The road north with the boys

David Schweickart · Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan · Late July–early August 2026 · 4 photographs

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By late evening on July 27, the boys were outside playing pickup street hockey and basketball with children they had just met at the hotel. We had covered a lot of miles that day. They had found a game.

Getting on the road

The night before, we had camped near Front Royal beside the Shenandoah River. There had been attempts at fishing and time on the bikes. I described it afterward as a great night camping—a good way to begin the drive north.

The next day included plenty of stops and a wrong ramp in Breezewood that added a detour. The new cargo bag was working well. We stayed in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, where the hotel pool was out of service. I paid to use a local pool instead.

Time between driving days

By the following afternoon, we had driven into Michigan and met up with family at a water park. The kids ran around for a long time. I had planned the trip with possibilities for fishing, places the boys wanted to see, friends and family to visit, and time when my partner would join us.

On July 31, I was beside a campfire at a state park in Bay City. Bikes and time outside fitted into the days between longer stretches of driving.

A table, a shoreline and time together

By August 4, we were staying with friends in Clarkston. My partner and the kids were there, still asleep while I started the morning.

The days that followed included time beside the water, with the dog along for a shoreline stop. Those pauses mattered as much as the driving.

Those are the parts that give the trip its shape beyond the miles: the boys finding other kids to play with, time in the water with family, bikes, meals and mornings by a fire. The wrong turn belongs in there too. It added a detour to a day I still described as a good one.

Before the longer miles

The July 26 photographs also hold smaller stops from the beginning of the journey: fish under reflected branches, a narrow path beside a stone wall and open fields, and a large Beyond the Frame mural. Those scenes belong to the first day’s looking around before the night camping beside the Shenandoah.

They make a useful counterpoint to the later road notes. The detour, the unusable hotel pool and the long stretches of driving were real parts of the trip. So were the moments when we had time to stop and pay attention to something that had nothing to do with the next arrival.