Road trips are part of the American psyche
Appeal in the destination, or the journey itself? Thrill in the vehicle, or the open road? Check, and check.
Some element of bonding? Yeah, if you count the car — a 1986 Pontiac Parisienne with 180,000 miles on it.
Last: Are you exiting your comfort zone?
Well, then. Sounds like a road trip.
Welcome to the Smokey Point rest stop, northbound side, about six miles north of Marysville on Interstate 5. The state Department of Transportation tells us that nearly 1.1 million vehicles passed through here in 2001, making it the most heavily traveled rest area in Washington. (Its southbound counterpart placed fifth.)
Look there, under the hood of that mud-spattered maroon monster whose original gearshift has been replaced by a sturdy rod of juniper. That's Ger Cawdell, a 35-year-old laborer and photographer from Victoria, checking the oil on his way back from Basin, Mont.
Right now, Cawdell is actually more than that. He's an embodiment of that urge to hit the highway on the way to somewhere else. Road trips are part of a North American psyche built on notions of conquerable frontiers and explorations, and this year (at least according to PBS) marks the centennial of the first documented road trip by car — a San Francisco doctor's 63-day journey to New York City.
"One of the first loves of most Americans is to get out on the road and travel," says owner Craig Chilton of Xanadu Enterprises, a networking resource for people interested in delivering ambulances, school buses and other specialty vehicles to cross-country destinations.
After World War II, a public enjoying more affordable cars and growing leisure time spun vacations on highways stubbled with Burma-Shave signs. They visited faraway relatives, national parks and more.
"When I was young, we seldom had a single, distant destination," says American Automobile Association researcher John King. "They were usually loop trips, and part of the experience was learning about the landscape you were traveling through."
Question, then: Why would a rest area barely 40 miles out of Seattle rank as the state's most popular? For a lot of road-trippers heading north, Smokey Point is when they wonder whether a potty break is in order before bearing down for the long haul. The sign reading "Next Rest Area 30 Miles" sets them reeling; "Free Coffee" is probably the clincher.
For Cawdell, it was a chance to check the Pontiac and grab a little bread and jam from the cooler in his trunk. This road trip — to see a female friend's art project — was the latest of many, fortified with 48 compact discs laced with heavy metal and blues. "Lots of Motorhead and Megadeth," he says. "That keeps me awake."
Oh, there was the time he drove to Arizona for two months of work, and several trips to see friends in Boise. Then there was a planned odyssey through Alberta, B.C., and up into the Yukon; a week into it, he met a girl and got a job and that was the end of that.
But for him, that's the point: To be free, to see what's out there, to go where the road takes him.
Imagine your middle-school kids experiencing the American panorama for the first time. Reels of passing landscape. Streams of crisp, outdoor air. As a single mom, you've mapped out the route. You know where all the state police are in case of trouble.
Still, you can't always predict the weather, and in Wyoming, you're caught in a major rainstorm, running after pots and pans as they sweep across a flooding campsite. The family van literally rocks with the force of the winds.
Courtney Caldwell, editor in chief of American Woman Road & Travel magazine, says that cross-country trek with her two kids brought them closer together. The storm "was an adventure that was very frightening at the time, but we all got through it," she says.
It was a classic road trip worth retelling, and at Purdue University, professor Shirley Rose's course on road-trip narrative encourages students to noodle the human impulse to spin tales from journeys. Readings include Kerouac's "On The Road," Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" and William Least Heat-Moon's "Blue Highways."
But what defines a road trip? Rose's class focuses on car trips, and while there are other ways to travel — you could call Hannibal's elephantine quest of the Alps a road trip or Paul Revere's midnight ride — there's nothing that'll sprint over land any faster with you at the controls.
Yes, that's a crucial element of road-tripping: You are in charge. You decide where to go.
"Cars are unique in their flexibility to change direction, to be spur of the moment," says Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC) at the University of Washington. "It's not the act of driving. It's the act of controlling your destiny and enjoying what you're doing."
Maybe you're alone, or with your brother or best friend. Maybe hitchhikers are fair game. Maybe you're chugging along in a rickety gas saver; maybe you're tobogganing between the stripes in a mammoth RV.
Rose says road trips involve getaway and adventure. "Clearing the cobwebs out of your head," is how Sandi Goodrich of Stanwood puts it, staffing the Smokey Point coffee stand along with fellow Skagit County Harley rider Jenny Clack. "Road trips and Harleys just go together."
