I love to drive.
When you’ve been driving for most of your life the car becomes a natural extension of your body and controlling it becomes effortless.
I love to drive.
But I don’t mean driving around the crowded and congested streets and expressways of Chicago. I mean driving across long expanses of highway taking me from city to city and state to state.
I love driving long distances and watching the terrain change from flat to hilly, from hilly to mountainous.
I love driving across huge bridges, crossing rivers and passing over valleys.
I love driving and daydreaming about the men that laid down these roads. The people that connected our country from coast to coast.
And it boggles my mind to think that someone said, “man, this mountain is in the way, let me just cut through it.”
While driving I fall in love with the land of this humongous country and think of how crossing through one state is the equivalent of crossing through the whole of Europe.
I’m a romantic.
I’m in love with the idea of wide open spaces and Americana.
In a country founded by immigrants from around the world there is little culture that is uniquely American.
But I think of baseball and apple pie. Of fireworks and the stars and stripes. Of road trips and wanderlust. And I crave discovering the America that is just our own.
Not the America portrayed in movies and television. But the hidden America found in small towns off the beaten path.
I want to find the “America the beautiful.” The deserts and lush forests. The farmlands and the swamps. The beaches and canyons. And bask in the country my parents decided to leave their home for.
That is my goal.
The Secret Life of Pandas 
When my ex and I were deported from Canada (long story) we drove from Vancouver to Chicago via LA, and it was one of the most amazing trips of my life. The people we met, the vast expanses of space (being from the UK this blew my mind), the way it could be scorching hot in the morning and snowing a six hour drive later – amazing.
Wow that sounds like a pretty amazing trip.
I love this. Traveling & finding those unique & unusual spots along the way along with good local restaurants sounds like such fun. Peace & sparkles
My family spent the summer of 1966 in a camper, all 8 of us, from KC to Texas and across to California, up the coast to BC, back down past the Grand Tetons and eventually back to KC… We visited people all along the way (my folks were raising support to return to Colombia) and saw many of the national parks. I have vivid memories of pieces of the trip, although I was six at the time.
Back in Colombia in the late 1960s, someone gave us a Mr. Magoo book, in which he traveled Route 66, and a Dennis the Menace book that also involved a road trip to California. It’s amazing how trivial cartoons can feed one’s imagination!
When the national speed limit was 55 in the 1970s and 1980s, I often took smaller roads on trips, because sometimes they were more direct, there wasn’t much difference in time of arrival, and the sights were far more interesting. I need to do more of that.
A lovely written piece. I could picture it all and would love one day to drive across America and fall in love with every part of the land!
Thank you. ❤ this country is gigantic and it’s hard not to fall in love with it