
I was recently getting some writing done in the 10th-level reading room of Seattle’s magnificent downtown library and wandered down through the stacks spiral into the reference section. I discovered some great collections of city- and county-focused histories from across the United States, including some robust selections from Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Granted, libraries are repositories of all sorts of wonderful information. But it struck me as odd that the Seattle Central Library would have a detailed biographical history of Greene County, Pennsylvania, in the far southwest corner of the Keystone State. But it’s there, along with books on Tuscarawas, Carroll and Columbiana counties in Ohio and plenty of other localities.
I snapped a few photos of some of the books I came across and I realized that many of the places I stumbled upon in the stacks were also sort of on the way from D.C., where I am based, to Michigan, where I grew up and still have family. I’ve driven the normal route between D.C. and Michigan, along the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes, plenty of times and I always try to find a way to make the journey more interesting. (And it allows me to stop off at my favorite Hungarian pastry shop in Wooster, Ohio.)
So, thanks to this chance encounter in Seattle, I’m plotting a strange route between Baltimore and Toledo, Ohio, hoping to hit as many places along the way, snapping photos of city halls, county buildings and other place-centric locations inspired by what I came across in the Seattle stacks.
The other thing to make this roadtrip slightly more interesting: I’ll be driving from place to place without any sort of geographic assistance, besides my mnemonic navigation skills engrained in my brain circuitry. (I once drove from San Diego to Ann Arbor, Michigan, without a map.)
Yes, this is an odd adventure, but I’ve done some atypical road trips previously, including driving the route of the Lincoln Highway between New York City and San Francisco.
What I’ve learned on my many roadtrips is that it often pays to get off the Interstates when you can and explore what’s off the beaten path.
So stay tuned for a full report from my trip.
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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