So I'm laid up for the next 6 weeks with a broken foot and not a lot to do. This is a trip report that I have been going back and forth about writing for a few years now, mostly because in many ways I saw it as a failure for a long time. There were some great high points along the way, best of which was taking my dad to a place he wanted to go for most of his life but never did. But the hoped for personal transformation, like you read about in many upbeat travel stories, remained elusive, and the year following the trip was one of the lowest in my life. Looking back from a much better place now, I do see this trip as the start of a multi-year catharsis that has resolved in finding meaning and purpose though I didn't find it through travel.
What follows will be my recollection of a trip I took back in the summer of 2015 over the course of about 2 months. A lot of the travel was once again in my trusty old 1966 VW Beetle. I was nearing 31 and the VW was almost 50. This would be the little car's second cross-country adventure. It's been a while so some of the fine details have since escaped me, but my general state of mind during those times has not. This trip in many ways changed my views on traveling, especially as a means of attempting to escape problems.
I had been living the past two years in central New Hampshire, in the foothills of the White Mountains. I worked in a college town at a local bar and deli for a couple dollars over minimum wage plus tips, which were usually pretty good. I lived in a small but nice apartment above the owner's garage, where I mowed their yard, shoveled, and snow-blowed the driveway, which is no joke in New Hampshire winters. In exchange they cut a significant chunk off the usual rent. I subsisted mostly on rice and bean burritos as well as a steady diet of deli sandwiches from work. I eked by off my paychecks and deposited the tip money in a savings account for an emergency fund. I spent a lot of free time skateboarding, hiking and driving in the mountains, and lounging at a local swimming hole in the summer. I also generally felt lost, alone, and without direction. There's more to it, both real and imagined, but I'll leave it at that.
By early May the snow was gone after another long winter, and I was ready to just get out of there for a while, maybe forever. I told work I would be quitting after college let out in late May. They offered to hold my job for me if I returned before the college kids came back in August and I decided to take them up on the offer. Financing the trip with my two years of saved up tip money, I had a general plan of first heading to my parents new place in Wisconsin. My parents were recently retired, had sold the house where my brother and I grew up down in Texas, and moved back to Wisconsin where they were both from.
I would stay there for a bit and then I would continue with my dad to the Grand Canyon. He had been wanting to go to the Grand Canyon all his life but for one reason or another never made it out there. He was now retired but his health was not great and he walked with a cane. My mom doesn't travel and there was no way my dad could make the 4000 mile drive to Arizona and back on his own. I offered to take him there and he was thrilled to go. After taking him back to Wisconsin I would head back out west on my own for a while before making my way back to New Hampshire.
The day before I left, I changed the oil, adjusted the valves, points and timing on the VW. The tires on the car were pretty much bald, but I had a brand new spare so I ordered three more new ones shipped to my parents house. I'd throw the good spare on, get three replaced and keep the best bald one as the spare. The next day, on a cool cloudy morning in late May I loaded up the VW and pointed it west toward Wisconsin. I had my camera, a 2014 Rand McNally Road Atlas, my tent and sleeping bag, a copy of Where the Sky Began by John Madson, a Coleman gas stove, a few gallons of water, my big bag of rice, a container of oatmeal, and a few cans of beans to get me to Wisconsin. It seemed so easy to get in the car and leave my problems behind for a while so I was in good spirits.
The VW, with it's measly 40hp 1200cc engine is not really fit for interstate travel so I kept to state and U.S. highways on my three day trek out to Wisconsin. I don't remember the exact route I took but that isn't too important now anyway. I do recall some of the sights from along the way through. Early on I got a little turned around and lost for a bit somewhere in Vermont. I went through an Amish area in New York where I watched a farmer plowing a field with a team of horses. In the same area I came across a really curious site; a phone booth at the intersection of two random county highways in the middle of nowhere. There was a payphone still inside so naturally I had to pick it up and low and behold there was a dial tone. I don't think I had seen a live payphone in about 10 years, let alone one this far from anything. Weird.
