We just finished a seven-day roadtrip from our Lake house in Michigan to our other home here in Scottsdale. It was a utilitarian trip, facilitating the need to get from one place to another efficiently and with a dog. This time though, we spent a little more time smelling the roses along the way. Spoiler: no roses, no smells of note. But we did see a bronze statue of a big pig. Bowzer freaked.
That’s the thing about a roadtrip versus other modes of travel: you can go at your own pace, take detours, slow down or speed up. Smell things. You don’t even need to have a plan at all. If you know us, though, you know that we are planners, down to the mile and the minute. Even so, we called some audibles on this trip, extending stays (e.g., in Bentonville, Arkansas to visit Crystal Bridges and the pig) and abbreviating others (Gallup, New Mexico, yikes). Also, any chance you get to gas up at a Buc-ees, take it. You’re welcome.
2025
Here’s what I took away from our most recent trip: in a time when the country feels so divided–state against state, ideology against morality, intellect against insanity, the rich versus the poor–a 2000-mile drive along interstates and backroads offers a different take.
We moved seamlessly across the country, witnessing little or no societal disruption along the way. State lines bore little significance beyond changes in speed limits, road-surface conditions and quality of rest areas. Some states spend the money, others do not. I’m looking at you, New Mexico. Trucks were omnipresent the whole way, and we saw plenty of double-stacked trains on tracks paralleling the road; supply chains seem to be robust.
The trip had continuity. The forests of Michigan gave way to the concrete sprawl of Chicago and then rose into the hills of Missouri, the flat lands of Oklahoma and Texas, and the twisty, white-knuckle roads through the surprisingly lush, green mountains of Arizona. We passed through a few cities, separated by hundreds of miles of farms and grain elevators, truck stops and antique malls, trailer parks and shotgun shanties, and subdivisions of McMansions impossibly built onto postage-stamp lots set fast along the interstate-proper on vast prairies far away from anything.
In some of the hard-luck-looking places, where piles of junk and rusting lots of cars stood guard around crumbling houses and decrepit single-wides, there was still a sense of community. We didn’t stop to chat, but in my imagination, I want to believe the residents and their kin were contented with what they had, in an H.I. McDunnough sort of way.
We did America. The good and the bad, the kind and the asinine, the bold and the humble, the ugly and the proud. We saw refreshingly few signs for Trump and Brandon. But plenty for Jesus Christ. And casinos. And CBD. And personal injury lawyers. And fireworks. America.
A Marvel
I’ve long considered the interstate highway system as one of America’s greatest achievements. It would be impossible to launch and execute in this day and age. The thing runs nearly 50,000 miles. When you look at it in the macro, it makes sense: east-west routes are even numbers, north-south odd. It needs work in places, lots of work in some. And remember, as we were so often reminded: bridges get icy before the rest of the roadway. Also, if you kill a road worker in Michigan, you’re in for $7500. I think it’s ten grand in Indiana, so plan accordingly.
Approaching St. Louis via one of its labyrinth spaghetti bowls of intersecting highways, on-ramps and off-ramps, it’s like being in a bustling travel hub where you’re forced to commit to your destiny in the blink of an eye. Don’t blink! Do you want to go to Memphis or New Orleans or Dallas or Kansas City or Minneapolis or Indianapolis or back to Chicago or into that concrete barrier. Make up your mind! Even the GPS lady isn’t really sure about which of the myriad tentacles to take. “Um,” I think she said, and then we rolled the dice.
Also, these days there are a lot of flashing lights on every government, safety and commercial vehicle out there. Could this be the reason for the rise of epilepsy and autism?
Waxing historical, I often think back on the pioneers who migrated west early in the 19th Century. What a slog! They’d spend days and weeks traversing a valley and climbing some ridge or mountain in the hopes of a revelation, a sign, progress(!), only to find another seemingly endless tract ahead of them. Again and again and again. And again.
On this trip, Mary tired of me proclaiming “the Pacific!” every time we crested a horizon. Can’t say I blame her.
Wayback
I was roadtripping in utero. I don’t know that to be true, but it seems plausible. Mom’s roadtrip of 1969 was something, and it still stands as the most epic of all time: ten weeks, three boys, one tent and no McDonalds. Check out Marge Binder’s Epic Adventure, a series I put together back in 2019 using her diary from the day, along with vintage maps, guide books and triptiks. I still have the trove of the resources I used for this, all purchased on Ebay. I need to find a respectable way to share them with the next generation. Oh, and check this out: Dinah Shore belting out See the USA in your Chevrolet!
My Family roadtripped a lot. Every summer we’d head to Michigan from Virginia, and some Christmases we’d go south to Walt Disney World. Dad was keen to visit the battlefields and monuments of the mid-Atlantic, at first in our tent and then in an 18-foot Terry trailer. We went to the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games in that trailer.
Mom’s M.O. on long trips: pack the night before and be out of the driveway before dawn; that made time for swimming and recreation in the afternoon. She also had a system for maintaining silence: be quiet for a full hour and earn a quarter. Make a peep and the clock starts anew. We Brothers were not a supportive bunch, so noise-provoking antics in the back seat and wayback were common. Still, we usually ended up with enough coin to feed the campground’s arcade for a while.
Stupid Roadtripping
When I was of-age and with license, I navigated my own roadtrips. I actually got my first (and only, so far) speeding ticket on my first roadtrip to the Lake with a high school friend. Lesson learned (not).
