August 16, 2015 Here’s the back story. Daughter #2, the darling Heather, has recently finished an internship and secured a real job as an archaeologist in the Canyon de Chelly area of Arizona. Hurrah for gainful employment! She has been doing some pretty cool stuff. Now that all of Heather’s friends who she has been bumming rides off are heading back to their colleges or hometown, Heather needs her car. Now a logical person would either a) tell Heather to fly home and pick up her car or b) tell her to buy a used one locally or c) find someone or some service to drive her Toyota to Arizona. Instead, we decided on a late summer adventure. We are going to drive Heather’s car out to her and fly back. According to Google Maps, the 2458 miles in 36 hours at an average of 68.28 mph. Three hard days? Three days of blurred interstate signs, monotonous rest food, mindless following of taillights, brutal tedium. I wish it was the beginning of the summer, and we had four weeks to travel the Blue Highways or bring Thor, our golden retriever, along and do our version of Travels with Charlie, but we only have a week, so we are planning on taking five days to traverse 3/4 of the country. Not a leisurely trip, but we’ll get off the interstates along the way. I’ve had thoughts of this project/trip brewing for that past three years. It started one day when I Googled “Concord” and was amazed at the number of places that share my home town’s name. There are Concords everywhere! The largest is Concord CA, followed by Concord, North Carolina and Concord, New Hampshire. I started wondering what all these Concords have in common? Was there some connection to the original Concord - Concord MA? Were the first settlers looking to find a bit of peace and quiet? Does the name fit today? My curiosity built as I continued to learn about my own town’s history. I became a licensed town guide. I read as much as I could about our local history, but still all those other Concords, those Concords with a population of 21, those Concords that no one has ever heard of, enchanted me. So here is our project. Liz and I are delivering Heather her car, but we are going to visit as many towns named Concord as we can squeeze in during our five days on the road. Truth be told, Liz isn’t too keen on this. She would rather just get there and see The Darling Daughter, but she is being a good sport, (at least for now.) Will there be concord or discord as we turn a 2400 mile trip into a 3000+ mile meander? We are off tomorrow at 7 AM. Our destinations are Concord NY and Concord PA.