Road Trip Epilogue

It’s good to be home. When I got back to the shack everything was as I’d left it Thanksgiving night. It smelled like cigar smoke and from the empty bottles by the stove it was evident the family and I had seriously depleted my stash of hard liquor. I started a fire in the stove, lit a stick of incense, and began to tidy up. Eventually I started writing. As you can see I’m writing now. The shack is warming up.

I travelled alone 1,327 miles in the Buick from Ottawa, Illinois to Oldsmar, Florida. Just My Location, my handy free app, put my destination in Oldsmar at

Latitude 28.03
Longitude 82.55
Elevation 36 feet

I had travelled 28 degrees and 3 minutes south and 6 degrees 18 minutes east of the shack. Going east, towards Greenwich England which is zero, matters little weather wise but getting closer to the equator was major. The sun was hotter, the days were longer, and it was warmer. Plants were green, people wore less clothes, there were more birds about. It was nice.

My solo road trip became a vacation with people. My wife flew down and joined me in Oldsmar at her brother and sister in law’s condo tucked safely inside a gate. We hung out on the lanai (which is what they call screened in porches in tropical places), watched birds fish the pond in the backyard, make a trip to St. Pete and the Salvador Dali museum, and caught up on each other’s lives. It was there we began to each and drink much too well, better than anyone deserves really, something that would continue during our entire stay in Florida. I broke out my loud Hawaiian shirts and shorts.

After a few days we travelled farther south to Sarasota and stayed with Colleen’s sister and her husband. That was downtown city high rise living. We went to the farmer’s market, drove to Cortez and ate on the fish docks, sat on our hosts’ deck overlooking the city and the bay. At night we had drinks out there and smoked cigars. Every day the sun shined. We wore no coats.
We were joined by friends and drove the Buick down to Fort Myers Beach

Latitude 34.18 N.
Longitude 81.93 E.
Elevation 19 feet

We stayed there in a cottage for a week and relaxed in an even bigger way: golfed, went to the beach, saw movies, ate in restaurants, sang songs, and explored. Somehow you feel closer to the ocean there and lower down. You start to get the feeling that a big wave could send you tumbling even when you’re standing in the front yard.

One day we went over the bridge to Sanibel Island. The elevation on Sanibel is 9 feet. If I owned a beach house on Sanibel I would pay close attention to global warming and the ocean’s rise over the next twenty years. Anyway, on Sanibel we visited a place called the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. An old friend we visited put us on to that place or we wouldn’t have known anything about it. He said we could drive our car through for $5. When we got there we decided to take a trolley ride with a naturalist. We’re glad we did.

Much of Ding Darling is a mangrove swamp that changes constantly with the tide. It contains both fresh and salt water, and water that is both. We learned a lot from our guide about this complicated and wonderful place filled with birds, fish, and alligators. The birds, some of whom live by us in Illinois but wisely spend their winters in Florida, pretty much take over the state at some point. They certainly don’t fear us. We saw roseate spoonbills, egrets, ospreys, pelicans, storks, you name it. My favorite birds are the little sandpipers. They do this thing where they stand on one leg at the ocean’s edge. I think of it as a sort of yoga pose in a beautiful place. The sandpipers have it pretty good.

Next time I want to complete the trip by going all the way down to Key West and the very end of Florida and America. Who knows? Maybe by then we can catch a ferry to Havana and smoke the really good cigars. The future is full of possibilities.

Colleen and I saw our friends off back at the Sarasota airport, spent another night at Carol and Jim’s, and after breakfast began the drive home, this time on the Interstate Highway. Unlike the road trip we stayed primarily on three roads: 75, 24 and 57. That brought us to 74 in Champaign, and the 39 in Bloomington. In LaSalle we hit Route 80, and as you know we live about a three wood away from Route 80. Maybe a driver now as I get older. We drove from Sarasota to Cartersville, Georgia.

Latitude 31.18
Longitude 84.80
Elevation 759 feet

There we stayed in a Best Western, ordered a pizza and crashed. The next day we drove all the way home. It was a radically different trip than the solo road trip.

So my Dad, who has been a major character in this tale, said this about modes of travel. He was born before the automobile was popular and both farmed and travelled using horses. Here’s what he saw as the difference between travelling by horse and travelling by car.

“When you’re riding a horse, or behind one in a wagon, you go past the big oak in the neighbor’s pasture, through muddy spot at the bottom of the hill, past the Smith farm, up the hill, past Miller’s corn crib, over the creek bridge, and into town. When you’re in a car, you just drive to Danvers. The faster you go the less you see.”

Now that we’re always driving, we’ve added another level. When you drive on a two lane road you go from Dellwood, to Two Egg, to Grand Ridge, then Selman, Blountstown, Bristol, and Hosford. When you’re on the Interstate you just go to Tallahassee. When you’re on the Interstate you go from one big metropolitan area to another, from Atlanta to Nashville. The towns in between become unimportant.

You only see the names of towns that have exits off the Interstate and even if you take the exit you rarely if ever get into the actual town. You just pull into the businesses along the interstate. And the businesses along the interstate have become amazingly the same.

The stuff you can put on your Subway sandwich, the spinach, banana peppers, pickled jalapenos, shredded lettuce, pale tomatoes, sliced black olives-look and taste the same no matter which Subway restaurant you are in. In fact, the restaurant itself is often indistinguishable from the one you just left 500 miles earlier; the booths, the counter, the cash register, the parking lot. It’s the same over and over and over.

The gas stations are increasingly chain operations. The pumps, the rest rooms, even the racks of candy bars seem identical. Occasionally there are local crafts or products but for the most part you could be in Kentucky or Connecticut and not notice any difference. On planes we fly over America’s small town entirely. On the Interstate we drive past them.
Americans, maybe everyone on the planet, are more and more separated from one another. I think maybe we’re scared of each other. We must like travel the way it is, kept apart, isolated, each in our car interrupted only by stops at gas stations and a handful of franchised restaurants. It’s safe, and comfortable, and very unremarkable.

I used to hitchhike extensively, both in this country and others. In one day I would meet, sit next to, converse with, and get to know from five to ten new and different people. I though on this trip I would encounter hitchhikers. When I did I planned to pick them up, as people used to pick up me, returning the favor as it were. It would be like meeting myself 40 years later.

It didn’t happen. I saw no hitchhikers. Zero. There was a kid with a backpack sitting outside a gas station by Interstate 75 in Georgia, but it wasn’t clear if he was waiting on someone or hoping someone would offer him a ride. He had no sign. He looked neither composed nor happy. He certainly didn’t have his thumb out. That was the closest I came to seeing someone trying to find a free ride in one of the nearly empty cars crisscrossing the country. 2700 miles and not one hitchhiker. What happened? I don’t know. I really don’t. I can only guess its fear. Fear of violence I suppose. Fear of each other.

I encountered no violence on my trip. Not only was their no violence, there was little if any anger or confrontation. In fact, throughout my trip there was a fair measure of welcome, friendliness, and acceptance. Imagine that. I don’t think we do imagine that. I think we perceive America as something entirely different than what it truly is. And I don’t think we’re right in our perception.

The road tip gave me the kind of freedom that comes from solitude, interrupted by positive interactions with kind strangers, knowing I would soon return to settled life surrounded by people. My road trip was but a brief departure from that life. But it gave me an answer to Robert Zimmerman, the Minnesota kid who grew up to be Bob Dylan, to the question he posed in 1965 on his album Highway 61 Revisited:

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

It feels good Bob. Very good. Still.