First stop, New York City and vicinity. Then south to North Carolina to visit my uncle and aunt, then down through Georgia and maybe into Florida, then back to Virginia, possibly by way of Atlanta where I also have "people" I may try to track down. I haven't sorted out all the details yet.
Amtrak's Palmetto Line will take me from Washington to North Carolina. (This line's northern terminus: New York City Penn Station. Southern terminus: Savannah, Georgia.) Another line, apparently called the Silver Service line, partly overlaps Palmetto and continues down to Miami, Florida by way of Jacksonville and Orlando. Map of both, red markers indicating stops:
There is an idea out there that air travel has already peaked as the dominant form of long-range travel, and that we are in the early ascending stages of Maglev train technology (magnet based trains). A professor I had, Dr. T.L., made the case for this to us around 2008. Eight years later and so far no sign that I'm aware of. I rode one of the world's only functional Maglev trains in Shanghai, China. It went only from the airport to a suburban subway station where you had to transfer to the regular system. A total prestige project.
