This picture is from my 2004 On the Lincoln Briefly trip. Basically a drive along the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor in Pennsylvania, it was my first documented trip on any portion of the Lincoln. I was still employed at the time and this was one of those trips where I tacked vacation days onto a business trip so most of the cost of transportation was covered by the company. The picture is of the coffee pot in Bedford, PA, and I also got my first look at the teapot in Chester, WV, on this trip. In the intervening twenty years, the two pots and several other Lincoln Highway icons have become fairly familiar but it was all brand new to me then. I went a little bit off course to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield and a little farther off course to visit the Flight 93 Memorial at Shanksville. There was not yet anything permanent at the crash site. Just a lot of flags and a few yards of chainlink fence stuffed with mementos. None of my subsequent visits with the engraved stone walls and informative displays have been as moving as that first time with those simple gifts from a mourning public.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.