Guys, the East Coast is so dif­fer­ent. I mean, you drive one hour and you’re in a dif­fer­ent state. Drive six and you cross three states. Did you know Cal­i­for­nia takes about 15 hours to drive from North to South? Grow­ing up, my fam­ily spent many sum­mer hours in a car dri­ving up, down, and around the West­ern states. I learned how to love my time spent in an auto­mo­bile, some­times watch­ing hours of noth­ing but desert whiz by. It was in our old Dodge Van that I per­fected my tech­niques for deal­ing with my chatty lit­tle sis­ter and where I learned how to instantly fall asleep by the rock­ing of a vehi­cle. Today, though I don’t take them as much as I used to, I still love car trips. Not only does it remind me of my youth, but it reminds me of how big my world can actu­ally be.

When I was liv­ing in New York, I think I was swal­lowed by city liv­ing. Sadly, I only man­aged to get out of NYC a hand­ful of times. A hand­ful! In five years! That’s pretty sad. There was one mem­o­rable Fourth of July trip to Cold Spring, New York, where I swore there­after that I would make efforts to get out of the city more. Then an amaz­ing trip up the coast to Maine for the fol­low­ing Fourth, which I reminded myself of my pre­vi­ous years’ promise. Sprin­kled in between were a few more trips upstate and out to Jer­sey. But cer­tainly not a track record of trav­el­ling about to boast.

A few weeks ago I went on a very short day trip to Annapo­lis. A few hours, really — we didn’t even leave town until 3pm. The car ride wasn’t that long, an hour at most. I wasn’t really expect­ing any­thing other than a naval acad­emy and an abun­dance of shell­fish restau­rants, and was pleas­antly sur­prised when we drove up to a bustling, quaint, café-filled col­lege town. As we ven­tured out of the car on foot, every­where we looked were cof­fee shops, bars that looked like they’ve been oper­at­ing since the 19^th cen­tury, water­front seat­ing, and flag-decorated patios.

Some­how we found our­selves first strolling through the US Naval Acad­emy, which was a sur­pris­ingly beau­ti­ful cam­pus. Lots of green­ery, lots of beau­ti­ful brick build­ings and very wide paths. A beau­ti­ful gym, and dump­sters that, to no ones sur­prise, were in for­ma­tion. About face!

We checked out an old musty book­store, filled with old and new books prac­ti­cally falling off the shelves it was so packed inside. We peeked our heads in an ice cream par­lor, only to forgo ice cream since the line was just too long. We walked around the quaint streets of town, observ­ing the old houses with their col­or­ful, tiny doors and ivy-covered alley­ways. Doors and alley­ways that could only have been built when the nation was first founded, as no one of excess height or weight today could com­fort­ably fit under or through.

I’m so thrilled that already in DC, I’ve been explor­ing beyond the city lim­its far more than I did in my pre­vi­ous stint on the East Coast. And, it’s won­der­ful. Maybe it’s given the nature of peo­ple in this city, maybe it’s the acces­si­bil­ity of the free­ways and that more of our friends have cars, maybe it’s just that the city is bor­ing (no, not this, def­i­nitely not). Well, maybe it’s also that I’m now mar­ried to some­one who can’t sit still.

Here are a few gems to hit up on a day trip to Annapolis:

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