I left home towing a 13-foot Scamp travel trailer on July 3 to begin a 5,000-mile journey across the interior of the northern United States. I met people and saw things. This country is truly magnificent. It’s vast and changing and still wild. Everyone should drive it sometime to get a sense of its immensity and splendor.

My first real stop was Nashville where I spent July 4 at a Nashville Sounds baseball game. I had my first night in the Scamp and my first experience in an RV park just outside Opryland. I realized immediately that RV folks have their own culture and I was a bit of an outsider. People had virtual living rooms set up under awnings spanning from their mobile homes. Some of the larger vehicles towed cars and several were as large as a Greyhound bus. My Scamp got more than a few stares. 

I didn’t talk to many folks since I got in late and left early, but I noticed a lot of bumper stickers touting gun rights. One read, “’Get strapped or get capped.’ George Washington, probably.” Others read, “Come and take it,” a theme I also found on coffee mugs and tee shirts for sale in truck stops. Gun culture was real in that RV park. 

My next stop was a visit to my brother and sister-in-law in the small town of Ripley, Tennessee, in the Mississippi valley. Ripley has a place called “Sushi verses Tacos,” a Mexican sushi joint. It was pretty good food. We drove around what they call “The Bottom,” a vast, flat area of farmland in the valley that’s also home to Fort Pillow, a Civil War fort overlooking the Mississippi that was the site of a massacre of Black Union soldiers. Today, it’s better known for a state penitentiary nearby that is officially called West Tennessee State Penitentiary but is better known by its former name of Fort Pillow State Prison. 

After my visit, I drove north a couple of hours to get head start on my journey north. I had booked an a RV slot at a small state park called Columbus Belmont State Park in Kentucky. I got in way after dark and pretty much went to sleep. When I awoke early the next morning, I discovered the park sat on a bluff overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River. I watched barges and other ships maneuver through what seemed a narrow stretch of the river. 

The park was actually another Civil War fort. Confederates had stretched a chain across the river to slow Union vessels and then bombarded them with guns placed along the bluff. Earthworks piled high protected the fort from an attack from the east. Today, those earthworks provide miles of walking trails through the park that’s populated with giant hardwoods. 

I drank coffee with a guy staying in the neighboring RV slot. He had a 25′ trailer that had clearly been in place for more than just a day or two. He looked to be in his late 60s and sat in a folding camping chair, wearing a thin, white, button up shirt with short sleeves and old khaki work pants. A small dog sat to his right, attached to a leash. He was smoking cigarettes and I noticed a tin of Skoal in the drink holder of his chair. 

I told him I didn’t have any cellular reception and he shook his head and said, “They don’t have nothin’ in this town. They don’t sell beer or even cigarettes.” We talked about the park for a minute and I quickly realized that he was a regular here. He said he drove a school bus for a living and he stayed at the park to get away from people, the news, and politics, but I had the distinct impression he wanted to talk to me about the news and politics. 

He waded in easy, first telling me about all of the manufacturing that had come back to the area in the past year, but that the plants couldn’t find workers. He complained that people don’t want to work anymore and that they had to hire Mexicans and Amish people imported from Pennsylvania. He implied that, somehow, it was Biden’s fault that people didn’t work, but he wasn’t going to give the president credit for the jobs. 

Then he moved onto renewable energy. Apparently, the governor of Texas had snubbed Biden trying to force them to use renewable energy. He complained that Biden is pushing electric vehicles that aren’t ready for production. He told me about Michigan buying electric school busses that couldn’t make it up hills. He pointed out that I wouldn’t be able to make my trip because electric vehicles can’t go the distance for a road trip. He informed me that if we all switch to electric vehicles, the grid will collapse. Biden is trying to go too fast and it’s going to cause blackouts across the country.

I suggested that maybe upgrading the grid would fix that problem, but he wasn’t having any of it. I told him that I thought technology was evolving, but he said he didn’t believe it. The country is not ready for renewable energy or electric vehicles in his opinion and moving that way is going to leave us with rolling blackouts and an unstable supply of power. He wished me well on my travels and waved as I drove off. 

As I left, I still didn’t have cellular reception and didn’t really know where I was. I just took signs pointing north, heading to Springfield to see Lincoln’s house. After a brief stop at a dispensary for some legal sleep aids (how civilized!), I got into the Illinois state capital in time for a late lunch. It’s an interesting little town that has preserved blocks around the only house Lincoln ever owned. I would have liked to visit the museum, but it closed at 5pm and I got there about 4:30. It’s definitely on my list of places to visit again. 

I left Springfield with a goal of making a state park in northern Illinois. However, as I got closer, I felt like I could drive for a lot longer, so I kept on to Madison where I found a Wisconsin state park to spend the night. I got in late and was having trouble backing up my trailer in the dark. The guy in the neighboring lot came over and directed me into position. He invited me to come by his campsite where a sixty-inch screen showing “Fast and Furious” hung from his 30+ foot RV.

He had a small gathering of gregarious men. He was a 23-year law enforcement veteran who didn’t care about politics. He was far more interested in telling RV war stories with the movie droning in the background. We talked about kids and camping and traveling. He clearly loves meeting people and seemed like a great guy. He finished the night by telling a story about stumbling into the Oregon Country Fair near Eugene. 

When he saw the sign for a country fair, he was thinking carnival rides, cotton candy, and funnel cakes. What he found were the descendants of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters at an annual hippie gathering. “I knew something was different when I walked in and the smell of marijuana about knocked me down. I saw a sixty-year old dude dressed like a fairy and then this woman with no top walks by with two kids following her.” He was good natured enough to laugh at himself and said he ended up having a great time after getting over the initial shock. That story alone was worth the stop. 

