Yeah, Jenna and I are still out there exploring and loving the US of A. In fact, you can and should check in with Jenna’s epic cross-country adventure at Round-Trip America. I was able to join her for a few days in South Dakota and we had a grand time, simply grand. She’s doing tons of cool things, writing and posting gorgeous photos. Go see for yourself.
I also recently took a trip to Oregon, where I spent some time on the Oregon coast looking for storms. Big, exciting storms. Click here for a story about that trip. And Sophia in an Oregon Storm is a short video companion to the story, in which I am delightfully buffeted by the wind and rain. I love that kind of thing.
Road tripping made this woman very happy. Photo courtesy of R.P. Piper via Flickr (Creative Commons license).
Nearly 4 million miles of roads. That’s what we’ve got here in the U.S. Those of you who have been reading Flyover America for a while (or, even, for just a post) probably realize that a number like 4 million presents a problem if you’re a Flyover America type in the midst of conjuring up a cross-country road trip. Because, of course, an FAer thinks there’s a story down every road. Well, almost every road. A few are dead ends.
As I mentioned last week, I just gave up my NYC digs. At the moment, I’m happily writing from the family not-an-estate in the highly misunderstood state of New Jersey. OK, some of the criticism is justified. (More on all of that in the coming months.) But, though I have yet to buy a car, I’ve already started dreaming up my first cross-country road trip. I’m 39. It’s about damned time I took that drive. (Sophie took her first at 19. I feel so lame. I know. It’s not a competition. But still.)
My plan: drive from Jersey to Alaska next spring and then back the other way in the late summer/early fall. That’s the dream, man. (Ooh, is there a VW Bus in my future?) But, already, route confusion is pulling me this way and that. I know I’ll skitter around a bit and take a wibbly-wobbly route to visit friends, and see this, that, the other thing, but…I’d like to start with somewhat of a plan.
So, your favorite cross-country routes? Discuss. Oh and…see you for dinner when I’m out there?
In 1977, I took my first cross-country trip with two girlfriends. I was 19 years old and, except for 10 days in London when I was 15, I’d never left the East Coast. Actually, I’d barely been out of New York City. Partway through the drive, I started writing a letter to my brother documenting the trip. I wrote 14 pages, all the way through the final leg of the drive, San Francisco to L.A. Nick saved the letter and returned it to me a few years ago. As literature, it’s unimpressive. But as a record of the awakening of a provincial city girl, it’s kinda special.
Here, a few excerpts from the road trip that made me a Flyover American.
…
We just arrived in Nebraska. This is the state I’ve been dying to hit. I never thought I’d be in Nebraska, ever. To be here is the fulfillment of an anti-dream.
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The Rockies just came into view. They’re really vague, just a purple haze, but you can already see an outline. They loom ahead. The Rockies. What am I doing here?
…
Next we drove to Utah. We went the scenic route, though. The scenery we saw was simply dreamland. We went up about 12000 feet, onto the tundra. It was all grass & little flowers & babbling brooks & serene mountain lakes. It was national park land, too, so there was no commercial anything, just heavy-duty nature. After a while we started to go down. We went through real farm land (a lot of cows) and it started to get drier and drier as we got nearer to the desert. The land was unbelievable. It was fertile, but not all over. There were cliffs & hills with red & grey & brown patterns and ranches and stuff.
…
…we stopped in a little town called Steamboat Springs for lunch. We had picked up a hitchhiker on her way there, so we ate in probably the only restaurant. It was a really pretty valley, and the people were incredible. They were all cowboys, hats, boots & all. All of them were old and they had super-personality faces.
…
Nevada is another statement in surrealism. Miles & miles of desert & nothingness, until you hit a city, which just springs up with neon flashing at you hysterically.
…
The next day we drove to L.A. That was a spectacular drive. We drove literally along the coast. I can’t even explain what it was like. I could feel the U.S stretching out, miles & miles of it, to my left. To look at where the land met the sea on the other side of the continent took my breath away. I could also see the coast stretching out before me, and I felt like we were driving along the edge of a map.
…
I now understand what patriotism is all about. I never understood the vastness & color of the country, and I’ve only seen a fraction of it. It’s so rich & beautiful & everything is different. New York is not America. I can’t wait for my next trip.
