Customize Your Drive down the East Coast
Even in our Internet age, it would take hours of Googling and GPSing to research and compile information to make a trip down the East Coast’s I-95 both easy and fun. My husband Stan Posner and I have done all this work for you – and more.
We drive from New Hampshire to Miami getting off at each of the 607 exits to compile our award-winning guide, Drive I-95: Exit by Exit Info, Maps, History and Trivia (www.drivei95.com). Now in its 5th edition, it features easy-to-use maps and highlights places to sleep and eat and cool places to see, turning the drive into a fun journey. There’s advice about radar traps, radio stations, 24-hour mechanics, ATM’s, golf courses, campgrounds and even places to sleep with a pet.
– Did you know you can watch rats playing basketball right just off I-95? Head to the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond.
– In Alexandria, VA, at the new (and free) Freedom House Museum, learn that in 1808, a U.S. law outlawed the importation of slaves. Clever entrepreneurs did not let this stop the sale of slaves (who were still so necessary for plantation life) — they simply bred them!
– We found the “pound cake lady” (Jan Matthews-Hodges) and her blue-ribbon awards baking in a former school in Benson, NC. We drool every time we think of them: moist and buttery with a slight crunchy sugar crust
– If the traffic isn’t rolling fast enough for you, head to Xtreme Indoor Karting in Fort Lauderdale, FL. You will feel like a real race car driver as you don a jump suit, professional helmet and neck brace, and then lower yourself into one of the 40 European Bowman race karts.
– New Hampshire has been added to this edition, and at the outdoor Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, you can explore centuries of life through 43 original buildings, from the Pitt Tavern that served John Hancock, George Washington and Paul Revere to Abbott’s grocery store that dealt with rationing during WWII, to the Shapiro Home, where Jewish Russian immigrants lived in the 1920s.
– In Brunswick, GA, you can climb aboard the shrimp crawler Lady Jane where you help this crew empty the net, learn about the species that have been caught and get to partake in the freshest possible “shrimp boil”.
– Kids of all ages will have loads of fun at Milburn Orchards in Elkton, MD. It’s a 4th generation farm, which also has a mini-amusement park ( we loved the goat walk). Don’t forget to check out their the pies: awesome apple or Sandra’s favorite coconut custard.
– You can still walk the area in Lexington and Concord, MA, where “the shot heard round the world” was fired on April 17, 1775 beginning America’s 8-year war for independence.
– Since the 1930s chicken pie lovers from all over New England have been driving to Harrows in Reading, MA, for Harrows Chicken Pies made daily from fresh chickens, cooked slowly overnight and then smothered in flavorful scratch gravy, firm carrots and potatoes and poured into lovely pastry.
– The Daytona Beach Drive-In Church welcomes everyone looking for a unique way to worship. Just stay in the car, tune in on your radio or listen to the speakers and ten hop across the street to the beach.
Much more than just another roadway, I-95 is a pipeline to history and amusement. This Whether you are going South for the first time or the hundredth, with this book, it will all seem brand new, and better than ever..