I left Madison early, heading for Duluth, MN, where my son was finishing up a 28-day stint on an Outward Bound expedition, canoeing 122 miles through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area along the Canadian border. I arrived in the early afternoon and took a drive up the north shore of Lake Superior. Again, stunning landscapes and views of the largest of the Great Lakes. Duluth is an interesting town that mixes an artist community with a port that ships iron ore across the world. It’s got a thriving tourist district along the lake front and yet parts of the town tell of a more affluent time. 

After a brief stint in the Twin Cities to wash clothes and let my son visit with his grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins, we headed toward the Badlands. Up until now, I had been driving where we passed a town every 20 miles or so and had covered about 1,800 miles. That was about to change. 

West of Minneapolis, towns got further and further apart. The sky got big and the land got flat or with very gently rolling hills of farmland. When we crossed the Missouri River in south-central South Dakota, the landscape change dramatically to green hills with scrub growth and small patches of trees. Vistas gave views for miles. 

Approaching the Badlands, we could see mountains devoid of plants in the distance. When we pulled into the park, the landscape felt like a different planet. My son rushed to greet the hills of crumbling dirt. He had been there four years earlier with this mother and was determined to watch the sunset from a high perch. I had been there thirty years earlier, but the contrast still gave that “we’re not in Kansas anymore” feeling. 

The next morning we watched the sun rise over the mountains and took a short hike where we ran across a big horn sheep blocking our path. He didn’t seem too thrilled to see us so we slowly backed away and took another route. After a couple of miles with the temperature heading toward 90, we hitched a ride back to our truck and trailer and headed west. 

We stopped at the famous Wall Drug for bad food and a glimpse of the west’s version of South of the Border. It didn’t do much for me or my son and we were just ready to keep moving across the country. This time, we were heading for a small western town called Red Lodge, MT. 

The landscape changed and so did the population. Now, most of the people working in the restaurants and truck stops were Native Americans. The change brought a marked cultural shift with symbols that seemed almost stereotypical, like Dreamcatchers hanging from rearview mirrors and leather beaded paraphernalia. Sad little casinos sat in gravel parking lots, a sharp contrast to Harrah’s in Cherokee. In the few small towns we passed through, we didn’t see any signs of fast food, just local grills and maybe a bar advertising food. 

We stopped along the way at Mount Rushmore. My son and I were both underwhelmed. The town leading into the monument had the feel of a tourist trap. While the busts may have been impressive for their scope, they paled in comparison to the natural landscape we had already seen. Also, a lot of the tourists were wearing right-wing paraphernalia like three percenter patches. We didn’t stay long. 

We spent the night at a Montana state park outside of Red Lodge and woke up early to head into Yellowstone through the Beartooth Pass. Charles Kuralt called it the “most beautiful drive in America.” It’s a stunning road 11,000 feet high, looking out on towering mountains on either side. At the top, the road is lined by ice and home to shaggy mountain goats. At the eastern edge, it overlooks Yellowstone and ends in another former mining town called Cooke City and the entrance to Yellowstone. 

We wound our way into the first National Park through the Lamar Valley and, within a few miles,  came across a line of parked cars and people looking toward the river. Wolves and a grizzly bear had converged on a bison carcass and were battling over the remains. It was quite a welcome. 

We spent the next five days driving around the park. My son cared more about the wildlife than the geological features, though the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We watched Old Faithful erupt and saw the Grand Prismatic Spring, but he wanted to see bears, wolves, elk, and other wildlife. So that’s what we did. 

Yellowstone is really remarkable. It’s overcrowded, but it’s worth the visit. The landscape is stunning and wildlife is abundant. You could easily spend a week or more and still not see everything. The west side of the park from Mammoth Hot Springs to Old Faithful is the most crowded area with most of the geological abnormalities. The eastern side is a bit less crowded with Lake Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and the Lamar and Hayden Valleys home to the predators and herds of buffalo and elk as well as the pronghorns. People with kids are in the west while people looking for animals are in the east. 

We finally left after spending a morning watching a mother grizzly and her two cubs dig for food in the Hayden Valley. We left through the south entrance and Grand Teton National Park. The Tetons are truly spectacular, towering rock spikes reaching into the sky. No photos can fully capture the sense of awe inspiring majesty.

We headed east out of the Tetons and traveled diagonally across Wyoming. The landscape changed every few hours. We left the stunning mountains of the Tetons and passed hills that were painted stands of purple, red, green, orange, and yellow. Those rounded hills morphed into weather red buttes and valleys like something out of an old western movie. At times, we could see for what seemed like hundreds of miles. 

Finally, we spent the night in western Nebraska. We were ready to get home, so we blew through the next 24 hours. We would have made the trip in two days except for drenching rain between St. Louis and Asheville. We spent the night with my brother and his wife and shared with them our adventures before arriving home around noon the next day.  

This country is magnificent. The west is vast in a way that’s hard to comprehend in the east. I left Lander, Wyoming, with a half a tank of gas, thinking I would fill up about halfway to Rawlings, 125 miles to the southeast. I didn’t see a single commercial establishment the entire way and had no cellular reception. I drove the last forty miles in a panic with the fuel light on. When I finally filled up, my 21.1 gallon tank took 21 gallons of gas. The cultures have developed differently, if subtly because of the space. It’s worth a trip. I think I’ll do it again.