On one of my first Fridays as a freshman at JMU, I was kidnapped by brothers of the fraternity I was pledging, plucked from the sidewalk as I was returning to my dorm by Don Parr and Ted Farnen. A few hours and beers later, we were at the Virginia Tech Kappa Sig house in Blacksburg. We went to a Romantics concert, because…yeah, Otis Day and the Knights were booked. We serenaded girls on the campus of Hollins College. We slept on random floors. On the trip home Sunday, we stopped at Natural Bridge, a pretty special place off the 81 south of Lexington. I missed my 8:00 AM Monday physics lab. Honestly, I simply forgot.
A lot of other roadtrips back then were utilitarian, like driving from JMU to Richmond for work on weekends. That entailed drinking until late at a fraternity rager on Friday night and then piling into someone’s hand-me-down coupe and careening across the Appalachians in the misty, twisty darkness, and then sleeping in the car until our shifts began as security guards at Kings Dominion. I wince as I write this.
The JMU kids spent spring break in Key West. Four or five fraternity brothers packed into Dan Harvey’s olive-green Delta 88 for the drive. Ten hours in, we celebrated crossing the border into Florida, dumb to the fact that the trip was barely half done.
When I lived in Orlando after college, my buddy and roommate Matt Palmer and I would make quick eight-hour trips to Key West, where his brother was F&B director at a resort. Because we wanted to arrive around dawn, we’d leave on Friday at midnight. But to get to midnight, we had to stay awake. And that meant pitchers of beer and plates of wings at CJs or JBs or Sneakers. Then a 12-pack for the road. The Florida Turnpike is flat and straight, so it’s easy to fall asleep. Or worse yet, to hallucinate onto the dark, desolate highway ahead: broken-down big rigs, swarms of alligators, clowns. But that armadillo is real!
A favorite Florida roadtrip was one I planned for a girlfriend’s birthday. We woke up in Orlando and drove the Beeline to Cocoa Beach pre-dawn. We watched the sun rise over the Atlantic, sipped champagne. And then we headed west and down I-4 to Clearwater on the Gulf of Mexico to watch the sun set. I’m a solar-celestial romantic that way.
If you want to test your compatibility with a partner, roadtrip together. There’s just enough silence, tedium and stress to bubble any foibles to the surface. Do they read every billboard aloud? Do they sing along with every song? Do they snack loudly? Is their G.I. up to the task? Do they have an odor?
Mary and I roadtripped together for the first time in 2005. It was a mix of utility and pleasure. I started out from Santa Monica and picked her up at her Folks’ place in St. Louis. We drove to Lake Michigan where she met my Folks for the first time. Then we headed back west to her place in Northern California via Des Moines, Oglala, Aspen and Reno. For the next few months, I roadtripped back and forth from Mountain View to Santa Monica every few weeks, until we finally moved in together up north.
A few years later, we roadtripped coast to coast, up to Michigan and down to Florida, with our two dogs in tow. Not as long as my Mom’s trip, and we tended towards AirBnBs and Residence Inns as opposed to a tent. Still, a grind.
Stupider
Who remembers what happened in March of 2020?
Mary and I made a good decision. And then a bad one. We had reservations for Cabo San Lucas to celebrate my birthday. The night before our flight, news of the corona virus was reaching a fever pitch and chatter about closing the borders became a thing. Friends warned of dire risks, urging us to cancel. We did. Then we tried to conjure a good alternative. Hawaii? No, they were talking quarantine. Portland? Why. Vegas? Our jobs took us there every month back then. Anyway, do we really want to get on a plane right now?
ROADTRIP! Something familiar and pleasant, down the coast to my old hometown of Santa Monica. Lovely!
The first day on Highway 1 heading south along the coast was beautiful, though the twisties at the cusp of the cliffs and views of the hungry ocean down below were panic-making. I’m not a physicist, but the catastrophic potential at the vortex of momentum, inertia, gravity, guardrail fallibility and my own dull reflexes seemed quite viable.
We took a break and basked over a nice lunch at Nepenthe, overlooking the woodsy Pacific coast (highly recommend). We decided to overnight in Santa Barbara. By the time we got there though, the weather had turned sour. We braved the rain to run across the street from our hotel to a supermarket for provisions. That’s when things got weird. We saw other people running into the store, appearingly stressed, even frantic. The place was packed, some shelves picked clean, and the lines were overwhelming. It was chaos. It was scary. It was real.
The next morning, my birthday, Friday the 13th, we continued south toward Santa Monica, undaunted. As we drove into the dark clouds over Los Angeles on the 101 (one of my least favorite highways), NPR reported a pandemic had been officially declared. Schools were closing. Disneyland and Universal were closing. The president was shucking and jiving. And we kept driving. Down the 405 to the 10 and west to Ocean Avenue.
We dined across the street from our hotel on the beach. The next day was beautiful, so we strolled and shopped along Abbott-Kinney and the Venice Promenade, Third Street and Montana Avenue. We made plans for drinks with friends and a family brunch the next day. (Name drop alert: Our drinks were planned with my friend Cheryl Hines and her husband RFK Jr., vaccine skeptic and the future secretary of Health and Human Services. I still love Cheryl!)
Somewhere along the way that Saturday, the vibe changed. Almost instantly. The buzz amplified, a whiff of paranoia and a twinge of fear. People kept their distance. By dinnertime, we made a decision: cancel everything and go home.
So we did. Drove north six hours the next morning, went inside and didn’t leave for a year. Yes, a little hyperbole.
Come June 2021, we packed up everything we owned, sold the house and left California.
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