Last summer, I loaded up the car with books, music, magazines and a big cooler. I stuffed tee-shirts and summer dresses into my bag and good shampoo to counteract the lousy amenities at the little independent motels scattered across the country that I prefer to stay at. Never been a chain girl (loathsome of the Marriot-mentality) and I like to travel well. I love very good hotels with incredible design and dead-on service located in some interesting far-flung location. But there aren’t too many of those properties when you’re cruising back roads across the country. I have a large, comfortable German tank with a very decent stereo system. I brought books on tape; David Sedaris, The Words and Music of Johnny Cash, and lots of music of which I was totally unfamiliar. I filled the cooler with Belgian ales, Sancerre, cru Beaujolais, cheese, fruit, veggies, crackers, salumi, and my favorite Italian chocolate.
I drove to Minnesota to visit with a few antique dealers specializing in Americana, taking many back roads and also antiquing in small, unexplored towns. Stopping in old barns and talking to the farmers, I got some great old butchering equipment. I got up with the sun, when it was a bit cooler, and made tea to sip on during the morning drives through the mountains and flatlands, which were glorious. Sometimes I smoked a little grass I brought and listened to the silence of the road. Sometimes I called old friends I had not been in touch with but I had thought of during the long, solitary hours spent driving. Sometimes I listened to NPR. Sometimes I listened to the southern preachers ask for money. I blasted music and put all the windows down when the outside temp hit 100, which was often. I’m not a big fan of driving in the dark, so I usually found some little motel after sunset in a quiet town on a big piece of land. Very 1950’s Americana. If there was a good diner or small restaurant in town, I brought wine and ate there. More often than not, though, I put on the tube to some old movie played on some older television set, had a cool bath and ate cheese, salumi and a cold Belgian beer from the cooler.
I love weather. That is one thing I miss about not living on the east coast. There was always different and intense weather back east. California is fairly temperate, Mediterranean. I drove through northern Wyoming during the most incredible set of storms. Never seen anything like it. Deafening and violent thunder and bolts of scary lightening over vast corn fields. Winds that made my hearty German girl shudder. And rain you couldn’t see through. Unable to drive on through this storm one late afternoon, I pulled into this sweet, rundown motel in this funky little town. I made a mad dash across the street through the pouring, warm rain. There was a tiny restaurant in a little A-frame building. The only item served was fried chicken and a couple of the usual sides. Each piece of chicken was cooked to order. Took 20 minutes for me to get my bag. I opened the door and windows in my stuffy little motel room to get some air and watch the storm move through. Watched Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds,’ opened a chilled Gamay (embarrassed and hate to admit I brought good stemware…) and sat on the stained, satiny bedspread and slowly ate the best fried chicken I have ever had.
I had a celebratory birthday supper with friends at Tru in Chicago, after taking a hot soak in a super-deep Japanese tub… my tired back aching from many miles driven. Good mid-century antiques, jazz clubs and museums in Chicago. Found spicy BBQ, good still-life paintings and soulful blues in Kansas City. Hiked in the mountains with friends in Salt Lake City and ate small batch ice-cream in the freezer of my friend’s factory there. It’s wonderful to travel by yourself and visit with people along the way. I enjoyed the quiet. The time spent thinking. Or not. Or listening. Or not.
My car was full of wonderful pieces (some of which I am still loathe to part with), and splattered with dirt, bugs, re-killed roadkill. I returned peaceful, attentive, restored, purposeful.
I love road trips.