The first evening I set up my tent in a mad rush to avoid being eaten by hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes at a deserted campground in upstate New York only to have a severe storm blow through later that night. I cooked up and ate my rice and bean lunch in the sunshine on the second day overlooking a beautiful lake in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania. That afternoon I attempted to pilot the VW through another massive thunderstorm. I ended up having to pull off the road and wait the storm out because the strong winds blew the driving rain so hard against the windshield that the wiper blades hovered above it instead of wiping the water away, leaving me blinded.
The third morning, I poured over my map desperately trying to find a reasonable route around the bottom of Lake Michigan that didn't suck the poor VW into the madness that is Chicago, but alas, there was no practical way around. So together the Beetle and I mustered up our courage and flung headlong into the high-speed chaos of some toll road that ringed the city. The speed limit was something comical like 55mph but even with the pedal to the floor at just under 70 everyone was blowing past. After a stressful run around Chicago I exited the toll road and headed north to Wisconsin on an Illinois State Highway. It started raining again as I crossed into Wisconsin and got on US-12 which took me past Lake Geneva and through Elkhorn before bending west where I continued north on State Highway 67 to Eagle, where my parents live. In Eagle I made a left where I should have gone right and ended up going six or so miles in the wrong direction before realizing it and turning around. I went back through Eagle the right way this time and soon I pulled into my parents driveway in the mid afternoon.
It was kind of a surreal situation walking into their new house, like entering a foreign land. Most of the furniture was the same and the same old pictures were hung, but in a house that I didn't recognize. Up to this point in my life we had only lived in two different houses and the first one we left when I was only three. So pretty much my whole childhood and some of young adulthood was spent in the same house in Texas. I could pretty much walk through that house with my eyes closed after so many years but now it was all new and different. I hadn't seen them in close to two years though so it was nice. Plus they had a guest bedroom with a new queen bed which was a treat compared to the foam pad I had been sleeping on for the past ten months in New Hampshire. We spent a few days seeing the area and catching up and then in early June, my dad and I set off for the Grand Canyon.
The VW and I all ready to go.
My stuff. Looks like I had some bananas as well.
NH-118 Dorchester, NH. I lived in Dorchester at a friend's farm for several months when I first came to NH.
VW on NH-118.
Quechee Gorge, Vermont.
A nice Vermont farm.
A blossoming apple orchard. Vermont. I got stung by a bee behind my ear after I took this picture.
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The view from where I made my lunch on the second day. Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania.
What follows will be my recollection of a trip I took back in the summer of 2015 over the course of about 2 months. A lot of the travel was once again in my trusty old 1966 VW Beetle. I was nearing 31 and the VW was almost 50. This would be the little car's second cross-country adventure. It's been a while so some of the fine details have since escaped me, but my general state of mind during those times has not. This trip in many ways changed my views on traveling, especially as a means of attempting to escape problems.
I had been living the past two years in central New Hampshire, in the foothills of the White Mountains. I worked in a college town at a local bar and deli for a couple dollars over minimum wage plus tips, which were usually pretty good. I lived in a small but nice apartment above the owner's garage, where I mowed their yard, shoveled, and snow-blowed the driveway, which is no joke in New Hampshire winters. In exchange they cut a significant chunk off the usual rent. I subsisted mostly on rice and bean burritos as well as a steady diet of deli sandwiches from work. I eked by off my paychecks and deposited the tip money in a savings account for an emergency fund. I spent a lot of free time skateboarding, hiking and driving in the mountains, and lounging at a local swimming hole in the summer. I also generally felt lost, alone, and without direction. There's more to it, both real and imagined, but I'll leave it at that.
By early May the snow was gone after another long winter, and I was ready to just get out of there for a while, maybe forever. I told work I would be quitting after college let out in late May. They offered to hold my job for me if I returned before the college kids came back in August and I decided to take them up on the offer. Financing the trip with my two years of saved up tip money, I had a general plan of first heading to my parents new place in Wisconsin. My parents were recently retired, had sold the house where my brother and I grew up down in Texas, and moved back to Wisconsin where they were both from.
