IN CONCLUSION
THE REALITY OF BACKROAD, AMERICA

Reality almost never lives up to anticipation.  Especially when you’ve been anticipating something for several years.  I had anticipated this road trip, on some level, ever since the first time I saw Thelma & Louise.  I had anticipated the specific things I would see and experience from the first time I drove through the Mojave Desert after moving to Los Angeles.  “That America is out there,” I told myself, and for about five years I anticipated a trip that would take me through all those places where commerce and industry hadn’t staked their claims and dug their holes, where outlaws ducked beneath the radar of the law and, of course where old men sat on porches, lone sentinels in dusty forgotten towns.  I anticipated seeing the very essence of Backroad, America, something I had thus far only experienced via Hollywood’s version of reality. 

As the time for this trip drew closer I also anticipated, quite simply, a really great vacation with my wife.  I anticipated the two of us going places the average traveler never considers.  I anticipated getting lost and enjoying it.  I anticipated conversations with strangers.  I anticipated great meals in little dives with secret family recipes.  I anticipated roadside attractions that would make us giggle and say, “They’ll never believe this back home.”  I anticipated full-blown transcendence in middle-of-nowhere landscapes where we were the only humans around for miles.  I anticipated “forgetting the interstate”, throwing caution to the wind and having ourselves the journey of a lifetime.  I anticipated bringing back a trove of stories (with the pictures to prove it) that would wow and amaze anyone whose idea of “vacation” never went beyond an air-conditioned hotel close to a beach, bar or amusement park.  Furthermore, I anticipated a deeper connection with my wife, forged in the kind of common experiences, emotions and adventures a trip like this brings about.

I anticipated a lot to say the least.  And somehow, not a single reality fell short of those anticipations.  Everything I’d hoped to see, we saw.  Everything I’d hoped to do, we did.  Everything I’d hoped to experience, we experienced.  And then some… often in ways I never even anticipated.  At the back of my mind though, there was something else I had been anticipating.  Something I was afraid to say out loud.  Something that had the potential to trump all those other anticipations. 

Almost every piece of travel writing with even a modicum of nostalgia for the legacy of the Great American Road Trip (including those written by yours truly) spends a considerable amount of time lamenting the fact that Smalltown, America is disappearing.  With super-convenient divided highways zipping people to and from super-convenient big box stores selling the same super-convenient, mass produced, brand name products, the whole notion of a town center with its main street, city square and locally-owned businesses is becoming a novelty of the past.  With real estate the hot commodity of the day, the idea of expecting pristine undeveloped land anywhere in the country is almost laughable naïveté.  To believe the literature, modern people don’t care about towns and scenery.  They want convenience and high concept destinations.  I think in the back of my head, I really anticipated the whole romantic notion of Backroad, America as being nothing but a fantasy, a memory of the past.  It wasn’t too hard to believe that, living as we were in the middle of urban sprawl from four major cities where anywhere in a three hour driving radius looks exactly the same as everywhere else – no delineations between towns, Walgreen’s at every major intersection, Best Buys and Lowe’s strategically placed every fifteen miles, Ruby Tuesday’s and Applebee’s the only reliable places to get food, and every empty patch of land merely in a holding pattern until some contractor comes in and builds multi-phase condos and housing developments.  I really anticipated that generic look of “convenience for convenience sake” to have infected every part of this country.

And yet it hadn’t.  There were plenty of places left that were still immune.  Boone, Bluff City, Sneedville, Cawker City, Pitkin, Pahreah, Ely, Hamilton, Leggett, Orick, Gold Beach, Astoria, Libby, Deadwood, Wall… to name but a few.  Small towns.  Blue-collar towns.  Ghost towns.  Back road towns.  They all existed.  Even the few cities we took the time to explore had their own share of unique history and personality that had yet to be tainted.  True, the necessary evils of modern society are ever creeping in, and the profusion of places like these has most certainly shrunk compared to the days when Route 66 was the most viable route across the land.  But Smalltown, America… Backroad, America has not been killed outright.  It’s still there.  Lauren and I had seen it.  We’d driven through it.  We’d eaten there.  We’d slept there.  We’d talked to its residents.  We’d taken pictures in front of its roadside attractions.  We’d stood alone and prayed in the middle of it.  We’d nearly driven off several of its cliffs!  Yes, it is most definitely still there.  And it’s amazingly not that hard to find.  It just requires getting off the interstate once in awhile. 

How long will it last?  Who can say?  The point is, right now it is out there.  It lived up to every anticipation.  And because it did, Lauren and I were able to live up to our own anticipations as well.  After a bit of faltering and uncertainty in those first couple of days, we were finally able to just let go and let the road dictate our course.  We were able to be free wheeling and spontaneous, liberal with our time and direction, unencumbered by schedules or destinations.  We could change route at a moment’s notice, stop at unintended attractions if they looked fun, veer fifty miles off course for a restaurant that sounded particularly good.  We could spend an extra hour or two at a place that spoke to our soul or nourished some childlike instinct.  And when something we wanted to see turned out to be closed when we got there, we could say, “Oh well,” and move on, confident that there would always be something more just down the road.  In short, because Backroad, America still exists in a very real form, we were able to approach this road trip the way it was meant to be approached: as a continuous journey rather than a series of destinations.    

And we did it together.  We were with each other twenty-four hours a day for twenty-seven days straight – most of that time spent inside the cramped space of a Mazda Protégé.  “How are you two not going to kill each other?” was a question family and friends asked frequently, and one we wondered about ourselves – especially after it became common knowledge that Lauren would be eight months pregnant by the end of the trip.  How long would it be before discomfort, close quarters and the monotony of driving caused us to say, “Screw it!” and come home early?  And how far from home would we be when the point of explosion occurred?

