Snowbirds and road-trippers can customize their drive along the I-95

Sandra Phillips and Stan Posner

December, 2010

It could take hours of Googling and GPSing to research and compile information to make a trip down the East Coast’s I-95 easy and fun. We have done all this work for you – and more.

•We drive from New Hampshire to Miami, getting off at every one of the 607 exits, to compile our award-winning guide, Drive I-95: Exit by Exit Info, Maps, History and Trivia (drivei95.com). Now in its fifth edition, it features easy-to-use maps, and highlights places to sleep and eat and cool places to see, turning the drive into journey. There’s advice about radar traps, radio stations, 24-hour mechanics, ATMs, golf courses, campgrounds and pet-friendly places to sleep. It’s also available as an e-book or on a cool USB key.

•Did you know you can watch rats playing basketball right off I-95? Head to the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond.

•In Alexandria, Virginia, at the new (and free) Freedom House Museum, learn that in 1808, the U.S. outlawed the importation of slaves. This did not stop the sale of slaves who were already in the country or had been born to slaves, who plantation owners felt were necessary for business.

•We found the pound cake lady, Jan Matthews-Hodges and her blue-ribbon awards baking in a former school in Benson, North Carolina. We drool every time we think of the cake: moist and buttery with a slight crunchy sugar crust. n If the traffic isn’t rolling fast enough for you, head to Xtreme Indoor Karting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. You will feel like a real race car driver as you don a jump suit, professional helmet and neck brace, then lower yourself into one of the 40 European Bowman race karts.

Maryland’s Milburn Orchards is a fun stop, but this isn’t how Stan and Sandra usually travel the I-95. Photo courtesy of Sandra Phillips and Stan Posner

•New Hampshire has been added to this edition, and at the outdoor Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, you can explore centuries of life through 43 original buildings, from the Pitt Tavern that served John Hancock, George Washington and Paul Revere to Abbott’s grocery store that dealt with rationing during the Second World War, to the Shapiro Home, where Jewish Russian immigrants lived in the 1920s.

•Kids of all ages will have loads of fun at Milburn Orchards in Elkton, Maryland. It’s a fouth-generation farm, which also has a mini-amusement park (we loved the goat walk). Don’t forget to check out their pies: awesome apple or Sandra’s favourite coconut custard.

•You can still walk the area of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, where “the shot heard round the world” was fired on April 17, 1775, beginning America’s eight-year war for independence.

•Since the 1930s, chicken pie lovers from all over New England have been driving to Harrows in Reading, Massachusetts, for Harrows Chicken Pies, made daily from fresh chickens, cooked slowly overnight and smothered in flavourful scratch gravy, firm carrots and potatoes and poured into lovely pastry.

•The Daytona Beach Drive-In Church welcomes everyone looking for a unique way to worship. Just stay in the car, tune in on your radio or listen to the speakers and then hop across the street to the beach.

•Much more than just another roadway, I-95 is a pipeline to history and amusement. Whether you are going south for the first time or the hundredth, with this book it will all seem brand new, and better than ever.