American Road Trip*
Simon and Garfunkel sang in their melodic tribute
to the heartland titled simply, America, “So I looked at the
scenery, she read her magazine, And the moon rose over an open
field, I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why, Counting the
cars on the New Jersey turnpike, They’ve all gone to look for
America...”
Too many, America is hamburgers and French
fries eaten in the car on the way to Wal-Mart and a week in
New York is more than enough to discover all one needs to know
about American culture. The cities may make United States famous,
but America is in the heartland; in the purple mountains and
spacious skies, bar-b-q and fried chicken. America is in all
the towns marked only with a small black dot on the map indicating
a population under 10,000. That is what I intended to show my
French friend, Aurélie, during a 21 day road trip that
covered more than 12,000 km, 17 states and 2 Canadian provinces.
A road trip isn’t about getting anywhere, it’s
just about going.
Going East
Setting off from my hometown in Michigan on
a sunny Saturday morning, Aurélie and I headed east on
I-80 through Ohio in my little, green Neon. We crossed Pennsylvania
and negotiated the beautiful Allegheny Mountains. It was necessary
to stick to a strict driving schedule but we vowed to stop each
day to do one ‘cool’ thing. The Appalachian Trail runs 3000
km from Georgia to Maine with 373 km in Pennsylvania. It takes
five to seven months to hike the whole trail, but we only had
an hour.
Surrounded by the concrete mountains of New
York City, Aurélie was keen to try some real American
food so we went to a little Indian restaurant in Greenwich Village
where we were stuffed with chicken curry. We got up early the
next morning to see France‘s greatest gift to America, the Statue
of Liberty. Crowding in with thousands of tourists speaking
as many languages, we gazed across the bay at Miss Liberty and
imagined how beautiful she must have looked to the immigrants
arriving on the shores of the United States for the first time.
My own father, as a little boy, was one of those immigrants.
From there, we visited the New York Stock Exchange, the South
Street Seaport and the Empire State Building all before lunch.
After eating a hot dog in Central Park we spent the afternoon
shopping on Fifth Avenue.
Monday morning we braved traffic and made our
way through the Holland Tunnel into New Jersey. Soon the chaos
of New York faded into the green rolling hills of New Jersey.
We spent the night with relatives who live on a sprawling horse
farm in the hardly mentionable village of Pittstown where large
white letters on the side of a barn declare, “Don’t blink, you’ll
miss it.”
A road trip is the perfect time for a pilgrimage.
We stopped in Woodstock, New York to fulfill a teenage dream
of mine. Walking down the main street was like going back to
1969. The shops and galleries were filled with psychedelic art
and the bakery sold vegan muffins. Aurélie put a Bob
Dylan CD in the radio and we sung Blowin’ In the Wind all the
way to Montréal.
A few hours later and we emerged from the late
summer fog in the Catskill Mountains at the Canadian boarder.
Québec has an identity problem and no where can that
be seen more clearly than in their stop signs. While the rest
of the world, including France, recognizes a red hexagon with
the word “STOP” in bold white letters, in Québec, the
signs say “ARRÊT”. Aurélie and I both expected
to be able to speak French in Québec, but it was instantly
clear that our Parisian French was no match for the fast paced
Québecquois of our waiter at dinner. Though he understood
us, we humbly had to ask him to speak English.
On our way back to Michigan, we visited Niagara
Falls. Niagara is an interesting place. While it could easily
be one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the simple
beauty of the falls has been overrun with casinos, wedding chapels
and mini-golf. We took a quick trip behind the falls before
getting back in the car. Arriving back in Michigan 5 hours later
and still wet from Niagara we had a lot repacking to do before
departing on the next leg of our journey.
Go West Young Girls, Go
West!
With the camping gear organized and the bikes
and skis loaded onto the roof rack, we set out for I-94, the
northernmost highway in the United States and the ribbon of
road that would guide us towards the Pacific. We camped in Clearwater,
MN, about 50 km northwest of Minneapolis. Arriving well after
dark, we decided to forgo the tent and sleep under the stars
with the Minneapolis state bird, the mosquito. Sunday was an
incredibly beautiful drive across North Dakota. Kilometer after
kilometer yielded never-ending fields of sunflowers. It was
somewhere in the middle of all those sunflowers, that after
a week on the road, we decided that the little green Neon carrying
us so dutifully across the country needed a name. So with a
stop for gas and a quick check of the oil, we bought the expensive
brand and christened her Betsey.
Happily, Betsey delivered us on the doorstep
of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND. The badlands
make up some of the most interesting and unique landscape in
North America with their vast and intricate system of buttes,
tablelands and valleys surrounded by grassland. At sunset we
climbed up high onto one of the first buttes and took in the
orange sea of petrified sediment that stretched out in front
of us, the concrete mountains of a week before now only a distant
memory. We stumbled into an authentic western saloon complete
with swinging bar doors and sat down in front of the lone weathered
barman who told us “the West begins in Medora”. The next morning
Aurélie and I were anxious to see if he was right.
We sped across ‘Big Sky Country’ with the windows
down and the wind in our hair. There is no speed limit in Montana
so Betsey cruised on at 150 km/h through cattle country until
somewhere the road became noticeably steeper and the purple
cloud on the horizon became the Rocky Mountains. After too many
hours on the highway, we turned south to Three Forks. We ate
lunch at the only diner in town and for $3 each, we had steak
sandwiches, homemade coleslaw and lemonade. We were the only
people in the restaurant not wearing flannel, despite the fact
that it was August.
