So I leave Dartmouth, MA and am on my way to Charlotte, NC. But this time around I want to take a different route - not the usual I95 South and a halt at DC. But I have no clue as to what possible route I can take.

I had to stop at Newport - the 'Island Tattoo' place to show the progress my tattoo had made to the artist. As I was leaving the place I filled up my gas tank and was beginning to ponder about the route ahead. I pulled out a torn n battered Walmart Atlas to see what possible places I can visit enroute to Charlotte. I was not having much success initially in making any decisions. But that was until I pulled out the last page. It was in a very bad shape but turned out to be the most valueable. I noticed that I could make a stop at Philly on my way. But Pittsburgh was only about 350 miles away from Philly - so I could do that as well. Then again Cleveland is not far off from Pittsburgh and then Chicago, Detroit, St.Louis, Memphis and Asheville got added in my route in a similar way. I knew it was a very far fetched idea. If I would have carried it out it would have amounted to about 4500-5000 miles from Dartmouth to Charlotte while covering all these places.

It didn't matter if I covered all these places or not but what was really important was that the last page of that atlas showed me that any new place worth visiting was never more than 300-400 miles away. And as long as I was willing to sleep at a cheap place or in my car - I can quite easily carry out this roadtrip. 2 things still remained a problem. Doing this roadtrip in a car which was anything but reliable and not knowing how much my body could cope up with this. Anyways there was more than enough inspiration to carry out this roadtrip which I wanted to do since I landed in the US. So here's my oppurtunity to do it. And I make my way towards Philadelphia - the first stop in my journey.