As fresh college grads in the early 1980s, TRAC's Hallenbeck and his wife needed decompression. Care and feeding of the soul. A cross-country trip to Washington, D.C., took them through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons; a huge thunderstorm nearly washed their tent down a creek, and they got served by Miss Louisville 1950 in a Kentucky diner.
What made the trip a keeper? It didn't happen in an upholstery-scented rental car. It was in a Ford Fiesta with a passenger-side window that only opened if you gripped the broken knob in T-shirt-wrapped pliers as you rolled it down.
"Do you really want to do a road trip in a modern Mercedes SUV?" he asks. (Hmmm ... OK, no.) "Or should it be in a Dodge Wrangler, hoping it doesn't break down as you climb the Continental Divide?"
Motorcycles offer another experience still, one espoused by practitioners with religious fervor. It's the smells and sounds of the outdoors, the flowers, the livestock, everything.
The best roads, Seattle motorcycle historian Tom Samuelson says, are the ones found on old maps; they wind along rivers, devoid of motor homes and people in a hurry. Motorcycles cut right through those. "It's kind of like ground-flying," he says. "You're touching it, but it seems like you're hovering above it."
Road trips mean getting off the interstate, sponging up life's serendipity and playing tourist at hokey outposts hawked at 70 miles an hour: Wall Drug. Sea Lion Caves. Little America.
Bonding is an element of a road trip, too — even as you argue over dinner stops or how Golden Earring's "Radar Love" or Alice in Chains' "Man in the Box" cannot be on a Top-10 list of driving tunes. Your co-pilot consults maps, points out the right exits, pops in another cassette when it's time.
Alone? Then it's the vehicle you bond with, a steady force in your hands. "The machine," Purdue's Rose says, "can be a home that takes one into a strange place."
One of her students characterized a true road trip as taking you outside your comfort zone. Whether one or 31 hours away, it exposes you to strange places or circumstances. "I think that's a major feature of the road trip," Rose says. "Not knowing what to expect."
Some road trips live on as legend; others are buried in infamy. Either way, select journeys merit retelling or remorse but remain impossible to forget.
The common denominator is this: Something's different when you get home. Maybe you see the world more keenly or completely; maybe you birthed, bronzed or busted a relationship. Maybe you hit trouble and found a way out.
"If you get stuck and get out of it, it becomes something you can tell about," Rose says. "It's not just encountering adversity, but overcoming adversity."
Of course, some people don't like surprises, and for them, there is the American Automobile Association, which arranges itineraries called TripTiks (a copyrighted term). TripTiks include rest areas, mileage and indicators for AAA-approved lodging and restaurants.
Among Washington/Inland's 833,000 cardholders, King says Las Vegas ranks most popular, followed by Yellowstone, San Francisco and the Oregon Coast.
AAA's Jennifer Harbison says preplanning can head off road-trip blues — knowing where to expect construction, packing an emergency road kit, ensuring the kids are entertained and fed.
For her audience, magazine editor Caldwell views road-trip preparation the way your mom used to send you out into the cold, anticipating every possible scenario. Her suggested gear includes kneepads (in case you have to change a tire) and an apron (because you might have on an outfit you don't want to soil).
"And always have a working cellphone on you," she says. "Because you just never know."
For those clinging to more classic notions, the question is: Has the road trip of yesteryear hit its last milepost? Purdue's Rose wonders whether adventure has left America's highways, lost in sea-to-shining-sea generic fast food, cars with global-positioning systems indicating where to turn, backseat TV screens hijacking young eyes from the world outside.
"If you think about traveling along the interstates, it's the same stuff along the side of the road everywhere," Rose says. "It's hard to tell the difference between Texas and Indiana."
Biker Samuelson says the Pacific Northwest offers an oasis from all that. His favorite road trip was through Norway, to the birthplace of his great-great-grandparents. Once he got home, he realized he was part of an evolution, a passing on of traditions and sensibilities. "It was a good one," he says of that trip, but it also convinced him the Northwest is the place to be.
The pathways here rival Europe's best, he says; you can hold Mother Nature's hand as you skirt the Olympics, vault the Cascades or zip up Chuckanut Drive to Bellingham. "You can see a volcano, a desert, an ocean or a bunch of islands. You can see incredible waterfalls. It's just not that available to other people.
"All these wide open spaces."
Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com
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