O n the way back from our first American road trip in our first car, a used Ford, we drove north from Atlanta, Georgia, after spending a few days in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

In North Carolina, we hugged the Atlantic shore along the Outer Banks, took the Ocracoke-Cape Hatteras ferry (pictured with our two children, the used car and me with my husband behind the camera -- and the car's aerial that gets in the way). We stopped that night in Washington DC and drove back home to State College the next day. It was a memorable trip across mountains and by the ocean.

I am an academic.