Before you start your engines and dive into this entry, I have buried two words from my daily calendar somewhere in the text below. They are Careen and Tenacious. Think of it as a treasure hunt on the open road of prose. No steering wheel or road map required, just a keen eye and perhaps a thermos of strong coffee for encouragement.

We had been considering, why buy a great big motorhome and tow a car behind it like a metal caravan? Why not buy a pickup truck and fit a fifth-wheel trailer to the bed? The new dream had took root, grew leaves, and before I knew it we had hired a car and were driving off to look at pickup trucks.

Cardinal had been kind to us. The sun shone, the boatyard hummed, and Sawasdeekat sat on the gravel like a patient patient awaiting surgery. We had settled in, made friends with the neighbours, and allowed ourselves the dangerous luxury of optimism.

Pookie is our nominated contact and social officer. She is the one who reaches out, organises, and turns strangers into friends before I have finished checking the engine oil. It was not long therefore before she had made our Thai acquaintances into whatsapp friends. If you recall we met them by chance at the Hole in the Wall. Sue, the mother and head of the clan, wasted no time in inviting us to Richmond. When we explained that we had no transport, she did not hesitate. She volunteered her son to drive over and collect us.

Pookie told me to pack an overnight bag. Before we had chance to say Thai Dynasty, they had arrived.

We jumped into their car and drove the seventy odd miles back to Richmond. Sue offered her eldest son's house as accommodation, and Sonny and his wife Vow welcomed us like old friends. Most people might feel a flicker of apprehension about climbing into a near-stranger's car and letting them take you to their home. But their family could not have been more genuinely welcoming.

Sonny's house announced his passion before he said a word. Bourbon. Locked cabinets down the hallway. Bottles in the kitchen and lounge. A complete room devoted to the stuff, with every inch stuffed with bottles, boxes and barrels. He is a collector and curator; a man who talks about mash bills and ageing with the same reverence Pookie reserves for a perfect curry paste. He is also owner of a restaurant and so conversations about dishes, courses, and pairings flowed all weekend.

Richmond, it turns out, has a claim on bourbon that stretches further back than most people realise. Virginia has a recorded history of distillation dating to 1620. Reservoir Distillery, in the city's Scott's Addition district, became the third distillery outside Kentucky to distill and release bourbon after Prohibition.

The family own restaurants and we ate at every one of them. Each had its own character. YaYa's Cookbook served Thai and Japanese fusion. MPM Tiki Bar poured cocktails with theatrical flair. Mom's Siam held the crown as the respected Thai institution, while My Noodle Bar lurks underground with hip food and a knowing crowd. The family name behind it all is Kiatsuranon, and their reach across Richmond's dining scene is the sort of quiet empire built on years of tenacious work rather than fanfare.

Sonny forced me to try an Old Fashioned at each establishment. In fairness, I did not put up too much of a fight. We had an absolute blast. It was the sort of weekend you talk about for days afterwards, and the sort that reminds you why travel matters.

Back at the boat, we organised ourselves and hired a car. I had done my research. Ford seemed to offer the best towing capabilities. An F150 would handle a standard tow bar, but a fifth-wheel setup demanded an F250. Then came the labyrinth of trims, towing specs, and payload ratings. We didn't care much about leather or chrome but Pookie obviously would have liked a little luxury. We definitely wanted at least a half cab at the back so Pookie could lean her seat back and lie down when the road stretched long. Our desires were decided and we set off looking.

Enterprise kindly upgraded us to a brand new BMW and so we set off for Washington, keen to see the best model we could find. Sadly the one we wanted had been sold by the time we arrived and so our heads went down momentarily. We looked online again. Baltimore had one and so we drove north. The advert promised a Lariat model with leather seats, plush trim, and nice wheels. The truck we saw looked a shadow of its former self, a punctured tyre, rust underneath, filthy dust inside and out; the machine had lived a hard life and was trying to hide the scars.

