6 Takeaways From a 6-Week American Road Trip
...from someone with a lot of time on the road to think.
This summer, we completed a loop around the Western and Southern United States. Ostensibly, this was to take care of some unfortunate family business in Los Angeles and Southeast Texas. But given that Liuan and I both work remotely, we decided to shun the airports and turn it into a six-week, four-wheeled adventure.
First, Stats
Mileage: 6,820 miles (10,975 km)
Gas Stops: 31
Weeks: 6
States: 16
Hottest Temperature: 116°F (47°C) (sadly, not even rare on our trip)
Where we stayed: Camping 2 nights; Hotels: 3; Airbnb: 13; Family: 26
Things we saw: Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Butch Cassidy’s Childhood Home, Big Bear Lake, Meteor Crater National Landmark, Petrified Forest National Park, Smokey Mountains, and a million farms.
And now for the takeaways…
1. The U.S. seemed smaller afterwards.
Sounds counterintuitive, right? But upon arriving in Long Beach, California, what once seemed a vast and impossible distance to traverse by land proved finite. Flying, on the other hand, feeds the impression that what lies between is endless. That said, turning up in Long Beach in our car felt strange, like we had broken some law of physics and teleported.
Also counterintuitive: the fact that we went slow probably heightened the impression that the distance was short. The entire trip to L.A., including stops, took a week and a half. A few days in Denver, a couple at the Grand Canyon, and almost a week in Big Bear Lake. When compared to the number of driving days (three plus a little bit at the end), it didn’t seem that big a deal.
2. The Midwest is BORING! (or is it?)
I have to admit, the first dawn-to-dusk drive through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska was a yawner. It was one flat cornfield after another, uglified by an endless sequence of advertisements. So boring was the drive along I-80 that The Largest Truckstop in the World—basically an indoor mall with a lot of truck-sized parking spots—was a must visit.
But then I got to thinking about tradeoffs, because what else was there to do but ponder. I thought about our trip through South America and recalled the newly built roads (as well as the ones they hadn’t gotten around to modernizing) snaking up, down and through mountains in Ecuador, Brazil, and Colombia. They were true engineering marvels. The road I was driving, by contrast, had to be the cheapest and easiest road ever built. I know the reasons for differences in countries’ wealth is probably more complicated than this, but the ease with which crops and goods can be transported over vast distances must play some factor.
Then I began to think about why it is that the Midwest is so freakishly flat. As most of us know, this was caused by the icy continent-sized bull-dozers known as glaciers. But did you know that in some places the depth of that ice was up to two miles (3km)? That’s about twice the depth of the Grand Canyon! It was also twice the height of the pillowy cumulous clouds that drifted overhead, providing us motorists the occasional relief from the sun’s glare.
Finally, if you ever get stuck making the mind-numbing drive across the U.S.’s central states, listen to this podcast about efforts to rewild the “American Serengeti,” so-named because of its once incredibly diverse fauna.
3. West of Denver, not boring at all.
The biggest change in landscape between Chicago and Denver was the color. It changed from green to yellow around the Western edge of Nebraska. Twelve hours of driving just for a change of hue.
Heading west out of Denver is where the real fun began. We drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in one day, mostly along I-70. The road took us through mountains, desert, canyons, and vibrantly colored rock formations that I don’t even know the names for.
The landscape morphed and reconfigured itself like a kaleidoscope. After living in the Midwest all my life, it was hard to fathom that the colors and shapes of landscapes could change so completely in the span of 20 minutes of driving.
If you ever get a chance to take that route, I recommend stopping anytime you see signs for a lookout point. They were always worth it, and always revealed something new.
4. Uncanny similarities to South America.
This trip made me realize that North and South America are in many ways mirror images of each other. It was not a rare occurrence on this trip to be struck by a memory of an identical landscape in the southern hemisphere. Geological factors and similar latitudes give rise to similar climates, land features, and vegetation.
