“Every single page,” I said, keeping my eyes on the highway. “She spent years planning this trip while I was out on deployment schedules. Figured it was about time I memorized her itinerary.”
For the first time in over a decade, the road ahead didn’t feel like an escape from an empty house. It felt like an appointment I was finally keeping.
The Sweetbrier Bakery & The Ghost of Cinnamon
By late afternoon, the flat coastal plains gave way to the rolling green swells of the Appalachian foothills. We took exit 42 off I-81, following a two-lane blacktop that wound lazily through fields of frost-touched cornstalks until we found it: a weathered brick building with arched windows and a faded wooden sign reading Sweetbrier Est. 1927.
The parking lot was empty except for a gravel driveway large enough for our aging motor home. When we stepped out, the crisp autumn wind carried the unmistakable scent of baking cinnamon and woodsmoke.
An elderly woman with hair the color of silver wire pushed open the front screen door, wiping her hands on a flour-dusted apron. “Well now,” she said, squinting against the late afternoon sun. “That’s a mighty fine classic rig you’ve got there. Don’t see many C-classes built like that anymore.”