I would stay there for a bit and then I would continue with my dad to the Grand Canyon. He had been wanting to go to the Grand Canyon all his life but for one reason or another never made it out there. He was now retired but his health was not great and he walked with a cane. My mom doesn't travel and there was no way my dad could make the 4000 mile drive to Arizona and back on his own. I offered to take him there and he was thrilled to go. After taking him back to Wisconsin I would head back out west on my own for a while before making my way back to New Hampshire.
The day before I left, I changed the oil, adjusted the valves, points and timing on the VW. The tires on the car were pretty much bald, but I had a brand new spare so I ordered three more new ones shipped to my parents house. I'd throw the good spare on, get three replaced and keep the best bald one as the spare. The next day, on a cool cloudy morning in late May I loaded up the VW and pointed it west toward Wisconsin. I had my camera, a 2014 Rand McNally Road Atlas, my tent and sleeping bag, a copy of Where the Sky Began by John Madson, a Coleman gas stove, a few gallons of water, my big bag of rice, a container of oatmeal, and a few cans of beans to get me to Wisconsin. It seemed so easy to get in the car and leave my problems behind for a while so I was in good spirits.
The VW, with it's measly 40hp 1200cc engine is not really fit for interstate travel so I kept to state and U.S. highways on my three day trek out to Wisconsin. I don't remember the exact route I took but that isn't too important now anyway. I do recall some of the sights from along the way through. Early on I got a little turned around and lost for a bit somewhere in Vermont. I went through an Amish area in New York where I watched a farmer plowing a field with a team of horses. In the same area I came across a really curious site; a phone booth at the intersection of two random county highways in the middle of nowhere. There was a payphone still inside so naturally I had to pick it up and low and behold there was a dial tone. I don't think I had seen a live payphone in about 10 years, let alone one this far from anything. Weird.
The first evening I set up my tent in a mad rush to avoid being eaten by hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes at a deserted campground in upstate New York only to have a severe storm blow through later that night. I cooked up and ate my rice and bean lunch in the sunshine on the second day overlooking a beautiful lake in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania. That afternoon I attempted to pilot the VW through another massive thunderstorm. I ended up having to pull off the road and wait the storm out because the strong winds blew the driving rain so hard against the windshield that the wiper blades hovered above it instead of wiping the water away, leaving me blinded.
The third morning, I poured over my map desperately trying to find a reasonable route around the bottom of Lake Michigan that didn't suck the poor VW into the madness that is Chicago, but alas, there was no practical way around. So together the Beetle and I mustered up our courage and flung headlong into the high-speed chaos of some toll road that ringed the city. The speed limit was something comical like 55mph but even with the pedal to the floor at just under 70 everyone was blowing past. After a stressful run around Chicago I exited the toll road and headed north to Wisconsin on an Illinois State Highway. It started raining again as I crossed into Wisconsin and got on US-12 which took me past Lake Geneva and through Elkhorn before bending west where I continued north on State Highway 67 to Eagle, where my parents live. In Eagle I made a left where I should have gone right and ended up going six or so miles in the wrong direction before realizing it and turning around. I went back through Eagle the right way this time and soon I pulled into my parents driveway in the mid afternoon.
It was kind of a surreal situation walking into their new house, like entering a foreign land. Most of the furniture was the same and the same old pictures were hung, but in a house that I didn't recognize. Up to this point in my life we had only lived in two different houses and the first one we left when I was only three. So pretty much my whole childhood and some of young adulthood was spent in the same house in Texas. I could pretty much walk through that house with my eyes closed after so many years but now it was all new and different. I hadn't seen them in close to two years though so it was nice. Plus they had a guest bedroom with a new queen bed which was a treat compared to the foam pad I had been sleeping on for the past ten months in New Hampshire. We spent a few days seeing the area and catching up and then in early June, my dad and I set off for the Grand Canyon.
The VW and I all ready to go.
My stuff. Looks like I had some bananas as well.
NH-118 Dorchester, NH. I lived in Dorchester at a friend's farm for several months when I first came to NH.
VW on NH-118.
Quechee Gorge, Vermont.
A nice Vermont farm.
A blossoming apple orchard. Vermont. I got stung by a bee behind my ear after I took this picture.
The view from where I made my lunch on the second day. Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania.
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