After the Flood

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO: I left Annapolis at 9:00 this morning, and made my first discovery of the trip: now, I understand how the Washington Beltway works. People have been complaining about the traffic on that road for years, but I now realize that it is designed only to fit the traffic patterns of a typical Sunday morning. At such a time, the highway efficiently funnels commuters around and into D.C. If used at any unintended time, it is bound to malfunction. Those Godly highway-planners at the Department of Transportation must have only intended that people drive the Beltway on the way to church. Genius!

After navigating around Washington, I traveled up I-270 and I-70, and into the Near West. I should note, I guess, that Maryland has the finest roads and road signs I've seen to date. That state has some of the highest state taxes in the nation, and tons of intrusive regulations, but in road maintenance the people's money is well spent. Indeed, for someone used to the potholed Philadelphia streets, a ride down US-301 or I-70 is like gliding along a sheet of silk. In a car, no less.

I ate lunch in Cumberland, Maryland, the gateway to the National Road. The National Road was one of America's earliest federal construction projects. It was initially designed to run from Cumberland to Wheeling, (West) Virginia, and was later intended to go all the way to St. Louis. What's more, unlike most roads of its time, the National Road was paved. This constituted, in the early nineteenth century, Big Government, which is why funding was cut in 1839 and the road stopped in Illinois.

The history of all this interested me, so I decided to follow the road - now U.S. 40 - all the way to St. Louis. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that much of that road is limited to 25 or 30 miles per hour, and full of traffic lights. If I had three months to travel, a la Blue Highways, I wouldn't have cared. But time was of the essence, so I paralleled the Road as closely as I could from the interstates, and headed into West Virginia and Ohio.

There were mostly mountains until just past Wheeling, then the land flattened out and the Middle West spread out before me. There wasn't much time to sight-see, since I wanted to get a good distance completed today, but I did pass a church in Frostburg, West Virginia that claimed to be reconstructing Noah's Ark. There was some sort of structure rising up, but it didn't look like an Ark just yet. Hope that flood holds off until they finish it.

From there, I just kept going until it was getting near time to eat. After 504 miles, I pulled into Springfield, a pleasant-looking town along the Mad River (yes, that's the real name). I don't know much about the place, but Wikipedia informs me that it was chosen as an All-American City in 2004. That seemed pretty impressive, until further research revealed Philadelphia to have been chosen for that honor four times. I don't know what the standards are, but I can't see what old "corrupt and contented" Philly has to do with this nice little city in western Ohio. Oh well, I'm off to the Cracker Barrel. Maybe they'll know there.