I picked this up the day we arrived home from a stressful "vacation" in Maine and finished it the next day. One would think after spending a week cursing the day I thought to ever leave my doorstep, that it would not be so easy to get the traveling bug back in me. After blazing through this little travelogue, I would be searching campervans on Pinterest were I not so tired from the effort of corralling a newly mobile toddler from certain self-destruction on the rocky shores of Acadia.

I unfortunately fell prey to one of the classic blunders (the most famous of course, is never get involved in a land war in Asia) but only SLIGHTLY less well known is this: Never read the reviews before you finish the book. I read one saying "oh it's all well and good but it was obviously a tall tale, Steinbeck never did those things, he's a novelist, this is fiction." To say I am heartbroken sounds like a strain of the truth, but I can't help but feel a pang in a region suspiciously close to that most tender of organs.

All I can say is, I don't care. I choose to believe every word of it.