Day 32 of our 39-day, 8,006-mile, 23-state ramble across the USA was April 23, the first day of our drive back to the East Coast after leaving Las Vegas. My wife’s persistent cough was bad as ever. The medicine we were given did not help. So we decided to drive a lot each day, determined […]

Church Rock is a 400-foot-tall volcanic plug just east of Kayenta, Arizona on Route 160 in the Navajo Nation. In this photo, I am facing east on April 24, 2023, looking towards Four Corners. Eight years earlier when I was here in July, it was raining as well. Judging by my own experience, it rains […]

On April 24, 2023, on Day 33 of our 39-day drive across the USA, we headed north through Utah into Colorado. We passed snow-covered Mt. Linnaeus and Abajo Peak in Utah just after a delicious breakfast at Yaks Cafe in Blanding. Later, we stopped at Back of Beyond Bookstore in Moab, only our second visit […]

I highly recommend crossing the Rocky Mountains between snow storms, not in them! A big storm was predicted for later in the day and, when we left Craig, Colorado on April 26, 2023, snow was falling all around us. We hoped to drive out of it and, sure enough, we drove east into blue sky. […]

This juxtaposition of a gun store and a school bus got me stewing. There is a mindset that says, “If I have to suffer, others have to suffer.” To me, in school shootings, a twisted sense of justice seems to be involved, perhaps a revenge against life for not living up to its promise, or […]

Nowhere was the stark difference between freeway driving and back-road driving more in evidence than in Nebraska on Day 35 of our 8,006-mile trip across the USA in the spring of 2023. Because my wife was still suffering a persistent cough, violent enough to crack a rib, we had decided to head back east quickly. […]

As my wife and I rambled around the USA last spring, we saw lots of country but only a few old friends. Linda — in Mason City, Iowa — was one of them. I had not seen Linda in 23 years, so she and I had lots to talk about. But what would my wife […]

Where will we stop tonight? As we toured the USA last spring, we often did not know where we would rest our heads until we got there. During the first week, we would book a room a day in advance using Expedia. We could do that while driving! So civilized. But we could never tell […]

On April 30, 2023, the last day of our 39-day drive around the USA, we drove from St. Clairsville, Ohio through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and then home to Delaware. Because we hate the monotonous Pennsylvania Turnpike, we took the more varied and scenic southern route which includes US 40, called the National Road or […]

The last day of our 8,006-mile drive through 23 states in 39 days took us across the gentle Appalachian Mountains in the rain, the fingers of clouds reaching almost down to the road, so different from the grandeur of the snow-capped Rockies we had crossed just five days earlier. Perhaps because we were welcome wherever […]