The road to Washington, D.C. traverses three state borders: Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. In addition to posing at each “Welcome to…” state sign we pass, I’m also attempting to moonwalk in front of each sign and landmark from home to Los Angeles. George is doing something similar. Think of it as a combination of this guy’s photograph of himself in front of every state sign in America and Matt Harding’s dancing jig around the world.

I’ve mapped out where each state sign appears along the highways, the first being Delaware at about 1 hour and 2 minutes into the drive. To be even more precise, I noted on my itinerary that this particular sign is located right after a fork on I-95. Even with the approximate time and the knowledge of a unique road split, the sign came out of nowhere. We had to run through tall grass to backtrack a bit (you can’t go in reverse on a busy highway and turning around would take up too much time). On the plus side, photographing and videoing ourselves in front of the large blue sign only took eight minutes, two minutes less than the ten I had originally allotted for our brief stop along the shoulder of a busy/terrifying I-95.

We did the same for Maryland, where the tractor-trailers seemed bigger, but the shoulder was thankfully a bit wider. While Delaware’s enormous blue sign had the slogan “It’s good to be first,” noting it was the first state in the Union on December 7, 1787 (beating PA by a mere four days), Maryland’s yellow and white sign was smaller and simply asked you to enjoy your visit. I won’t be stopping in either of these states on my trip, but I’ve been to both before and am focusing on places I haven’t been to yet.
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I’m moving to Los Angeles from Philadelphia today, beginning an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime two week roadtrip through America. I created this blog to chronicle my travels and keep in touch with family and friends at home. Since I’ve never been to Washington, D.C. (except for a Nationals baseball game at old RFK Stadium), my friend George and I are touring the nation’s capitol the first day and a half. We’re continuing on the southern route to the west coast, filming video and taking pictures at each state sign and landmark. Our itinerary is nailed down to the minute to reduce the instances in which we always say “Ok, what now…” and waste 20 minutes finding something fun to do or somewhere to eat. This way, we’ll be able to fit in each as much of the country as possible in the next 14 days.

I always appreciate when other roadtrippers post what’s in their bag. So, here’s what I’m bringing for my adventure through America:

Things to Bring
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