Quote:
Originally Posted by Bjeanj
This is why I’m going to travel the USA and see things I haven’t seen yet. Went to the Grand Canyon, will go to see Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, etc etc. There are plenty of things to see without leaving the US. I want to make sure I can get back home if I travel.
All I can think of right now is “what if I go overseas and I am stuck there?” I’ve gotten both Moderna vaccines plus the booster. Hard to make plans now, anyway.
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It’s not just the national parks that are worth seeing (if you have a reservation and can get in). Last summer I drove from here to the Adirondacks near the Canadian border, west to Denver, then back to The Villages through southern Missouri and Tennessee. A few takeaways: I had never driven across Kansas in the summer, and I was surprised by how beautiful it is. I kept expecting to see buffalo or bands of Indians. I drove for a couple hundred miles on old U.S. highways away from the Interstate. Miles of farmland. Lots of small but thriving small towns I’d never heard of, generally neat and well kept up. Filled with real people, as contrasted with what the big city and coastal people think of them. I’d never driven in southern Missouri. Lots of forests and farms. (The view from the Interstate highways can be really beautiful, too, but it makes the country seem free of people and sort of meaningless. You will get a much different sense of the country if you avoid it and are willing to slow down and drive through a small town every fifteen minutes on some two lane highway.)
If you say you love your country, you owe it to yourself (and to your country) to actually see it, and not just the parks or some Broadway musical or Washington museum or Florida amusement park. If you say you served your country, go see what and who you served. Most of the problems our country faces are associated with big cities and the people who live there. The vast majority of America, though, is beautiful, hard-working, neat, clean, and safe. America the beautiful is still beautiful, and in those places, it’s friendly and not crowded. Consider skipping some of the great parks and great “destinations” and just open your eyes and see as you drive.
Back about forty years ago an English teacher named William Least Heat Moon (an American Indian) wrote a classic book called “Blue Line Highways” about a trip through part of America in an old Econoline van traveling only on the highways marked blue on his gas station maps—the lesser state highways. He ate in diners, stopped in tiny towns, noticed everything and tried to appreciate it. The book was an inspiration to me. You might enjoy it, too.