ottawa->montreal->quebec city->maine->vermont->boston->cape cod->DC->atlanta

well, that's pretty much been the route since upstate new york. i'll give a run down of what i can remember:

• ottawa - capital city of canada, half is in the province of ontario and half in quebec. its kind of a strange city - really not all that old but the (government etc) buildings are constructed all olde-world looking, and the rest of it is kinda ugly. but its a great place to visit for a few days because there are a ton of museums etc. visited a farm museum and were licked by cows, baby sheep and goats. enjoyed light and sound extravaganza projected onto capitol building - some great images but terrible voiceover and music! toured the capitol building, watched the changing of the guard ceremony.
• montreal - pretty cool city but also very big - 3 mil or so - largest in canada. were both expecting to like it more than we did. walked around the old town area which was nice. caught some of the free and very large jazz festival in the evening.
• quebec city - loved it. a highlight of canada. smallish managable size, beautiful, feels like europe. summer festival was on - saw buskers and two nights of concerts (tickets cost $25 but you could see and hear just fine from outside the roped off area - which suited paupers such as us).
• maine - camped in backyard of random people who picked us up on the side of the road! heh heh. thanks tom and phillis! actually very nice retired couple who took pity on us after we were cooking in dark on roadside (troubles locating campsite). they have a lovely house on a lake. bullfrogs were very noisy however! maine is gorgeous. went to the coast and spent couple of days around arcadia national park. stunning rugged rocky coastlines.
• vermont - stayed with sarah's friend's mum near montpellier. lovely lady - regaled us with very many stories. took a trip to burlington. 'hiked' some trails in smuggler's notch. vermont is very nice.
• boston - we were really off our game in boston. kept making bad decisions - not helped by not knowing anyone there. wasted a lot of time driving and trying to find non-ridiculously-priced parking and so on. its well known as being a bad city in that regard. parking meters only accept quarters - only place i can think of where meters dont accept multiple denom coins - stupid! so we kinda ended up hating the place, which is probably not fair. did do some nice things though - museums, public library (very cool), boston common (small and not too exciting), and a free edie brickell concert. boston and massachusetts in general is very important re american history, which is not of so much interest to me.
• cape cod - spent a couple of days on the cape, staying with friends of friends again. went to provincetown - pretty interesting place, but very touristy. shame we didn't have more time to explore the beaches around the national sea shore, had only a quick stop there.
• washington dc - dc was great. camped close to town, a short drive to the end of the metro. saw the whitehouse from outside (cant tour it unless you book 6 months in advance), washington monument and the lincoln monument (which is cool). dc has tons of free museums. the smithsonian stuff is all free, there are about 8 museums and apparently only 1% of the holdings are on display at any given time. we also went to the national zoo, very cool, highlight was seeing the baby pandas :) although the gorillas, orang utans, tigers, elephants and just about everything else were also really cool! i used to feel a bit conflicted about zoos - keeping animals in captivity and whatnot. but proper zoos (not roadside attraction zoos) nowadays are very important for breeding purposes etc given all the terrible things that humans are doing to "help" species become extinct (did you know that probably the most useful thing you could do to help not only the animals that we eat (and mistreat) but also those that are endangered is to not eat meat? zoos dont tell you this directly but "habitat loss" is driven in large part by animal agriculture).
• currently in atlanta. ah, domestic comforts - tv, dvds, movies on demand, internet access, not to mention solid walls and showers! stayed at sarah's mom's last night but we have our own place to stay at which we will move to later today. generally chilling out and recharging batteries (literally and metaphorically) here for a bit before the last stage of the trip. we have a million digi photos, some of which i will post at some point!