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I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. In a couple of weeks, I will drive with my family to Rochester, Vermont.

Since moving to Nashville, it's become the most highly anticipated

trip of the year. Two routes grant us equal delights. But this year, we

decided on the Northern Passage, Kentucky, Ohio and New York, then on to Vermont.

But first, the listening experience.

80s pop and 90s hip-hop.

An audio book, Edward P. Jones, The Known World.

Punctuated by our favorite podcast and some old-timey radio shows.

We stay in a gorgeously renovated Airbnb in the German Village neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio.

We eat Bavarian food. Then shop at the bookloth,

arguably one of the best bookstores in the country.

Next, we make our way to Rochester, New York, where we lodge at a historic hotel.

In the morning, we eat sweet pastries and coffee before taking in contemporary art at

Roko.

But of course, the biggest joy of the journey is that moment when we cross on Route 4 into Vermont in the middle of summer.

The visual noise of billboards easefully give way to radiant mountains, pastures, and farmlands seemingly from another era.

Quaint villages with general stores that we cannot simply pass by beckon us. I used to only associate the Green Mountain State

with freezing temperatures and blizzards, but recent summers have revised my

...