But the explosion never came.  To be perfectly honest, we only fought and got on each other’s nerves as much as we would have on any normal day at home – which is to say, no more than any other happily married couple.  And when you consider the fact that we were around each other constantly for almost an entire month, that means we actually fought less per minute of face time.  The little road weary spats we had were never bad enough to put us in danger of turning the car around.  We’d flare up about something stupid, be mad and give the silent treatment for about twenty minutes, then just move on with our day.  Despite Lauren’s pregnancy and accompanying need to pee at the most inopportune times, despite those long exhausting days in a car bookended by fitful nights on uncomfortable beds, despite the plans that were sometimes messed up by circumstances beyond our control, despite even a few near brushes with death, we remained not just civil and polite to one another, but sublimely happy, accommodating and one hundred percent in love.   

As our eventual route brought as closer and closer back to New Jersey, we were of course sad that the road trip itself had to end, but we actually found ourselves even sadder about the mere prospect that we wouldn’t be spending as much time together anymore.  After so long in each other’s constant presence, it was actually a little distressing to imagine being apart for ten hours every day after I returned to work.  I know it sounds silly, but the fact that we weren’t even a little sick of each other by the end of this trip gives me such hope for our future together.  And that’s a future that will most certainly include more road trips. 

Even while we were still on the road, Lauren and I were already discussing where we would go on “the next one.”  This trip, for all intents and purposes, encompassed the entire country.  We decided our next road trip (or two, or six) would be more focused, zeroing in on those places we’d either had to zip through too quickly (a tour of the Pacific Northwest for example), or the places we ended up not having the time for at all (like every lighthouse around the Great Lakes).  Neither of us are sure when we’ll actually have the opportunity to do that.  Just a month after returning home, the little girl who had tagged along inside Lauren’s belly was born and our lives as parents officially began. 

The realist in me tends to think road trips are about the least kid-friendly vacations imaginable.  Kids in general tend to enjoy and appreciate the destination much more than the journey.  How does a parent answer the question, “Are we there yet?” when there is technically no “there” in mind?  And sure, I know in these days of modern technology, there are iPod’s, portable Playstations, and car mounted DVD players to keep kids plugged in, entertained and, above all, quiet.  But then what’s the point of even going on road trip if you’re just going to disconnect from everything around you the entire time?  No, the realist in me doesn’t see Lauren and I taking this kind of trip again until well after the kids are out of the house.

But then there’s the pragmatist (some would say idealist) in me that thinks, “Well, who says it has to be that way with our kids?”  After all, we figured out ways for a pregnant woman to enjoy a road trip, didn’t we?  Couldn’t we make it work for kids too?  Couldn’t our kids be entertained by discovering the weird and eccentric treasures hidden around this country rather than letting some computer-generated cartoon character entertain them?  Couldn’t they get as much a kick out of posing for pictures in front of lighthouses and large balls of whatever as they could in front of a large man in a mouse costume?  Couldn’t they be wowed and amazed from exploring isolated geological wonders rather than riding a thirty-second roller coaster they had to stand in line an hour for?  Couldn’t they get just as excited hunting for ghost towns or locations from their favorite movies as they could hunting for that perfect pair of jeans at the mall?  If we did it right… if we employed all the same philosophies and techniques we learned on this trip – frequent pee breaks and chances to run around and explore; a healthy supply of wholesome non-electronic in-car entertainment; a good mix of in-your-face attractions and ones that require a bit adventure and exertion; perhaps even encourage them to write their thoughts down in a journal so they can reflect on all the things they’ve seen and experienced – if we did all that… couldn’t we keep on road tripping with our kids?  

I don’t know.  It certainly is an intriguing proposition.  The idea of putting off our next road trip until some intangible “someday” (which, according to that old Creedence song, is a day that “never comes”) is just too disillusioning to even consider.  Especially because I don’t anticipate all those great back road elements we discovered on this trip to still be there a generation from now.  I could be wrong.  I hope to God I’m wrong.  But it’s all the more reason to get our kids on the road earlier rather than later, so they can see an America that isn’t dominated by interstates, strip malls and timeshares.  Perhaps if we actually took the time and courage to do this – and I know this is idealism bordering on foolishness – it will make enough of an impression on our children’s young minds that by the time they grow up, the bulldozing and brand smearing of this country will finally start to reverse itself. 

But that’s enough hand-holding, flowers-in-the-hair conjecture and optimism. 

I’ve had nearly three years to think about an adequate conclusion to this whole memoir and travelogue and I still don’t know how to sum it all up.  It was amazing, awesome, the experience of a lifetime, and an adventure in every sense of the word.  But if you’ve been paying attention thus far, you already knew that.  The only way I can think to end it is with a plea to you, Dear Reader.  As a man in New Orleans once told me, “Forget the interstate.”  Forget destinations.  Even if you only start with the small roads around your own state, just get in the car and drive.  You live in such a unique place in the world where this type of adventure is not only possible, but perfectly suited to the landscape.  Europe has its backpacking.  Africa has the safari.  Australia has the walkabout.  America has the Road Trip.

Let Lauren and my experiences on the road be a lesson and even an inspiration.  Neither of us are seasoned travelers.  We didn’t have a working knowledge of the layout and geography of the places we drove through.  We weren’t driving the roomiest most comfortable SUV on the market.  We were operating on a very tight budget, which only allowed for economy motels and an overabundance of oatmeal.  Oh, and have I mentioned yet that Lauren was PREGNANT?  If we can pull it off, anyone can.  Backroad, America is out there.  Get in the car and go find it.  I guarantee, the reality of what you discover will live up to every anticipation.

Thanks for reading.