There are many paths you can take down the Eastern Seaboard, but I like the ones less traveled that stick in your memory and teach you a bit of American culture that isn't learned in the classroom.

    As you head out of Long Island, perhaps stop at the Lakehouse restaurant or the Whalers in Bay Shore for a lobster roll while pondering this guide to an ultimate mid-Atlantic journey that ends up at one of America's classic cities for food, history, and charm: Charleston, S.C.

The Hamptons to the Jersey Shore

In light of a recent spate of opioid overdoses on the East End, Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming has partnered with Sheriff Errol Toulon, HUGS Inc., and Suffolk Community College to offer a training and education seminar on the use of naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, which can be used to help prevent such overdoses.

    Once upon a time, or specifically, mid-pandemic last year, an average Long Island family was looking for a place to plan a vacation. Montauk wasn't terribly appealing, they were tired of the Outer Banks and the Hudson Valley, and Kennebunkport, Me., was attractive but too distant. The spot needed to be secluded enough for social distancing but welcoming and entertaining enough for a family of 10 with two small children.

What you need to know as you drive toward the Great Smoky Mountains is that the land is a rain forest. The hills, valleys, gullies, cracks, and seams are filled with hickory, fir, sugar maple, wild cherry, birch, chestnut, pine, cedar, and tulip poplar -- a tree that rises straight up out of the ground and nine stories later pops open with large, white magnolia-looking flowers (okay, tulips). The vegetation is so abundant that it comes described as shingled, shagged, big-toothed, winged, slippery, sweet, bitter, chalked, and weeping.