See The USA!

I'm about finished as I ever will be plotting out our next ginormous back roads cross country trip.  As mapping has gone from tracing and calculating mileage to Google maps, one naturally adds more to the process---that's the way computing always goes, isn't it?  My latest layer of plotting is subscribing to roadfood.com and seeing what regional eats are along our route.  We've found that in spite of all the back road glories of California, dining isn't apparent among them, so it's a treat to stop and have a local taste in the Midwest or on the Atlantic Seaboard.  Accommodations are accounted for but not fully booked---after all, April is pretty slow tourism-wise and we could be stalled somewhere because of foul weather.  Normally we travel in May or September into October, but this coming May has too many schedule conflicts---and who wants to wait until fall?

If memory serves me right, my husband and I have been on six or seven cross country trips in our fifteen year relationship/marriage.  We've been to every state but Alaska, Hawaii and Florida---and we're checking Iowa off our list on this trip.  Canada has been covered in general, but on this trip we'll search out a vein of Quebec we haven't been through before.

 

Why, yes---we did start off seeing the USA in our Chevrolet, albeit it was just a '97 Metro named Melvina.  Observers were strangely incredulous about our mode of transportation, like the man who approached us at a road block on an old US highway in Pennsylvania.  He got out of his car, walked up to my open window and exclaimed You drove all the way from California in that?! as if Melvina was a clown car from a three ring circus.  Fortunately he recovered and offered his first intention---to tell us he was late for work and to follow him on a detour around the road block.  The word was passed along to several other motorists, so he ended up with a little convoy following him.  He drove at a very familiar speed, even after the road lost its pavement and wound along the banks of a creek through a broadleaf forest.  People rushed out onto the porches of their cabins, gawking at us racing by in a cloud of dust.

These days we travel by Prius---an '04 dowager named Patsy with almost 300,000 miles on her.  Again people are growing incredulous, this time for taking such a high mileage car on such an ambitious trip.  There is a perennial discussion between us of purchasing a slightly used Chevrolet Spark a year or so from now, so once again the incredulity will shift to our car's déclassé size, not her advanced mileage.  Him, I mean---since he'll have the very unoriginal name of Sparky and be in the hue they call Lemonade.  I nixed Techno Pink after real life revealed it to be a very timid lavender gray with a relentlessly gray interior.

Road trips didn't used to be so easy, no matter the size or mileage racked up on an automobile.  At the turn of the 20th Century, road maps were merely suggestions---ambiguous lines for unmarked routes where locals could lead a motorist on to their own diversions.  I love this 1890s map of central and southern California for bicyclists.  The route from Los Angeles to the San Joaquin Valley is totally terra incognita today outside of the avid hiker and trespasser.  From the vicinity of Fillmore one was supposed to ride a bicycle up or aside of Sespe Canyon and over the mountains to Lockwood Valley---and then around Pine Mountain and down San Emidigo Canyon and onto the valley floor---but not directly to Bakersfield, but west to Asphalto, the land of There Will Be Blood.  There were once vast wetlands one had to bicycle around to get to Bakersfield.

By 1920 the proliferation of pavement and the legions of motorists traveling at some 35 MPH and often much faster demanded a uniform system of highway designation.  At first an abbreviation of the names bestowed on the highways by various promotional groups was used.  Official and regular signposts of any type were a major improvement, but the signs lacked uniformity, leading to confusion---which obviously would only get worse as more highways were routed and named.  Note that both the Pikes Peak Highway and National Park to Park Highway both used two Ps prominently, and it was likely at some point they crossed one another or even shared the same roadbed.  Their official designation was switched to a numeral in 1926, but some of these names have persisted in pop culture. Tourists may still see or read the term Redwood Highway along the Northern California coast, and the transcontinental Lincoln Highway is getting its fair share of attention this year due to its hundredth anniversary.  The Pacific Highway still runs through many towns in the Northwest.  Most of the other names soon sank into obscurity.

Unfortunately, the pavement still didn't reach most of these designations.  Of all the possibilities on our old highways/back roads trip, I think this scene is one we'll safely bypass.  Note that the motorist is a member of the National Park to Park Tour---via the National Park to Park Highway, of course.

I'm looking forward to sharing a daily travelog of our trip with you.