I’ve driven across the country about 40 times, and for all but the first two times, I kept trip journals. Who I met, what national parks I visited, storms I witnessed, where my car broke down, where I found fossils.
I am now in the process of typing up these journals. It won’t be anything like Jack Kerouac’s adventures. Not as much dope or drinking or carousing, although one time our daughter and I did stop in Kansas to photograph an abandoned farmhouse on Route 36 and found ourselves in a low spot covered with shoulder high marijuana plants, which I learned is called “ditch weed.”
The journals won’t be published, and I’m not sure anyone will read the whole collection. Maybe our grandson, who was along on at least four of them, will enjoy them. I will say that after traveling back and fourth, I came to appreciate this country. What a wonderful place. What great people. I know we have some awful jerks in the U.S., but almost every encounter I had along the way was enjoyable. Even in Texas.
👍I, too, have traveled across the country many times, but always by air, always time constrained. I'd liked to have seen more of the country between the Appalachian and the Rockies!
ReplyDeletePeople always tell me it is boring and "flat." It is neither. I love eastern Colorado, which is the part everyone else hates. And I can tell you almost every town on 36 along the top of Kansas. My daughter once sent me two photos from that part of Kansas with a quote from me: "I got to get me a job where all I do is drive back and forth across Kansas." The photos are framed and on the wall above my computer.
ReplyDelete