For the first two weeks of September, Katie and I drove around upstate New York and then Maine, focusing on hiking, camping, and generally just escaping from from New York City and civilization at large. These days, it’s other people who pose a looming health threat to each other. Simultaneously, our newsfeeds pose a constant threat to our collective sanity. And, if you’re Californian, you have actual fires posing an incendiary threat. It’s all bad.

Thus, I’m so grateful we could hop in a car and drive up. Away from NYC, DC , and especially Florida. First stop: the Adirondacks. Specifically, Upper Saranac Lake. Nearby, we climbed Ampersand Mountain, short but delightful hike with a pretty aggressive back half climb ending in pretty spectacular views of the nearby lakes.

Following a stop by High Falls Gorge, we set up camp near the ski lodges around Lake Placid. In addition to several jaunts around smaller trails, we also trekked 15 miles to summit Mount Marcy, New York State’s highest point; the next day, we wandered through some private country club golf courses to reach Rainbow Falls, a pleasant perennial waterfall.

However, saying that we only hiked and camped would be misrepresenting our trip. After (loosely) packing the tent, we drove straight through Franconia Notch and a rainstorm to the southern coast of Maine to visit little towns like Kennebunkport and Ogunquit. Our motel in the area was less than 200 feet away from a beach! And also because Maine, we had lobsters. We ate lobsters in some form four times total, with the most memorable being Highroller Lobster Co. in downtown Portland, ME.

Our experience at HighRoller was impressively contactless. Actually, in general, both in Portland and the smaller towns we passed through, the citizens and visitors of Maine were quite receptive to all sorts of social distancing measures. I sense that low population density isn’t solely responsible for Maine being one of the states best at keeping infection rates low. In the backroads, we saw a mix of Trump and Pence fliers; downtown, we walked past side-by-side energetic marches for the Senate race candidates (Susan Collins, Sara Gideon); nonetheless, in general, we felt that Mainers were Mainers first and foremost, invested in taking care of each other.

Before going to the crown jewel National Park of the northeast, we stopped by a few state parks on Cape Elizabeth. I had so much fun at Kettle Cove, where the long veins in the oceanside rock formations made them look confusingly like wood! Not even petrified wood either, we legitimately mistook a boulder for a piece of wayward driftwood…

Anyway… Acadia National Park, up next! The strongest memories I have from my family trip in 2011 are waking up to watch a sunrise, hopping seaside rocks that looked like turtle shells, and eating lobster. Acadia delivered on each of those: sunrise from Cadillac Mountain, wandering up and down the Ocean Walk, and eating at Charlotte’s Lobster Pound, respectively. More than that, we got to hear the thunderous pounding of Thunder Hole on a gusty day, scramble up the Precipice iron rung trail, summit lots of the less popular mountains on Mount Desert Island, and do 6- and 8-mile runs around carriage roads (most people biked, but the weather was great for getting in some runs after the morning hikes).

Speaking of fires, on our last day in Maine, our sunset at Seal Cove was shrouded by a haze that dulled the sky and turned the sun and angry red. We learned that it was smoke from the Colorado fires drifting across the continent that was obscuring the sky. How scary, and how fitting.

We stopped by Boston for a pit stop and for a handful of socially distanced reunions with my friends. I’ve been hoping for a Boston trip for a long time: revisit my old Harvard stomping grounds, explore new places now that I’m not a student anymore, and run around the city some more. Each of those was truncated by the looming threat of the virus and the consequent obliteration of old social norms. Annenberg looked like strictly takeout goodie baggies for Harvard froshes. “Favorite COVID outdoor dining tables” is a thing now. Running in Cambridge requires a mask (breathing through a sweaty mask is a workout!).

Still, I appreciated this trip. As Americans, we are blessed a plethora of national treasures: a well-maintained interstate system (good ol’ bipartisan projects), an improbably sustainable lobster fishery (maybe because we ate all the cod?), and seemingly endless natural beauty (that’s protected for future generations, right?). I don’t know where I’m going with this post… so I’m just going to post this first draft and retreat back to the hospital basement reading rooms. Later dudes.