This week I had intended to write about why I hate Route 1 through Chadds Ford.

Like when you’re pumping gas at Leader Sunoco and a tractor trailer comes barreling through the intersection and you wonder if you’re experiencing the east coast version of the great San Francisco earthquake.

Once I was out on the front porch of the Sanderson Museum when a car literally came flying across the intersection through the corner of Hank’s Place to rest atop another car. Nice trick!

Or there were the times when the Brandywine Battlefield would have events prior to the relatively recent installation of the traffic lights. We’d hear screeching brakes and the inevitable booming crunch of 2 tons of steel coming together. One afternoon there were 3 accidents. The second victim was actually looking at the mess from the first accident–oopsy!

I do not like driving up Chadds Ford Hill. There are only 2 lanes. The right-hand lane should be mandatory for all trucks including pick-ups, people in mini vans who don’t know how to drive mini vans, people in any early model Japanese or Korean car powered by a lawn mower engine, and timid people who take 7 miles to pass a truck. Please stay in your special lane.

As I said I was going to write all these nasty things about Route 1, before I had a major attitude adjustment this weekend on my 550 mile round trip to Williamsburg, Va. for a re-enactment.

My first error was going on one of those computer search sites where you enter your home address and the destination address and choose either “shortest route” or “fastest route.”

On the way down I sat on I-95 between Alexandria and Fredericksburg, Va., a distance of about 40 miles, for two hours, often crawling along at five miles per hour.

On the way home I realized there should have been another choice as in “route least likely to raise your blood pressure.”

After looking at their way to get back around Washington, which incorporated seven steps, I threw the print-out on the car floor and stayed on I-95 and I-495 north to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and had a great trip.

I exited I-95 on Route 272 in North East, Md. and in a few minutes was in Nottingham, which lead me to my delightful trip down Route 1–a pleasant contrast to the five lanes in either direction of northern Virginia with highways splitting into multilane-exits peeling off from both the left and right.

Coming into Chadds Ford, seeing the old Kennett Meeting where the British and Continentals skirmished in the early morning of Sept. 11, 1777; the Pennsbury Inn and the White Barn; Chadds Ford Winery; the historic Barnes- Brinton House; the old barn that is now the Gables; the view over the hills as you come down Chadds Ford Hill; the gentle rippling of the Brandywine River, George Brinton’s Mill now the Brandywine River Museum; the old Chadds Ford Inn, now Brandywine Prime; the barn and former Post Office; Turners Mill / Pyle’s Studio; the hills of the Battlefield Park and miles of green trees!

And now I will tell you the best way to get to Williamsburg according to re-enactors…Route 301!