So Western Nebraska reminded us of the Pampas in northern Argentina—even down to the color of the cows. The red, white, and sea green hills, with layers that looked piles of towels, reminded us of the Jujuy region in northwestern Argentina.
There was a whole region of Brazil between Curitiba and Iguazu Falls that looked like the middle of Illinois. Furthermore, California and Chile exhibit a similar phenomenon where mountains wall off the ocean’s humidity to the west and cause a desert to the east. Those were just a few of many times we said, “Oh! that reminds me of…”
5. Don’t fall into the Grand Canyon.
Toward the end of our 11-hour drive from Denver to the Grand Canyon, the landscape offered no clues about what was to come. The final stretch led us through flat land heavily wooded with ponderosa pines and firs. Somehow, it seemed we had driven off course and ended up in Wisconsin’s north woods.
Beyond signs indicating we had entered the North Rim Grand Canyon National Park, nothing appeared grand or canyon-y as we navigated to our campsite and assembled our tent. We knew it had to be there, so we walked in the only direction it could be—downhill—crossing a few more rows of tent sites. Then, through a clearing in the pines, there it was in all its terror!
You can’t prepare yourself for your first glimpse into the Grand Canyon. All the sayings that connote awe and fear—takes one’s breath away, causes one’s legs to tremble—take on their original physical meaning as you come face to face with its unfathomable scale. To see it is to imagine yourself falling in.
In fact, falling in happens, often while taking a selfie. Of course, as parents of a ten-year old trying to prove his bravado by to sidling up to the brink with nonchalance, and two younger boys bumbling around with no awareness of their peril, we were “on edge,” so to speak.
6. Petrified Forest National Park is not a forest. Why did that surprise us?
Liuan: “This probably sounds dumb, but I imagined the petrified trees would be standing.”
Matt: “Haha. Yeah. That’s sooo dumb… But actually, I was thinking the same thing.”
Despite the misleading name, there are no standing trees. Instead, you are treated to the remnants of a prehistoric history so removed from the present that it strains the imagination. Where we were standing in modern-day Arizona was once a tropical jungle. It was located at the latitude of Costa Rica before plate tectonics shoved it north over the eons to where it is now.
The trees from that forest were immediately covered in wet sediment when they fell. Over time, minerals replaced the organic matter, preserving its shape, its inner rings, and its barky texture. What appears to be a wasteland of fallen tree trunks are actually a bunch of log-shaped boulders. They look real even up close.
Realizing that this place and all the places we had been had reincarnated many times over—existing as a jungle, the bottom of an ocean, or buried under two miles of ice—gave some perspective to the span of our own lives. That and the many hours on the road added texture to our main mission: to tie up the loose ends of Liuan’s father’s estate, and to come alongside her mother as she underwent chemotherapy.
Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll die in a lake of sediment and be immortalized as a petrified statue. But even if that doesn’t happen, we’ll all have gotten to experience at least one glorious page in the annals of time.
Latest Publications
We didn’t end up writing any new blog posts in the last couple months, but we were published elsewhere... including on CNBC!
Our family of 5 left Chicago to travel the world for a year: We spent $56,000 and ‘it was totally worth it’
By Liuan - Published at CNBC
We were approached by an editor at CNBC’s Make It blog for a short story about our yearlong trip through South America. It includes a summary of our trip, how much it cost, and how we paid for it.
Family of Five Shares Insights from a South American Gap Year
By Matt and James - Published at hellogapyear.com
A fellow travel blogger reached out for a written interview. His questions were very insightful and I think it brought out some interesting stories and thoughts. Definitely give this one a read!
The Midwest is BORING? MATT! Your problem was I-80, not the boring Midwest. There are so many great places to see between Chicago and Denver if you know where to look!
Made me smile - only a few week's ago we were experiencing the I-80 on our own trip across Iowa and we also stopped at the World's Largest Truckstop. Coming from the UK, all roads in the US seem unimaginably long and straight, but the I-80?! I must look at your past posts on South America, we have an idea of a month there next September.