Today, I am thinking of travel, and with Father’s Day, the vision and travel creativity inspired by my father – though I was blessed with both my parents as inveterate travelers.
“Road trip,” my father would declare in the 1960s as he packed our Ohio family into our Ford station wagon for a trip near or far. My mom had visited AAA for the hallowed Trip Tic package for insight along the coming route.
I was raised in a family with three boys and parents who would take us on frequent expeditions from our home in Ohio to the East Coast to see points of interest like the Great Smoky Mountains or Acadia national parks, to visit battlefields like Gettysburg and Antietam while visiting relatives in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
We would seek historical sites in southern Ohio, the scenery in northern Indiana, and odd-ball attractions like the Rotary Jail in Crawfordsville, Indiana (a jail with revolving cells). My brothers and I remember my dad saying, “Boys, let’s see where this road will take us,” and off we would head down some back country road in the general direction of our ultimate destination, finding travel nuggets around many a corner.
Eight years ago, my wife and I set off on the ultimate backroads road trip, a “two-monther,” following east along the Trans Canada Highway with many local diversions. We spent eight days exploring the Maritime Provinces on innumerable back roads, then meandered down the US East Coast to Ocean City, Delaware, and followed historic US Highway 50 to find our way back to California.
My father and mother would’ve been proud!
Following US Highway 50, we made our way through the back roads of West Virginia into Ohio, where a short diversion took us to the famed Serpent Mound (a half-mile-long burial and memorial mound created by Native Americans centuries earlier) and into the agricultural county of Southern Indiana.
Just into the state, tooling along US 50, I spotted a little brown sign noting “Historic covered bridge, 3 miles,” and off we went to the small town of Medora where we discovered the historic Medora Covered Bridge, at 438 feet, the longest historic covered bridge in America. While walking the span, I pulled a van belonging to one of the board members of the nonprofit maintaining the bridge, who gave us a short tour of the structure and sold us Medora Covered Bridge T-shirts.
Further into Indiana, I stopped on the edge of a small town to video a giant International Harvester combine moving through a half-mile-square cornfield. To my surprise, the operator came right at me, stopped 10 feet away in this seemingly giant mechanical marvel, and asked, ” Want to go for a ride?”
“Of course,” said I to the operator, Farmer John Lunz. I sat beside him on this huge machine, which had two computers that noted the water content of the corn, how many bushels were harvested per minute, and other such information. He gave me a 15-minute tour.
Moments later, his son pulled up in a second colossal vehicle, whereby the International Harvester offloaded its corn kernels into the hopper of the slightly smaller vehicle.
For the balance of the day, I was in seventh heaven.
Later on the Highway 50 route, we would discover that minor diversions took us to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Great Basin National Park on the eastern edge of Nevada, and across the “Loneliest Road in America,” Highway 50 that crosses the southern edge of Nevada, offering mile after mile of lovely vistas with only occasional small towns for gasoline or rest stops.
As an adult, inspired by my parents, I have maintained that interest in back roads, often choosing that option. We travel interstate highways only when we’re in a hurry to get to a distant destination. Often, our choice is a historic highway, such as the Lincoln Highway, which winds its way all the way from New York City across the US, through San Joaquin County, and onto the Bay Area. Or, we choose historic US Route 66, connecting Chicago to Santa Monica, CA.
Or follow the venerable US Highway 50, ending in San Francisco, heading east around Lake Tahoe, becoming the “Loneliest Highway in the US” in Nevada, and connecting such gems as Great Basin National Park in Nevada (featuring towering Wheeler Peak, at 13,063 feet tall, the second tallest peak in the state, with the stunning Lehman Caves at its base), Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado and scores of interesting historical points and small towns along a 3,073 mile route to the Delaware coastal town of Ocean Shores.
Hence, explore those back roads on both local and more distant road trips (last week’s column offered suggestions en route to Mt. Diablo in CA).
Road trips can be one day in length or multiple days, or tackling some of these suggestions can be done in segments separated by weeks or months. For example, exploring the local and national historic Lincoln Highway can be navigated by a city or a county at a time, following the course of the old highway using easily accessible guides. Or, following east on historic old Highway 50 can be done a state or several states at a time. Don’t ignore those backroad diversion opportunities!
Let’s see where this road takes us.
Contact Tim, [email protected]; happy travels in the West.
Information
Lincoln Highway, lincolnhighwayassoc.org; US Highway 50, loneliestroad.us; US Route 66: nps.gov/subjects/travelroute66; for turn-by-turn insight, historic66.com; for California, route66ca.org; Arizona, azrt66.com (other states have their statewide associations).
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