Dad and I, when I was little (and Michele was probably there too, but I don't remember much), would pile into the trusty old Honda Civic on the weekends and drive. Dad would have a general idea of where he wanted to go, but he wouldn't necessarily stick to that, and neither would he necessarily know how to get there. Frequently, we would get "misplaced." Never lost -- Dad doesn't get lost. But we'd find ourselves wandering down roads we didn't even know existed. That was the whole point to all this. To wander. Dad called it "exploring," and that's how we found all those cool little unpaved roads in Nebraska which led to the farms in the area. Being away at college, I'd missed exploring with Dad on the weekend. But today, we went exploring again, this time bringing along my little brother Mark, who's 11 and the sweetest person you've ever met. No lie. Anyhow, so this time Dad, Mark and I piled into the Saturn (the Honda was given to an auto shop at a local high school a few years ago, much to my dismay) and headed out. Dad wanted to see if he could tell where the old Rolling Road had led, but alas, the new road has completely obliterated most of the evidence of the old road. Well, we continued on down Rolling Road, just to see where it led, and found that it led right back to the Fairfax County Parkway -- it just makes a huge loop.

So we went down Rolling Road again, but turned onto another road in the meantime. Somehow we ended up down by Lorton prison, on a road that showed us farmland that looked like it had never been touched by housing developments. You'd be hard-pressed to find land like that in northern Virginia -- everywhere you look, new houses are going up. But this was wild land, rolling, hilly, and covered with wild grasses and trees. Then we passed the prison itself, which looked rather forlorn behind the rows of barbed wire. It's been abandoned.

Dad took a few more twists and turns, and we were at the Amtrak station for the Auto Train. We watched them load vehicles -- trucks and Jags and BMWs -- into the special cars for the train. I'd never before seen anything like it, and wished my family could afford another trip to Florida, just to ride on that Amtrak train.

Dad then careened down the roads of Lorton, found himself at Route 1, and we ended up at Occoquan, which is where Dad meant to go in the first place. It's really cool down there -- a lot of antique shops, and the shopping area is really old-timey and all that. Dad parked the car, and Mark and I got out to the scent of rotting fish... we went down to the edges of the Occoquan River where people were fishing, and they'd thrown some fish back into the river after they were dead. Didn't smell too good, let me tell you. But Dad took a cool photo of Mark and me while we were down there on the shores of the river.

So that was my day today... recapturing some excellent memories of Dad and me when I was little, and making some new ones with my brother Mark. All in all, a wonderful day...