Road Trip 2010: An East Coast retrospective (photos)

SAN FRANCISCO--Starting on June 23, CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman hit the U.S. Northeast for several weeks of driving and searching for the best stories he could find in the region. Over the course of 5,266 miles of driving--in a review Porsche Panamera, no less--Terdiman covered just about every imaginable base, from NASA to airplanes to Navy aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to great architecture to crayon production to the making of $100 bills, quarters, and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and much, much more.

After all those weeks and all that driving, the trip has finally come to an end. But here's one more chance to see the breadth of what the East Coast has to offer--even in the sweltering humidity of summer.

On this page and those that follow are images from each of Terdiman's Road Trip 2010 stops. You can click the included links to see each full piece.

This is a scene from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility.

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Terdiman visited with Frank Warren, the creator of the PostSecret project.

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One of the most popular story packages from the trip was Terdiman's coverage of Northrop-Grumman Shipbuilding and the construction of the U.S. Navy's next-generation aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford.

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This is the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum, in Washington, D.C.

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This is the White House, as seen in Terdiman's gallery of the best of Washington, D.C.

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Terdiman got a chance to get very close to the production line of the next-generation $100 bills.

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This is a police bike rolling off the production line at Harley-Davidson's York, Pa., production plant.

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Hundreds of U.S. Naval Academy plebes take their oath of office during 2010 induction day.

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Stacks of Crayola crayons, just seconds after being produced.

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A re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg, in Gettysburg, Pa.

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This terrific arch can be found at Valley Forge National Historic Park.

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Not one to ignore the East Coast's scientific contributions, Terdiman visited the Thomas Edison National Historic Park, in West Orange, N.J., the former home of the great inventor's labs.

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A good book-end to Terdiman's visit to the production line of the next-generation $100 bills, he also stopped in to see how America's coins are made at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

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Perhaps America's best-known and best-reviewed chef, Thomas Keller has built a small restaurant empire. At the pinnacle of that empire are French Laundry, in Yountville, Calif., and Per Se, in New York City. Terdiman visited the kitchens of both establishments to see how the great food is made.

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Hundreds of thousands of people pass through it daily, but how many people know the secrets of Grand Central Terminal, in New York City? Terdiman does, after visiting on Road Trip 2010.

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Terdiman got a personal tour of the universe at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

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A military SUGV climbs a wooden platform at iRobot, the maker of the Roomba, as well as several military field robots.

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A ceramic flotation device on the Nereus deep sea submersible at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

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A submarine school student at the Naval Submarine Base New London--in Groton, Connecticut-- gets the "OK" symbol, signifying that he's cleared for a quick ascent to the top of this tank, where submariners learn how to execute an emergency exit.

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Perhaps Terdiman's favorite stop of all during Road Trip was onto the Naval nuclear submarine, the North Carolina, the world's most technologically advanced sub, at the Naval Submarine Base New London, in Groton, Conn.

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An illuminating stop was to BBN Technologies, the Raytheon-owned research and development institution that some credit with inventing the Internet.

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Many barrels of beer are stacked high in the Barrel Room at the Samuel Adams brewery in Boston, Mass.

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The MIT Media Lab is a hotbed for the kinds of cutting-edge thinking that can end up reshaping technology.

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Sure he was making all Red Sox fans jealous, Terdiman got a backstage tour of Boston's Fenway Park.

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One of the most beautiful places on the East Coast is Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor, Maine.

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The source of some of the best ice cream in the world is the Ben & Jerry's factory in Waterbury, Vt.

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For all serious baseball fans, a pilgrimage to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is a must.

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One of the most serendipitous stops on Road Trip was Terdiman's accidental discovery of the Pittsburgh Steelers' training camp in Latrobe, Pa.

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Said to be the U.S. Navy's next-generation destroyer, the Zumwalt-class ship known as DDG 1000 could change naval warfare forever.

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A view of Niagara Falls, specifically the Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian side of the Niagara River.

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One of the hidden gems of the Washington, D.C. area is the National Security Agency's National Cryptologic Museum, in Ft. Meade, Md.

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One of the subjects Terdiman learned about during a daylong visit to General Electric's Global Research headquarters in Niskayuna, N.Y., was the applications for nanotechnology.

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Surprisingly--to Terdiman, at least--the single most successful Road Trip 2010 package was his story and photo gallery on Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, Fallingwater.

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After a quick cross-country flight to return home for a few days, Terdiman flew back east to attend the Celebration V convention--a huge, global "Star Wars" fan fest, in Orlando, Fla. Among the treats there was an exhibition of dozens of custom-painted and designed Stormtrooper helmets.

Click here to read the related Road Trip 2010 wrap-up story, and click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

There was no end to the visual treats at the Celebration V "Star Wars" fan fest in Orlando, Fla.

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The very last piece of Terdiman's Road Trip 2010 reporting was an on-stage discussion between "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart.

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