State hopping

If it hadn’t been for local knowledge, we’d never have scored a passage on the ferry at all. As it was, we have to take the 3.30 voyage rather than the midday one we’d hoped for. And we are lucky to get tickets for that. These Cape May/Lewes ferries ply the waters to and fro all day long and still there are massive queues. This is a very busy country. People are on the move all the time.

But the Americans are pretty good at it.

For instance, this ferry terminal is a destination in itself. It has a great big swanky waterside restaurant with a classy live music performance going on. It seems to be a thing for families to swan over to the terminal for lunch watching the big ferries chug in and out. It’s like the old days when people went to the airports just to

watch the planes. But, in this case, there is a purpose-built lounge, bar, restaurant, and shops to make it all into a big commercial happening thing with a party atmosphere.

The partying goes on among the ferry passengers, we soon discover. There are bars on the ferry. They are enthusiastically patronised. Bunches of passengers are getting rather happy and very noisy.

Not everyone.

We are the sort who like to watch the sea, the passing boats, the disappearing land, and the birds.

Seagulls follow the ferry excitedly feeding in the wake. Some like to fly beside or aloft over the ferry, seemingly suspended in the air. Riding on the upper deck, we are sometimes at eye level with them. Great big Atlantic gulls. Wonderful. Jonathan Livingston seagulls.

There are a lot of dogs on the ferry. There are a lot of dogs everywhere, as it happens. Dogs are accepted family travellers. They are in all the hotels. It is the era of the four-star hotel dog. Just $15 a night, I'm told. Some hotels offer designer dog beds and treats to encourage the canine custom. True story.

So, I suppose I am not surprised to see so many

dogs on the ferry.

I am surprised to see Mennonites, though. I am always surprised to see Mennonites - gentle, quiet, homely souls in their buttonless frocks and little headpieces.

It is a glorious 90-minute voyage across the pea green Delaware River estuary and then we are in Delaware.

Oh, bliss. Look. Corn fields. Tall, feathery-topped corn. I have seen cornfields right across this mighty country. I have seen them from little, bitty plants across the vast expanses of Wyoming and South Dakota. I have seen them getting bigger as we travelled east. I have become attached to the sight of them. They are not quite so lush here but I am so glad to see them again. I break out the Chex Mix in celebration.

Here in Delaware we are driving past settlements with mown verges and flower beds. There seems to be a lighthouse motif repeated along the roads. There are rental shops for almost everything: chairs, umbrellas, scooters, bait. You can rent bait?

More corn crops. Fields of soy. Corn. Lovely neat, sleek crops.

Delaware is Vice President Joe Biden's territory, says Bruce. Politics seems prominent with election signs of all sorts dotted along the roadside:

I.G. Burton for District Governor, Fred Shade for County Council, Kathy McGuinness for Lieutenant Governor, Max Schaff, Sam Wilson, Mike Miller for Congress. They flash past too fast to photograph.

Where it is not rural, it seems to be full of new developments. Aha, that one looks like the template the Sims computer game creators used. I used to build virtual houses like that back in the days when I played The Sims. I drift into nostalgia for that favourite computer game. Such are the indulgences of the eternal car passenger. This Alamo Nissan Rogue of the mysterious deep green hue has been a sort of home base for at least 10 weeks now.

We pass through Georgetown, very neat, a classic little American darling town with lots of restaurants.

Bruce is looking for chicken BBQ stands. Delaware is famous for chicken and he remembers its roadside BBQ chicken as one of the great yummies of this world. No sign of chicken. There are farm stands, instead. This one touts Candy-Lopes as well as peaches and cherries.

Fields of corn and soy. Woodlands, Open pasture. Farm stand selling corn and watermelon.

A massive billboard looms. Bridgeville - If you lived here, you would be home.

Hmm. What smarmy idiot thought of that?

Bridgeville seems to be a sprawling, flat town. It seems to be mad on billboards. I wouldn’t want to live there.

Back into countryside and it is more diversified agriculture. As well as corn there are crops of sunflowers and apple orchards. Did I mention corn?

Sign: Don’t Reach For Just Any Peach.

Corn.

Ma & Pa’s Farmstand - corn and cantaloupes.

Delaware is certainly a fecund little agricultural state. There is charm to this intensity of small home-grown enterprise. The farms themselves are becoming prominent. Huge handsome farms they are, too. And more produce stands. We grown our own corn, brags one. You don’t say. Another farm stand advertises Lopes. This one’s a fruit market. It has peaches and lima beans.

We don’t stop at any of them since we are looking for the remembered chicken BBQ stands.

It turns out they have not vanished. They simply are shut. They’re a lunch thing and it is getting late now.

Bruce swallows his disappointment and promises me curry for dinner.

We drive past a massive dairy farm and suddenly we are in Maryland.

Altered State, I trumpet brilliantly.

Bruce flicks me a sideways look.

Sign: State Law. No Texting. No hand-held phones.

More corn fields. Now the farm stands are replaced by acres of mini storage compartments.

The sky is lowering. Clouds are massing. We are coming in to Denton. Car yards and strip malls. Walmart, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway. We cross the Choptank River and marvel at its name. The sun is casting elliptical rays through the cloud layers. It is like a religious painting. Co-incidentally, there’s a huge solar panel farm. It extends for many acres. We wonder what it powers.

Oh, look, an outlet mall. A glossy, crowded hub of joyful consumerism. I look longingly.

Onwards we drive. Rivers, waterways and trucks, lots of trucks. Here comes the famous Chesapeake Bay bridge, a cable suspension bridge across the glorious, great bay.

That is one mighty view. The water is dotted with boats, barges and jet skis. People are playing on little beaches on the bay shore. Some are fishing off rocky groynes. It is the end of a hot day.

Now we humming along the road to Baltimore between walls of trees. And Bruce has a conniption.

What! Signs to the National Security Agency!

In my time working in the intel community it was completely secret, dark secret, he gasps. It used to be you couldn’t even mention the acronym NSA.

As if just to annoy him, there are more signs. NSA employees only. NSA deliveries here. There’s a stern cyclone wire fence but Bruce is still scandalised.

He points out the mass of power lines going in. They’re processing the world’s communications with huge supercomputers in there, he says.

But we’re on home turf now. This is Bruce’s old stamping ground. This is where I came 20 odd years ago when first we met. We’re nostalgic.

Soon we are unpacking in the Columbia Homewood Suites by Hilton.

Our destination for family reunions.

And what is that I spy across the way?

It is the Royal Taj Indian Restaurant - and the promised curry becomes delicious reality.