Sporadic Blogging: Road Tripping and the Soul of America

Setting: in a Honda Civic, along a non-descript stretch of I-80 in Iowa.

Ray: Whoa, Joe I think that sign said “Herbert Hoover Presidential Library."
Joe: Really? That can’t be the official one. Not all the way out here in the middle of Iowa.
Ray: Yeah, no way…. Wait, there’s an official Herbert Hoover Presidential Library?!?!
Joe: Yeah, all the Presidents have them.
Ray: All????!?!? But it’s Herbert Hoover! He led to country to the GREAT Depression. Unemployment was nearly 25%! It took a World War to get us out of it! [editor’s note: history’s greatest monster is actually Jimmy Carter]
Joe: Well, I’m sure they ignore that part and just focus on the stuff before the Great Depression.
Ray: That’s ridiculous! That’s like Germany having an Adolf Hitler museum! [editor’s note: ok, perhaps this was a slight exaggeration.]
Joe: I wouldn’t go that far. But look it up.

(Ray checks mobile internet)

Ray: Yup, it’s the official one. Right off I-80. We should totally drop by
Joe: I’m up for that. We could use the break.
Ray: Yeah, when else are we going to get a chance to see the Presidential Museum of history’s greatest monster.

(after a pause)

Ray: Do you think they intentionally built I-80 to go through the museum?

So that’s pretty much how we ended up doing a drive-by tour of the Herbert Hoover President Museum in Iowa. The random stops in the middle of wherever and the freedom of the open road are what makes road trips so great for me. And as literature suggests, road trips are the way to find the soul of America:. I’m pretty sure that’s what On the Road by Jack Kerouac was about (note: I’ve never read anything by Kerouac), and American Gods by Neil Gaiman (I have read this book, and road tripping is very integral to the plot. Or at very least, tangentially relevant).

On this particular trip, I was making my way from Boston to San Francisco to start my next 12 months in Cali, and this seemed a great excuse for the ultimate road trip. After all, did you know that I-80 is the second longest highway in the USA behind only I-90? I’ve always imagined trekking across the country with no set schedule and no set itinerary and just going wherever the feeling strikes. This, however, was not that. I had four days to get from the Back Bay to the Pacific Ocean, which meant 12 to 15 hours of driving per day, and with the trunk and back seats completely full, no picking up hitchhikers either. (Luckily, Joe agreed to accompany me so I wouldn't be making the trip by myself and having to confront existential dilemmas after 55 hours alone in the car.)

Unlike international trips abroad where you can talk about exotic foods, different cultures, and famous attractions, there isn’t much of note on a cross country trek where you stick to the Interstate. Food consists of McDonald’s (very little other options on some stretches, unless you consider Burger King exotic), culture is American (inane sports banter is the same no matter what state you’re in), and famous attractions aren’t quite so famous (see aforementioned museum). That being said, this country is vast, and very scenic. Green mountains in the east, give way to the cornfields of the great plains, to the exotic landscape of the Rockies, to the desert of the Great Basin, and then back to the coast of California. You better understand the dream of California to the pioneers: If you had to trek across the Great Basin by foot - a desert, incidentally, where the largest body of water is filled with salt, which must have seemed like the ultimate troll to wanderers at the time – California really was the promised land. (Incidentally, California by Phantom Planet perfect captures this feeling).

The Trip Itinerary
-Day 1: Boston to Indianapolis: ~950 miles.
-Day 2: Indianapolis to Grand Island, Nebraska: ~725 miles
-Day 3: Grand Island to Salt Lake City, UT: ~800 miles
-Day 4: Salt Lake to San Francisco: ~725 miles
Total: ~3200 miles give or take

Notable highlights along the way:
-The Vietnamese Restaurant in Grand Island, where upon walking in, they immediately knew that we were tourists. Joe claims this is the best Vietnamese food he's ever had.
-In the middle of Iowa, T-mobile goes on roaming, as if I was in Canada or something.
-Morton’s salt is apparently taken directly from The Great Salt Lake
-On our way through Wyoming, we stopped by a gas station / McDonald’s for food. And we recognized it as the same McDonald’s we had stopped by on our Boston to Las Vegas road trip 3 years prior. What this says about us I don’t want to know.

Yes, these really were all the highlights. Which is a long way of saying that the Herbert Hoover museum was the most notable, and quite possibly represents the soul of America.