As we drove up through the mountains towards
the panhandle of Idaho, the air became drier. The road was lined
with raspberry bushes and mountain goats stood high up on the
cliffs keeping an eye on the few cars that passed. Tired and
dirty from two nights of camping, we got a hotel in Kellogg,
ID. Dinner was late as we settled in at the local family restaurant.
Idaho doesn’t have much of a local cuisine besides its famous
potatoes, so we went with that and ordered them mashed on the
side of a big pile of fried chicken. After showers that left
the bathroom covered in a think layer of dirt, it only took
a moment for us to fall asleep.
In one day, we descended from the Rocky Mountains,
crossed the eastern plains of Washington, continuing along the
Columbia River to Oregon. The small town of Government Camp
has a winter population of 50 and a summer population of 5000
young ski racers and snowboarders. Mt. Hood was covered in snow,
but down in Government Camp it was hot. After setting up the
tent, we rewarded ourselves with a swim in Trillium Lake.
Wednesday morning we were up at 5:00 with the
racers. We went to the Huckleberry Inn for a short stack of
huckleberry pancakes smothered in warm huckleberry syrup. Oregon
is famous for its huckleberries and the Huckleberry Inn in Government
Camp is famous for its pancakes. At 7:00, we boarded the lift
at Timberline Ski Area, which extends from 1830m to 2700m offering
year round skiing. The view was astounding and we could smell
the sulfur steam that gives Mt. Hood its name. It was a clear,
sunny day and we could see all the way to Mt. Bachelor nearly
150 km south. The lifts close at 13:00 in the summer so we went
down for lunch before getting on our bikes for an afternoon
ride in the mountains. Though the sun is barely down, at 21:00,
the kids go to bed and we joined the coaches who gather at Charlie’s
Bar.
The Columbia River Gorge, where the Columbia
River meets the Deschutes River, offers some of the most serious
windsurfing in the world. While the kids and coaches were on
the hill the next day, Aurélie and I jumped into the
river. Neither of us managed to stay on our boards very long
so we drove into downtown Portland to have dinner on the harbor.
Even though Portland is not on the ocean, because of the size
of the Columbia River, it has an active shipping and yachting
culture and restaurants serve a vast selection of fresh and
saltwater fish.
It was foggy as usual on the Oregon coast when
twelve days after we left the Atlantic, Aurélie and I
walked into the very cold and salty Pacific Ocean. Winding our
way back up Highway 35 to Mt. Hood that night, we reflected
on the fact that we had succeeded in crossing a continent that
day. We celebrated with a bottle of local, organic wine and
marshmallows by our small campfire.
The third leg of our journey was a three day
drive to Colorado via Idaho and Utah. There is no better place
in the world to sleep under the stars than the red desert of
Moab, Utah. Only one day was allotted for all the activities
in Moab so we rose from our sleeping bags early to ride the
grueling 20 km loop of petrified sandstone known as Slickrock
Trail. Temperatures were in the 30’s so after our four hour
ride, we took our lunch in the Colorado River to cool off. To
stretch our legs, we went for an easy hike to Delicate Arch
in Arches National Park. No trip to Moab is complete without
a visit to Eddie McStiff’s Brew Pub. We sat down at the bar
and ordered veggie burgers. We were so tired that Pat the bartender
put straws in our mugs of Canyon Cream Ale. The bar was filled
with mountain bikers, climbers and motorcyclists. After we ate,
we were invited to play a game of pool with a couple climbers
from California.
We followed I-70 out of Utah into the Colorado
Rockies. Though we were headed to Steamboat Springs, we decided
to detour to Aspen for lunch. We had turkey burgers and chocolate
milkshakes at Boogie’s Diner, a local hang-out with Elvis’ corvette
in the lobby. With a little time to spare, we rode the gondola
up the green face of Aspen Mountain to relax on the sundeck
and gaze at the glory of the snowcapped Maroon Bells. The atmosphere
in Aspen is relaxed and informal and more people visit Aspen
in the summer for its art and music festivals, than go there
to ski in the winter. Fall was coming early to Colorado and
as we drove over Rabbit Ears Pass to Steamboat Springs that
afternoon, some of the Aspen trees were just beginning to change.
In Steamboat we filled our time mountain biking,
hiking and fishing, but driving in Colorado is the real excitement.
It is impossible to drive more than 50 km without going over
a mountain pass. On our way to Denver, we drove over the Continental
Divide at Loveland Pass where at 3654.5m high, there is snow
even in August. Denver was still 100 km of steep highway away.
We sped past trucks on I-70 as the mountain goats disappeared
and the air became warmer again. Dinner was fresh warm tortillas
stuffed with spicy steak, a rainbow of peppers and zesty guacamole.
Nothing goes better with fajitas than margaritas, so we ordered
two, on the rocks, no salt. After three weeks, all that was
left was an overnight drive from Colorado back to Michigan.
Dusk was settling across the plains as we drove
east into the night. Aurélie and I contemplated our journey.
We had met a cowboy in North Dakota, skied in Oregon, crossed
the Mississippi twice, hiked the Appalachian trail, mountain
biked in the desert, climbed mountains in Colorado, spoken English
in Montréal, put our feet in the Pacific and seen the
Statue of Liberty. We covered the entire northern half of the
United States, read several books and magazines and littered
the car with travel brochures, camping guides and maps. We felt
at once larger than life and smaller than the little prairie
dogs hiding in the fields. There were too many cars for us to
count on the New Jersey Turnpike but we enjoyed the scenery
immensely. Zooming across Nebraska, I woke Aurélie up
to watch as a full moon rose in front of us, over an open field
and we both realized that somewhere in the middle of nowhere,
we had found America.
*This article is available
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