When we left the Smokies a couple weeks ago, we said goodbye to the last national park we’ll see for a while. In the weeks ahead, our travel route will be dictated by something we have no control over: the Major League Baseball schedule.

After all, we’re not just trying to see every national park in the lower 48 on this Big Trip; we’re also trying to see 29 of the 30 MLB stadiums.* We’ve hit seven so far, and we’ve got a slew of games at new stadiums coming up over the next few weeks.

To get to those games, we’ve made our way northeast. We’ve meandered through the Carolinas and the Virginias, and up into Maryland. And as we went, we couldn’t help noticing a distinct shift in our surroundings.

For once, we’re nowhere near a national park—no Yellowstones or Grand Canyons or Yosemites. But we’re absolutely surrounded by national historical parks.

Everything out here seems to harbor a bit of U.S. history. That house over there? Built in 1765. That grassy area? The setting of a major civil war battle. That park bench? George Washington sat on it.
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When we’re not at a baseball game, we’ve been brushing up on our U.S. history—enough so that I feel more ready for the AP test now than I did back in high school. Here’s a look at where we’ve been learning lately.

I made a mistake in our last newsletter, specifically in the Where are we going next? section. Somehow, after looking ahead in the calendar, I listed all our final Florida stops in the newsletter—but omitted every stop after that.

The Floridian humidity must have gotten to my head. It convinced me we were never leaving.

Thankfully, the Sunshine State has loosened its grip on us, and now I’m writing to you from a coffee shop in the town of Cherokee, nestled in the North Carolina mountains. For the first time in months, we have no signal and no RV hookups at our campsite—and I have to say, I’m relishing it. (Jason, not so much. The Masters Tournament happened this weekend, and he was anxious to check the leaderboard every day.)

We enjoyed our time in Florida (mostly), but the weirdest part about our time there? We didn’t see a single mountain for weeks. Everywhere we went, the state unfurled around us either in an endless, flat, grassy expanse or a congested metro area populated by some of the worst drivers we’ve ever seen. (And we’re from California.)

It was unsettling. We’ve lived our entire lives in the shadows of mountains, and I didn’t realize how unmoored I’d feel without them looming on the horizon. It’s good to be back among them now, however brief our stay might be.

Before I start this rant, I’ll offer a disclaimer: I’m from California. California has all sorts of bad drivers, plus a passive-aggressive style of road rage that’s unique to the state.* It’s got street racers going 100+ mph on the freeway in the middle of the night. It’s got assholes who try to cheat traffic by merging at the last possible second. And in the desert, it’s got people who think each neighborhoods’ 40-mph speed limit is 20 mph too low.
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All of this is to say that I am familiar with bad driving and am in no way trying to excuse the practices of my home state. But however bad it is in California, it’s nothing compared to where we’ve been lately.

Dry Tortugas is one of our more peculiar national parks. Despite its name, 99% of this park lies underwater; the only dry bits are an archipelago of seven coral islands—or “keys”—that rest about 70 miles off the coast of Florida; and the largest of these keys, Garden Key, is home to a nineteenth-century fort that was never finished or fully armed.

Knowing all that, you can probably guess that visiting Dry Tortugas isn’t easy. With no roads leading to the park, visitors have to either board a ferry or take a seaplane, neither of which is cheap. And before doing that, they have to get to the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys—from which the ferry and seaplanes depart—and staying there isn’t cheap either.

We could have skipped Dry Tortugas. After all, we won’t hit every U.S. national park on the Big Trip. We could have saved this park for a future trip, perhaps during a vacation to Virgin Islands National Park.

Six weeks after leaving Southern California, we can finally say we’ve driven across the country. We’ve made it to the east coast. We’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean. We’re in Florida, the farthest we’ve ever traveled by car.

And… it looks a lot like home.

There are palm trees and strip malls. Cities bleed into each other in an urban sprawl akin to Los Angeles’s. And, most reminiscent of our SoCal roots, we keep running into traffic and bad drivers. If you want to send Jason into a rant, ask him what it’s like to drive in Florida sometime.

That said—Florida also seems quite determined to prove that it’s not Southern California.

Despite its nickname as the Sunshine State, we’ve gotten caught off guard by three violent thunderstorms since entering Florida about a week ago. (Weather forecasts don’t seem to mean much here where rain’s concerned.) The humidity is inescapable. And we’ve already had one campground neighbor who made us feel a little like Phil and Claire Dunphy in season 6, episode 5 of Modern Family. (iykyk.)

But hey, it’s Florida. While we’re here, we want to experience the most Floridian aspects of Florida as possible. That’s what we’ve been trying to do over the last couple weeks.
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Keep reading to see how it’s going.