With David Lynch behind the project, it’s reasonable to expect a layer of surreal* would shroud the Interview Project. His Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks visions of life in America are hardly comforting. They may be fun to watch–especially, it should be said, for college students experimenting with various altered states–but, like a maximum security prison, I don’t want them in my backyard.
For Interview Project, Lynch’s son Austin headed out with a team of interviewers and producers on a 20,000 mile trip around America. Along the way they’ve been doing just what the project’s name implies: interviewing people. Every three days, another interview goes live on the site.
So many of the interview subjects are beautifully ordinary. Some are a little offbeat. Unlike the pieces offered up by the StoryCorps oral history project, some Interview Project videos don’t even have a strong central theme. They’re just of people talking, answering questions. There’s not always a big a-ha or ka-pow at the end. But taken as a whole, all that ordinary adds up to something quietly extraordinary.
As a total word nerd, I’m always inventing new phrases on road trips.
In the lexicon I’ve developed with my friends, “To Clark” means “to overly plan an adventure in an attempt to make sure everyone will have a great time, only to see the plans backfire, causing disastrous results.”
Clark, disappointed again.
The verb is a direct reference to Clark Griswold, he of National Lampoon’s fame, who (at least on the silver screen) consistently made good-natured attempts to provide a good time for his (otherwise indifferent) family—Ellen, Rusty and Audrey—out on the open road, and consistently came up short.
It is pejorative, but lovingly so, as in “I’m exhausted, Matty really Clarked us into the ground today,” or “Matty, don’t Clark it too hard.”
The phrase was hatched in the summer of 2000, when Bret (now an editor at Newsweek) and Dave (now a political pundit) and I went camping for a week in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.
The three of us never had been camping together, and I wanted to make the experience special. I booked us the best campsite. I planned some fun kayak adventures. I scouted good hikes.
Of course, lots went wrong.
It rained on our campsite. Our kayaks rolled in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Bret practically needed a Medevac during our hike on Mount Constitution. To add insult to injury, all three of us fell for the same ballerina (and nobody really got her).
Instead of hating me for these unexpected developments, my friends likened me to Griswold, going so far as to call me “Clark” for most of the trip. The rest, as they say, is history.
For me, the lesson was simple: especially while traveling, avoid over-planning at all costs. Build in down time. Poke around. Explore. The key to a good road trip is serendipity, that wonderful phenomenon by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate.
When you Clark it, the itinerary gets so full, the whole notion of happenstance doesn’t stand a chance.
# # #
Of course one always can Clark the home schedule, as well.
I’m guilty of this often, and I’ve done it again this summer. My intentions were good when I agreed to join the gals at Flyover America, but the birth of my first child has made time a rare commodity around these parts.
With this in mind, I’ll be taking an extended hiatus to focus on child-rearing and other stuff. It’s been a pleasure to write with Jenna and Sophia for these few months, and I’ll be back periodically for guest posts or the occasional three-fer. In the meantime, please follow my other work on my personal Web site and daddyhood blog. Thanks for reading.
Anonymity is alive and well in the heart of the U.S. hotel lobby.
With all of the human comings and goings, everyone’s the same. Even at those properties that employ security guards, there is no way for desk clerks to get a commanding sense of which visitors are guests, which visitors might be legitimate acquaintances of guests, and which aren’t guests at all.
This means hotel lobbies can be great oases on the road.
For years, I have taken advantage of this for the purpose of using the men’s room. On road trips, when fellow travelers stop to empty bladders at the gas station, I make a bee-line for the facility in the lobby next door, rejoicing in the cleanliness and privacy that my decision delivers.
In big cities, I know that whenever I have to go, relief is as near as the closest hotel.
Earlier this week, I expanded my penchant for lobby-surfing to satisfy another important task: feeding and changing my 11-week-old daughter.
The impetus for this new discovery was a 450-mile road trip from our home in Sonoma County, California, to Santa Monica. It was the first major automotive excursion with the new kid. My wife, who’s still breastfeeding, wanted clean, quiet and quasi-private places to nourish the child along the way.
