#8, Delaware DE (Been There)

Delaware is one of those states that you really have to plan to visit if you want to see the state. It's pretty much blocked off by water and a couple bridges but you do pass through it if you are travelling along Highway 95 up the east coast. So while we didn't stay overnight or buy the t-shirt we definitely weren't sleeping in the airport. So, this one counts.

I remember one trip in particular where we had left Illinois for Myrtle Beach in the summer of 2009. Following a few days there we decided to drive up to Connecticut where our oldest son was finishing up his final months of his doctorate at Yale University.

Map used by fair-use permission of Nations Online Project

Since it was our first time driving this route my mind thought we would be heading up on Highway 95 which went somewhere into the middle of the main part of New York, then we'd hook a right and head into Connecticut. Some of you are smiling right now since you already realize the absolute nightmare that was the coastal drive through "The City That Never Ends." We drove all day for what seemed like New York City over and over and over again. We drove through Richmond, Fredricksburg, and Arlington Virginia; then through Washington, D.C. which is its own little nightmare; then the greater Baltimore, Maryland, area; then we made it through the northern tip of Delaware which includes Wilmington; next through the greater Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania; then Trenton and New Brunswick, New Jersey; and all of that before reaching what I thought would be the main problem, being New York City, New York. You'd think that I'd avoid the city at all cost, and that was certainly the plan, but in the crazy traffic that is New York City at rush hour we missed our turn and ended smack dab in the Bronx. It was getting dark and we just kept moving along as we passed through Greenwich, Norwalk, Bridgeport, Milford, and then finally New Haven as our final stop in Connecticut. And it was still like New York City. Maybe there's a reason we haven't been back that way since.

We made it through the Highway 95 corridor of Northern Delaware
Map used by fair-use permission of Nations Online Project

So yes, I was in Delaware. I suppose there was a silver lining to that trip that I learned where Delaware was on the map. It's the second smallest state in the United States (at 1,982 square miles), right behind Rhode Island which is the smallest (at 1,214 square miles). For a state that is just 96 miles long it may surprise you to find that the Delaware River, off the east coast of the state, runs 330 miles from Hancock, New York (where the Eastern and Western Branches of the Delaware river meet) through five U.S. states including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Delaware. It then becomes the Delaware Bay which funnels into the Atlantic Ocean.

There's more traffic as you head into "The Extended City"

So there you have your little history lesson for today. I could have added a lot more Delaware facts but I didn't. Let's just say that every state has its share of interesting history and places and the like, not the least of which you have access to the Atlantic Ocean!

Until next time,

Arktander

(AKA David Andreasen)