Slightly despondently we rented a motel room. It was not quite what we had hoped for. Still, we pushed on and used the overnight to search for more F250s. The next one that caught our eye was in Philadelphia.

Philly is a city that wears its history on every brick. We probably did more sightseeing than truck hunting and ended up stopping the night. We walked through the oldest part of the city, and we found ourselves on Elfreth's Alley, the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the United States, a narrow lane of thirty-two brick row houses built between 1703 and 1836. We couldn’t help but think back our previous house back in the UK that was built in 1769. We walked the alley and its houses for free, a small mercy on a public holiday. From there we drifted down to the Fringe Bar, which overlooks the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the river beneath it. A VERY hearty meal (US meals are HUGE) and then up the same street to an Irish pub where I had a Guinness. Paddy's, a place that once served as a film location for a well-known American television series called “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia”.

The USA was doing rather well in the World Cup at the time, and it looked possible that they would meet England in the Philly stadium the following week. The city hummed with anticipation and the locals spared no time in jokingly telling us they’d “Kick our arse!”

Philly borders New Jersey, and it was there that we saw the best model available. A good clean XLT model, we spent the night reflecting on our situation. We were UK citizens trying to buy a car in the USA. That required registration. Registration required an address. We did not have one. A bit of research revealed that South Dakota offered a path. All we needed was a post box address, or so the forums claimed. I applied immediately and soon discovered the truth. A physical address in South Dakota cannot be a post office mailbox or a mail forwarding address. The application form needed validation by an official. The official was not easy to find. Our dreams of a pickup were being careened off course by red tape.

We chose the scenic route home and drove through Leesburg, a town that once served as the capital of the United States for three days, its white-pillared courthouse square shaded by elms and oaks, its old stone and brick houses standing with the quiet dignity of a place that has seen presidents and generals walk its streets.

Then came Manassas, where the land itself remembers. The fields and stone bridges of Manassas National Battlefield Park bore witness to the opening engagement of the Civil War, and the Stone House still stands, a field hospital during both battles, its walls soaked in the stories of the nearly 900 men who fell on what had been peaceful farmland the day before.

The drive back meandered through history, each town a reminder that America is not just a place to drive through but a place to read, layer upon layer of story and struggle and stubborn hope.

We reached Cardinal empty-handed. Three nights away. A fortune in food and fuel. And the realisation that we could not buy a pickup even if we wanted to without the right paperwork in place.

We needed a heart to heart, and so we had one.

Cards on the table. Pookie said she really did not want to sail to Panama and then across the Atlantic to Australia. She would much prefer to fly there, hire or buy an RV, and see it that way. The distances were too big for us non-sailors, particularly for a woman who turns green the moment the anchor lifts. I had to admit that our time in the Caribbean had not been ideal. Anchorages were nearly a day's sail apart. When you arrived, yes, it was beautiful, but there were no people, the towns were terrible, the prices horrific, and the places serving good food were entirely absent. Some of the pacific islands, Australia and probably most of China and Japan were likely to be the same.

We decided there and then that our circumnavigation dreams would remain just that. Dreams. We would still see the world. We would simply choose to do it using a variety of means rather than one boat.

But what to do?

Zimmerman's quotes had been horrific and had already thwarted our plans of new solar. We decided we would take Sawasdeekat back to the Mediterranean. Pookie did not want to sail her there. So we would either have to get her taken on a ship shipping ship, or find a captain to take her for us. We, on the other hand, would see the USA by RV. But not immediately.

The way we see it, the world is changing fast. Prices and inflation are seemingly getting worse by the week. And so we decided to go back to the Med until the recession and the economy have sorted themselves out. Then, when our pound goes further, we will return and do the RV trip for the USA, Canada, and Mexico.

It was a turnaround of ideas and plans. It focused our minds on what is important to us.

Join us next week as we put those plans into force and use our time in Cardinal to see this part of America.