Open Road: American Roadtrip Recap

This is not my car

I’ve been back in Portland now for over three months now. Belatedly, I have decided it’s time for me to put together some reflections from my road trip to points South and East of Portland, mostly so I have an online memory capsule of my experience exploring more of my own country. I left Portland in a state of jet lag and culture shock three days after flying in from Frankfurt, on September 7th. I returned about six weeks later on October 17th with a newfound attitude about the diversity, vastness, and beauty of the United States.

I put just over 5,000 miles on my Mazda3 hatchback. My first top was California where my brother and I spent 5 days backpacking in Yosemite National Park. Then I drove down the coast to San Diego where I got back on, and once or twice, up on a surfboard. Then I camped for three nights at Joshua Tree National Park, spent a night in Prescott, Arizona, and then headed to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I spent about a week in Albuquerque taking a day to go to Santa Fe and the nearby mountains. Then I turned around. I headed to Southwestern Colorado and Southern Utah with a few nights in Idaho (one in Twin Falls planned, one unplanned in Boise, so I could get a flat tire repaired) and then SE Oregon.

Generally, as with sections of my trip, I had a blast on my road trip. American IS beautiful. Though there was a lot of ground to cover between some of the places I went, the landscapes in Yosemite, Joshua Tree, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and SE Oregon are stunning. In spite of our ridiculous political climate, I was on the road during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, the people I met were friendly and curious about what I was doing so far from home. Even so, I found solo travel in the United States to be much more lonely than it was abroad. Being alone in my car all day meant I wasn’t meeting fellow travelers in transit and inexpensive motels and campgrounds are much less social than the hostels and guesthouses abroad.

I had a strategy to combat loneliness though. The first part of this strategy was my car stereo. I had brief moment of panic when I thought my car’s bluetooth system was broken to the point that I considered abandoning the trip, luckily this was just a case of user error. The second part of my strategy was to plan my route around cities where I had friends and family members to visit. This not only fed my need for social interaction, it also proved to be an essential cash conservation strategy. Though fuel is fairly cheap in the United States, meth-and-bedbug-free motel rooms are hard to find for less than $100 per night and dinner out will typically set you back at least $20, especially if you are like me and have developed an pricey fondness for craft beer and fresh flavorful food. Luckily cheezits, pretzels, and tacos are usually cheap.

What did I see and do? Here are a few roadtrip highlights:

1. Summiting Half Dome and spending five days with my brother in the wilds of Yosemite. Unfortunately while there my glasses drifted downstream. I like to think they shattered into hundreds of pieces while tumbling over Vernal Falls and are now stuck behind a dam on the Merced River.

2. Realizing again that I’m not a natural surfer while still having fun in San Diego’s waves as my cousin provided pointers.

3. Exploring Joshua Tree’s desert landscape by moonlight and headlamp under the influence of the Baltimore guys’ leftover supply of legal cannabis.

4. Feeling like an foreigner on a Friday night in my own country as I hopped between bars in Prescott, Arizona’s Whiskey Row when musicians cranked out country songs and audiences danced away the stress of the work week.

5. Eating all the green chilis, hanging out with my aunt and cousin, biking to the top of Sandia Crest with a friend of my parents, taking in a concert at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, and catching the Dawn Patrol show at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. I really liked my time in New Mexico.

6. Learning more about the Ancient Pueblo People in Mesa Verde National Park near Durango, Colorado.

7. Driving through Southern Utah from Blanding to Escalante through Bears Ears and Natural Bridges, Glen Canyon, and Escalante National Monuments, and Capitol Reef National Park.

8. A 30 minute conversation with Felony Phil in SE Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands. Topics covered included his 1950s Jeep, my flat tire, cattle grazing, George Soros, Portland’s angry liberals, the folly of legal cannabis, and liberal immigration policies. He offered me both illegal cannabis and a beer for the road.

9. The wide open landscapes of SE Oregon from the Owyhee Canyonlands to the Alvord Desert, Summer Lake Hot Springs and the Cascade Lakes Highway.

10. Listening to The Wilderness, a 15 hour podcast on what the Democratic Party needs to do to reinvent itself for the future, a stack of CDs I had burned between 2001 and 2005, Death Cab for Cutie’s new album, and Top 40 and Country radio.

I have always yearned to see more of my own country, particularly the spots that seem to be inaccessible with only two or three weeks of vacation a year. There were places I visited in the United States where I felt as much of a foreigner as in the urban chaos of SE Asia or wilds of Central Asia. As a result, even though I was by now a seasoned traveler and back in my own country I think I was almost as anxious setting off on this portion of my trip as I was when I landed in Phnom Penh. I was leaving the urban bi-coastal bubble and spending time in places where big trucks, guns, and Trump supporters outnumber gender pronouns, techbros, and graphic designers working in coffee shops. I was moving through the world in the smallest car on the road, listening to a podcast about how the Democratic Party should rebrand, and carrying gear sending signals to the world about my urban origins. When I started out, I imagined locals thought three things when they saw me: I bet that guy would have Obama’s babies, I bet he has a wallet full of those credit cards that give you free money, and I bet he thinks that means he can tell me how to live my life.

Over time though, as happened when I was abroad, I grew more comfortable in my surroundings. The long stretches of open road were perfect for belting out lyrics to songs I hadn’t listened to in years and gave me space to contemplate my present and future. As I rolled into Portland in the early afternoon on a Wednesday the city still felt like home. I also realized that while I still vehemently disagreed with many of the opinions expressed by the people I had encountered in Trump country I have given up some, though not all, of the self-righteous superiority I carry towards them. I also encountered some fucking amazing places.