We didn’t plan to stop at Pass Christian Beach. We were already on the road, leaving New Orleans behind under darkening skies. Thunder had followed us through the cemeteries and whispered along the edges of the Lower Ninth Ward. Maggie—the GPS with opinions—kept insisting we return to the interstate, but traffic had other ideas. So … Read more
Dothan, Alabama Some stops are planned weeks in advance.Others happen because you’re early, the doors aren’t open yet, and curiosity refuses to sit quietly in the passenger seat. Howell School was one of those stops. We found ourselves wandering near downtown Dothan while waiting for the Visitor’s Center to open. From the outside, Howell School … Read more
Alabama Road Trip #2 — Last Day, First Stop Dothan has a way of sneaking up on you.It looks like any other Southern city from a distance—busy roads, familiar storefronts, the promise of breakfast somewhere nearby. But if you linger just a moment, if you slow down enough to look, you realize this town is … Read more
TMP Covert Ops — Episode 12 When you only have a sliver of time before a corporate hackathon, you learn to move like a shadow. The mission kicked off the day before with my visit to President Lincoln’s Cottage and was filled with many historic sites around the area. Day Two of my Bethesda mission … Read more
When Dusty and I found ourselves wandering the quiet early morning streets of Dothan after visiting the Cherry Street AME Church, we weren’t expecting to be stopped in our tracks by a federal building. But there it was — rising at the corner of West Troy and North Foster — a granite-anchored, column-crowned monument that … Read more
TMP Covert Ops — Episode 14 There’s a hilltop in Washington, D.C., where the city softens, the breeze picks up, and time seems to slow its breathing. From that rise, you can look out over the capital and almost forget the noise below. Almost. This is the Armed Forces Retirement Home, better known historically as … Read more
Some stops don’t call ahead — they just wait quietly until you stumble into their orbit. On the last morning of Alabama Road Trip #2, Dusty and I found ourselves with a little time to kill before the Dothan Visitor’s Center opened. So we did what any good backroad wanderers do: we followed the trail … Read more
TMP Covert Ops — Operation Iron LanternMcLean, Virginia — Scott’s Run Nature Preserve A Gorge Older Than Memory Just a few miles from the buzz of Washington, D.C., there’s a forest that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to this century. The canopy muffles sound, the creek hums a steady hymn against stone, and the … Read more
A Juicy Detour at Sunset There’s a certain kind of road-trip delirium that only shows up near the end of a long day—when the sky turns purple, the gas station lights hum awake, and everything starts to feel a little surreal.That’s the exact moment Dusty and I rolled into Clanton, Alabama, chasing the most gloriously … Read more
The road to Pensacola crawled that morning. Dusty and I had already conquered every cup of coffee the truck could carry before we finally reached the causeway that led into Gulf Islands National Seashore. Traffic melted away as white dunes swallowed the skyline, and the Gulf turned the color of polished glass. Somewhere under a … Read more