Our first stop was a Holiday Inn Express in Westley, California. Next up: the lobby in the lodge at the Harris Ranch outside Coalinga. We concluded our tour de hotel lobbies at a Hilton Garden Inn near Magic Mountain in Valencia. In all three cases, the desk clerks tossed sheepish smiles to indicate they were aware of our presence, but didn’t say a word. The keys:
We moved with purpose, making it seem like we knew what we were doing and therefore belonged.
We didn’t initiate conversation, a key to avoiding confrontations of any kind.
We minimized bags, so we didn’t look like vagabonds literally coming in of the street.
Granted, if one of the clerks had spoken up, we were ready. Our official story was that we were meeting some friends who were planning to check in, but that the friends hadn’t arrived yet. As an alternative, we were prepared to play the “baby card,” and lay it on thick.
Thankfully, our adventure progressed smashingly and without incident. The baby didn’t cry once. Looking back, I’m not sure how we would have done the trip successfully without lobbies.
I’ve found a new-to-me, road-trip flick to add to my list of favorites: Duets which was released in 2000 and stars Paul Giametti, Gwyneth Paltrow (whose dad directed), Huey Lewis and a bunch of other cool people, including cameos by Angie Dickinson and Maya Rudolph.
The story takes place in the world of high-stakes karaoke (where the high stakes are pretty low) and is packed with guilty-pleasure pop—and who knew Gwyneth Paltrow and Paul Giametti could sing? (Evidently he didn’t, as he revealed in a recent interview on Fresh Air, where I learned of the movie–which can be streamed on Netflix, by the way. And you can watch the trailer here.)
Duets is fresh and fun and wonderful, but my favorite part was the American imagery, as a collection of tormented characters drive from one karaoke contest to another across the states. This is not the old fashioned road-trip imagery of movies such as Thelma & Louise—there are no dusty motels with creaking screen doors or last-chance gas stations on desolate roads. Nope, this is the America of the modern traveling salesman (the job Giametti flees): bland chain hotels (where Giametti never manages to use the 800,000 frequent flier miles he accrued on his job), fluorescent-lit convenience stores, undistinguished stretches of highway, generic bars where local karaoke stars strut. This is Albuquerque, Kansas City, Houston, and, for the denouement, Omaha, Nebraska–though you would be hard-pressed to tell the cities apart.
In Duets, America plays as big a role as the characters that people the story—and it’s the same kind of lovable loser. It’s not America the beautiful, it’s America the banal. But tons of fun nonetheless.
No greater test of friendship exists than a six-day road trip in a 32-foot RV (or, if you prefer the industry lingo, motorhome). In college, I would have named seeing my best friend start dating the love of my life/cute boy down the hall (drama, blurgh) as the end-all be-all of friendship tests but that? That’s cake in comparison to the doubts and trust issues that could potentially bubble up during an RV trip. Make that, the doubts and trust issues that do creep up as, giggling nervously all the while, you watch the mandatory (and very helpful) how-to-operate-an-RV video the rental companymakes you question your sanity through shows before they’ll hand you the keys to the rolling castle. It’s an interesting combo of this is the most fun you’ll ever have (yay!) and here are 33,000 ways you can screw up this $100,000 or so vehicle (sigh).
When, a few years ago, my friend Kathryn and I decided to take Alaska by RV storm, we didn’t think much about the vehicle piece of it. It sounded fun. It sounded like an adventure. Done deal.
My Alaska obsession had already been annoying friends for years and K also had a mild case of the fever. In conversations leading up to the trip, we talked Alaska, swapped info on the camera lenses we were each bringing, and discussed the clothing layers necessary to work with Alaska’s wait five minutes and it’ll changeweather. But the monster vehicle itself? It was little more than a side note of the pre-trip story. A that’ll be a gas punchline.
