ROAD TRIP: Sea to Shining Sea

There is nothing like a road trip.

Getting into your car and just driving off to adventure can be, in and of itself, an exhilarating experience. It's a form of freedom with a long tradition starting with perhaps the first motorcar as it chugged it's way into the nearby mountains for a picnic, and culminating -- at least from a distance and endurance standpoint -- in the annual Dakar, an offroad rally race covering five to seven thousand miles across entire continents and through at-times hideously forbidding terrain.

Fortunately, we have well-paved roads if you stick to the main thoroughfares, but where's the fun in that? (Kidding.)

Meteor Crater

In addition to what must number in the hundreds of "regional" road trips, through New England, the Yukon, the Eastern Seaboard, up the California Coast and through the southwestern desert, among many others, I have driven or been driven end to end across the United States a grand total of six times. In cars that ran the gamut. 

The first trip, or at least the first I can remember and is generally accepted as such by the rest of the family, was in 1971 when my father and I trekked together in a 1968 Corvair Corsa from Newport Rhode Island to Seal Beach, California (a town just south of Long Beach). I was ten, just learning to properly use a camera, and at first bored by the long times in the car. It wasn't until a day or two into the trip that I realized the terrain was changing and that this, indeed, was something above and beyond a long time locked in a car.

Departing, O'Dark Thirty

At the behest of my grandfather, my dad and I kept a daily journal of the adventure, which eventually was paired in an album with photographs from our trip. My pictures could easily be identified by the shaky blur of ten year old fingertips on the shutter, an error my father noticed and corrected, but not until a number of "shaky Jake" photos were committed to film. I learned a lot on that trip, far more than a simply flyover would have permitted. Holding the camera steady and slowly pressing the trigger, for instance. Another was that you don't order hamburger steak rare, no matter that the word steak appears in its name. I learned about the petrification of wood at the Petrified Forest, and stood in wonder at the edge of Meteor Crater -- and even moreso on the rim of the Grand Canyon itself. I toured the interior of Hoover Dam, a marvel for a ten year old heavily into this sort of thing. And further down the road Interstate 40 was, at this point, still incomplete, requiring a side trip which first allowed me a glimpse -- in the distance -- of Las Vegas. We didn't stop, of course, but rocketed through and kept heading for the coast. By journey's end my mind had been expanded, and in all likelihood the event that began my love of the road trip.

My first drive solo across the country was in a 1976 Triumph TR7. Not the most reliable of cars in the best of times, it expressed some consternation at being lead through the paces, finally breaking down in Union, Alabama, which boasted a business day population of maybe ten people, including tourists. A gas station and a diner were the only visible buildings, and being a young and naive kid I managed to get myself squarely between two feuding service companies -- ending in my being thrown off the property by the station owner until he was calmed by a long distance call from my father. I should have been more aware of my surroundings and suspicious when the first mechanic eyed my car and its California plates, keenly observing that my Triumph was "one a them Japanese cars, ain't it?" 

Eight hours in Alabama's blazing August sun pretty much ended any desire to return to that state -- apologies to the Alabama Tourist Bureau, but trauma is trauma by any other name and is something that shouldn't be trifled. (Oddly enough the car experienced essentially the exact same problem three days later in New Mexico. Having gone through all of my cash to get my car out of Union, I was near panic as I pulled into a gas station off the highway. Three minutes after popping the hood, the mechanic reached down and shoved a loose plug into place. The engine immediately roared back and he sent me back on the road at no charge. "Sometimes those connectors come loose in these kind of cars". And yes, I know I was probably taken advantage of by the locals who spied a stupid kid in a foreign car with west coast plates. They saw me coming. Caveat Emptor.)

The Painted Desert

Santa Fe

The next time I crossed the country, and the last time as of this writing, was in the company of my wife, who had never seen much of the interior. We made an outing of it, having gone back to purchase my father's Acura Legend in the DC area and needing to get it back to Long Beach. So, in many ways we duplicated the drive I took with my father so many years previous to this one, and took the time out to go spelunking in Virginia's Skyline Caverns just outside Front Royal, then driving a long stretch of the similarly titled Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park. Rather than race across country, we took our time. It was wonderful to just be together for the week, but also to take time to visit things from the sublime (a return, for me, to the Grand Canyon) to the ridiculous (yes, we've been to Graceland). During the drive we encountered a fierce Arkansan downpour, a wide blue sky through Oklahoma, and the blazing sun through the Petrified Forest. By this time I had discovered the camera, and while digital was still many years in the future, managed to pop out a few pretty decent 35mm shots from my old Pentax. At that point I was largely self-taught, and hadn't yet become proficient in post-work. But in spite of the odds, think I did pretty well representing the best of our trip.

The beauty of having crossed this nation so many times is that you become aware of just how spectacular our scenery is. There's a majestic beauty to the Great Plains, for example. It's an amazing landscape which many might find boring, but in truth is a profound demonstration of just how big this land is. Similarly, the grandeur of the canyons and mountains, the cultures encountered along the way -- everything from back country southern hospitality with restaurants like the Bean Pot in Crossville, Tennessee (or the other end of the spectrum, rednecked auto mechanics in Union) -- to native American Sky Cities; the arts scene in Santa Fe; from the gaudy leather in Graceland to the striking beauty of Sedona's red rocks. Only from the road can you see America at her most authentic best -- even if that authenticity is completely contrived. And only by taking the granddaddy of all road trips -- across this land from sea to shining sea -- can you discover the country far too many of us take for granted. 

A friend of ours from Britain made the trek with my mother and younger sister two decades ago, having visited them in Annapolis, Maryland and a week later now stood at our doorstep in Long Beach. As we walked the last quarter mile down to the Pacific Ocean, I asked what her impression was. 

She thought for a moment, leaned up against the railing overlooking Queensway Bay, and announced: "Big Country."

The Open Road