Every state in this great nation of ours is blessed with its own form of bad weather to complain about. The Midwest gets swept away by tornadoes. The West has wildfires to keep things sizzling. New England has blizzards.

We were fortunate enough to get to experience the Southeast's little slice of disaster.

We headed south out of North Carolina heading toward Charleston via Wilmington. We really enjoyed Wilmington and were surprised just how big the Hollywood film industry is there. Screen Gem studios is headed by a Capra (son of the "It's a Wonderful Life" director) and dozens of films, television shows and commercials have been filmed there. It has a pleasant boardwalk along Cape Fear and a peaceful small town feel.

Fresh off our positive experience in Wilmington we made our way toward Charleston. First off, there is no doubting that once you cross that state border that things become suddenly more southern. People speak differently, boiled peanuts replace potato chips as a snack and confederate flags wave as often as American flags.

Driving through a steady rain we decided to cut our losses and stopped about 30 miles from Charleston in a town called Monck's Corner. It turns out that Tropical Storm Gaston decided to stop there as well. We were trapped in our hotel all night and all the next day without food and mostly without power as 60 mph winds and torrential downpours knocked trees and power lines down around us. Upon seeing images of people in canoes in downtown Charleston and hurricane Francis on the way, we decided it was time to run.

At the first break in the weather we got in the car and turned back north again. We eventually out ran the rains and found a hotel for the night. The next day Gaston caught back up again and pounded us some more. In Virginia our radio was interrupted by the screaching of the weather alert tones and we were told a tornado had touched down and was busy destroying everything. We checked our map to see where it was versus where we were and, of course, it was a few miles away and headed toward us. Wonderful. We decided to keep on running.

We decided to seek shelter in the city on the East Coast most removed from the real world. We went to Atlantic City.

We stayed two days in Vegas's little dirty sister city. We gambled at Caesar's Palace and the Tropicana. We indulged in free drinks and lost money on poker. We ate at a lovely locan diner. All in all a nice break from our roadtrip.

We're now in Providence, Rhode Island, another of our qualifiers for places to live. So far we're very impressed. It's a beautiful city and seems to have a lot to offer. Hopefully when I write next we'll have made a decision. But for now, the computer lab Nazi lady is telling me to get off the computer.