But, from day one, it became clear that the monster vehicle was there to teach us that this wasn’t just a shits and giggles kind of friendship. This was a friendship where one friend (Kathryn the Brave) would stand behind a 32-foot RV and provide hand signal navigation every last time the other friend (Jenna of the Lead Foot) backed that sucker into a space. This was a friendship where a misstep cleaning out the RV’s black water system lead to a slightly gross splashy moment but, eventually, made us both howl. (Though one of us may have started laughing immediately post splash while the other one needed an hour or two to find the humor in what had happened.) This was a friendship that could survive, nay, thrive when merging 32 feet of metal into rush hour traffic. (Even Anchorage’s rush hour seems daunting in a Winnie.) And this is a friendship that, clearly, will help us both keep moving ahead for a good long time (knock wood) and, hopefully, back along that same route* one day.
*Anchorage to Denali (240 miles) — Denali to Fairbanks (125 miles) — Fairbanks to Copper River Valley (250 miles) — Copper River Valley to Valdez (115 miles) — Valdez to Anchorage (304 miles)
Photo by Anonymous Account via Flickr (Creative Commons)
While the invention of iPods made things far easier than the days when we had to go through stack and stacks of cassettes to create the perfect on-the-road mixed tapes, there’s still an art to creating the perfect road trip playlist. It takes time, thought, a sense of humor, and a wide-ranging music collection in whatever digital format you prefer. It also needs a theme. It can be about a mood, a time of day, your love for hot dogs, or whatever. You don’t even have to announce the theme. You don’t have to name the playlist “hot dog music” but, to make it all hang together, the theme must, at least, be in your mind during the song selection process.
When Sophia suggested we each create a playlist perfect for a road trip within the 50–but just a 10-song playlist–I was all ooh, fun! until the pressure smacked me. You all turned into the the picky picky music snob staff from High Fidelity. But I forged ahead, tossing beloved tunes out of the way in order to create what could be the best mix of all time (especially when combined with Sophia’s dazzling list of goodness). OK, it’s not the best of all time. But I dig it. Mildly nervous and semi-sensitive being that I am, my temptation is to make apologies for my list or cheat and try to add things in but…I won’t. Instead, I say….have at it. Comment away.
But, when you drive out into America, tunes a-blazing, please remember: enjoy and behave. After all, you don’t want to end up singing the Folsom Prison Blues.
America (Simon & Garfunkel)
There are a few reasons it’s on the list: 1) It’s an umbrella policy that eases some of the guilt of cutting so many state-named songs off my final choices. 2) It’s a damned good song. I have yet to find somebody who dislikes it. If that person exists, I have a feeling I wouldn’t want to know him. I definitely wouldn’t want to travel with him. Would you?
Oh, Atlanta (Alison Krauss & Union Station)
There’s a line in it that sums up how I feel about so many of the places I’ve visited around America: “I hear you calling. I’m coming back to you one fine day.”
Stars Fell on Alabama (Billie Holiday. Wait, Frank Sinatra. No, it’s Billie’s version.)
It’s the story of a perfect moment of beauty and joy in somebody’s life. It’s, I think, part of what we’re all looking for when we go out on the road. Oh and Billie’s voice? Yeah, talk about heavenly.
My Clinch Mountain Home (The Carter Family)
It’s always good to remember where you came from–no matter where you’re going.
Rapid City, South Dakota (Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys)
Some people may dismiss Kinky Friedman as a bit of a novelty act. He’s not. While there are definitely some good knee-slappers (and plenty of reasons to take offense) in some of his songs, this one is just the story of a boy heading out on the road.
Bus to Baton Rouge (Lucinda Williams)
If I had to choose just one album to take on the road, it would be Lucinda Williams Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. But, if we’re talking place names, Bus to Baton Rouge from the album Essence is the way to go. It isn’t the cheeriest of songs–it’s about going back to a home that was, more often than not, a sad place to be. But it’s beautiful.
Nashville Jumps (Cecil Grant)
A great reminder that places are much more than their stereotype. Nashville may be the epicenter of country music, but that’s not all there is to it–and its past was far more varied as well.
Alaskan Nights (David Schwartz)
Never heard of it? Well, it’s obscure in an odd way. It’s from the Northern Exposure soundtrack. The show kicked off my mad love for Alaska. The piece still makes me smile. (Seriously, the whole soundtrack is good fun. Give it a shot. It’s also a great housecleaning soundtrack.)
