Day One: East

June 6

Papa,

Today has been us and the highway: low cumulus clouds over farm fields and power lines, the smell of honey pretzels and luggage, and the interior plastic of the van rattling against my elbow. 

Not too much to write yet. I hope you don’t mind an email each day or so; these are from my journal.

It’s hard to imagine looking over Niagara tomorrow!

Love,

b.j.

---

From: L.C. Melton

I am thrilled by any and everything you send. Your journal entry means so much to me. 

As you are enjoying all the places you will go, I’ll be traveling, too. But I’ll be traveling with Nanny again to all the wonderful places we got to see and the happy things we were able to do, and for me, that will be better than actually being there again. You are doing and seeing things that will be in your memory albums in fifty more years. I once wrote:

There are albums of old photographs   

that capture moments in time;

We have files of digital images   

stored in cyberspace we can find;

There are the creative paintings of artists   

that leave imagined impressions sublime;

But the images that we treasure most   

are the memories of our minds.

Rest up, for tomorrow you will experience one of the mightiest sights on the planet.

All my love,

Papa

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The Cape Cod Letters are a series of emails between my grandpa Larry and I, written during my family’s trip East back in June. Papa Larry took 30 trips to Cape Cod in his life, but this was my first, so I wrote home about it. I’m sharing these letters each Thursday on my blog this summer.