There's room in her used Ford Escape for the mattress, the Coleman stove and a 40-year-old North Face tent that's still in great shape. But she's worried there won't be enough room for all the books she wants to take.
No Kindles or iPads for Ellen Moyer, the retired mayor of Annapolis. "I like the feel of the real thing."
Ms. Moyer is packing carefully, reducing her belongings to the bare minimum because it is a long trip and there isn't much room in the car.
She's driving to Alaska.
At the age of 79, she is going to see for herself the breath-taking vistas that pictures cannot capture. "Everyone tells me you don't get it unless you are there," she said.
She's leaving her waterfront bungalow in Eastport during the prettiest — and busiest — time of the year in Annapolis. She will spend most of the summer driving across the United States, up through Alberta, Canada, and to the Yukon. And back.
"A friend once asked me to marry him and go homestead in Alaska," she says while sitting in the hot sun on her deck. "It was the wrong time. I was just a freshman in college. But it is the last frontier and it has always fascinated me."
She's doing it on a dime, she says. Camping in parks and parking lots. "Did you know you can cross the United States parking in Walmarts?" She had a dry-run on a friend's farm one weekend and it went OK, though waking up was tough. She was pretty stiff.
"If I am going to do this, I better do this now," she says. "Not going is not an option." She's taking a friend with her, but declines to say who. "I've driven cross-country many times, but at this age, the buddy system makes sense."
It is hard to log 650 miles a day at the age of 79. There's a lot more stopping and stretching. But driving is meditative, she says. A chance to clear the cobwebs in your head. She will blog at Travel with Ellen Moyer and post pictures when she stops for the night if she can find Internet service.
"Maybe I will write my own 'Blue Highways,'" she said.
Once she makes it to Alaska, she has plans to stay a week or more in Whitehorse, Dawson City and Fairbanks, and she wants to see Lake Louise in Banff National Park.
But she also wants to stop in the small towns, too. "I want to find out where people meet — coffee shops or diners — and talk to them. That's the only way you can get a sense and a feel of a place." She said she expects to learn things about the United States that you can't learn by flying over it.
She's going to try to meet with mayors, too, and those who organize arts festivals so she can bring back fresh ideas to her volunteer work on Annapolis' arts scene. It's about 5,000 miles one way. She won't be back until August.
The first woman mayor of Annapolis, she has the enthusiastic support of all of her five children. She camped cross-country with them when they were little.
On the way back, she's planning to stop in Roosevelt National Forest in Colorado and to see the Grand Tetons from Jackson, Wyo. She might as well. I mean, she's going to be out there.
"And I like the challenge of wide open spaces. When I was mayor, I thought about doing this but there was never the time. Now there is."
There is still the matter of the books. She knows that she will be stopping in bookstores along the way, picking up volumes that describe the history of the places she visits. But she is also taking with her "books that speak to the soul of this country."
Sitting by her elbow is "All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West," by David Gessner, unopened and waiting for the journey to begin.
"I keep asking myself, 'What do I leave out so I can take some books?'" she said. A friend warned her to take a winter coat and boots. There could still be snow where she is going. She rolls her eyes. That's room that books could occupy.
"That's OK. My son is coming over," said Ms. Moyer. "We're going to try taking out the middle seat of the car."
Susan Reimer's column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. She can be reached at sreimer@baltsun.com and @SusanReimer on Twitter.com.