Thick in the South (Wynton Marsalis)
This piece is one long hot sultry night (or, in this case, drive). It’s Louisiana or Alabama or wherever in August, and the car air conditioner is just barely holding on.
Jack & Neal/California Here I Come (Tom Waits)
Tom Waits is a night in a town you’ve never been to–slightly welcoming, slightly off-putting. He’s essential.
Ooh, got a little sad there at the end. This should lighten things up. Ladies and gentlemen, Simon & Garfunkel…
My husband Tom and I recently drove a loop south from Albuquerque. (Here’s an annotated map of our route, in case you want to follow in our tire tracks.) This was the first time I’ve Twittered from the road. Interestingly, the great to-Twitter-or-not-to-Twitter debate started up on World Hum while I was Twittering my trip and triggered a little metacognition about the process. Is it the right thing to do, and what makes a good travel Tweet?
Off the plane. In the car. On the hwy. Out of ABQ. Road trip!
I started composing this Tweet in my head before we were on the highway but refrained from posting it until it was true. I still like it. Its rhythm pleases me and it captures my glee and sets the scene.
Breaking into the gummi bears now.
Another important scene setter, since anyone who road trips knows how integral snacks are to the experience and we all have our favorites. (What are yours?)
The @blackstonehs is lovely. We’ll end our day with a soak.
Fail! This Tweet would have worked if I had provided a link. Without a link, it’s just a dull sentence—and incomprehensible unless you click through to @blackstonehs to figure out what it is. (Blackstone Hotsprings, a hotel.)
$30 of bliss—the Rio tub at the River Bend Hot Springs. http://tinyurl.com/dbzpmg
Not exactly lyrical but at least there’s a link. Note, too, that I posted this after our soak and did not distract myself from this trip highlight—an outdoor tub overlooking the river under a full moon. This kind of activity deserves 100-percent presence. No composing Tweets in your head, even. If you become more about the Tweeting than the traveling, then you’re doing it wrong.
My belly is happy after breakfast at the Happy Belly Deli.
Goofing around a small town. Nothing better.
Laughed ‘til we cried over vintage knitting pattern books in a TorC thrift store. Bought five of them.
Tweeting the small moments in my day was fun … it’s a moment to pause and review what gives me pleasure in 140 syllables or less. Some Tweets are stronger as a group and these three collectively describe an experience. It’s travel writing pointillism. (By the way, here’s a sample of what made us laugh.)
http://twitpic.com/326v8-The eagle has landed. NM Museum of Space, Alamogordo.
Goofy snapshots are a vacation staple. I like this one.
I have a room with a view—is it really so wrong to sit around and relax?
A couple of hours in the hotel lounge, sipping drinks and playing gin rummy. If that’s wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.
While just idle Tweets, these spurred some philosophical Twittering with @TravelWIthJulie about momentum vs. inertia during a trip. (We concluded that both in moderation are fine.) Nice to know someone was listening, too.
What time is it? Unplugged the clock radio cube when the alarm went off in the middle of the night. Turning it off was rocket science.
Are Tweets like this just Twitter clutter? That is a Twitter philosophical debate. Must all Tweets be useful? I like Tweets that just make me smile and assume anyone who travels has experienced the incomprehensible clock radio problem. I vote “yes” for this one.
So, what would I do differently? First of all, I forgot the hashtag that could have linked the trip Tweets. I remedied that on my next trip. Second, sometimes it’s best to hold a Tweet until you can do it justice with a link or pic or whatever will make it either more fun or more useful. Third, sometimes I Twitter just for me, because making up little word snapshots is fun. Judge me if you must, but I say there’s nothing wrong with that.
Hey Flyover friends!
In 1977, I took my first cross-country trip with two girlfriends. I was 19 years old and, except for 10 days in London when I was 15, I’d never left the East Coast. Actually, I’d barely been out of New York City. Partway through the drive, I started writing a letter to my brother documenting the trip. I wrote 14 pages, all the way through the final leg of the drive, San Francisco to L.A. Nick saved the letter and returned it to me a few years ago. As literature, it’s unimpressive. But as a record of the awakening of a provincial city girl, it’s kinda special.
My husband Tom and I recently drove a loop south from Albuquerque. (
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