America covers more than three million square miles in just its lower 48 states. It is 2,600 miles wide across its mid section and stands 1,700 miles tall at its tallest (from Key West, Florida to the border with Pohenegamook, Quebec, in the far north of Maine). At its most squat, it is a compact 800 miles high (from Pensacola, Florida to the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio). A trip from one side to the other is no ramble to the local supermarket, and a visit to the top from the bottom no breezy day’s outing. Traveling to encounter America is thus no trivial task. So how would one go about doing it?
Strictly in terms of travel hours, modern air travel is the most expeditious trans-continental conveyance. Coast to coast, JFK to LAX on a 767-300 is a jaunty five and a half hours. Less than half a day, all the while immersed in a peculiar America endeavor. But freakishly unnatural and intensely stress filled, air travel is more a cramped test of the soul than a vehicle for encountering ordinary, day-to-day America.
JFK Terminal 1, 9:37 pm, New York, NY
Rather than flying, a traveler might opt for the open road of the interstate highway system – the very namesake of our magazine. This mode of travel inflates the NYC to LA trip to 42 hours, sans sleep. But despite being our namesake, travel by interstate bypasses virtually every inch of day-to-day America. Indeed, the interstate highway system was designed for this very purpose: to bypass American communities. Its express goal was express travel, city to city as briefly as possible, enclosed in our cars, rarely stopping for a bathroom, no less for interaction with other Americans.
Thus, while certainly less frantic and distracting than air travel, where one sees only terminals, parking lots and seat-backs-and-tray-tables, travel by interstate highway expands that experience only marginally. The conterminous seat back of air travel is replaced by multitudes of lanes stretching beyond the car hood, by hulking green signs lettered in Highway Gothic typeface, and by the precincts of rest stops, gas stations and motels tending to the vital needs of repose, relief and, above all else, fuel. Needless to say, while Interstate is our name, it is not how we travel to encounter America.
One tier below the interstate highway system is the US highway system. These roads pre-date the interstates, and include such well known highways as the east coast’s Route 1, covering the Colonial era “Boston Post Road” in New England and extending to Key West, Florida, and the iconic Route 66, the quintessential American road trip route stretching southwest from Chicago to a terminus in Santa Monica. Travel time from NYC to LA on the US highway system increases to two and a half days of straight drive time, no stops, no sleep. That’s not quick, but it does take a traveler directly through myriad cities, towns and rural expanses. Alas, many of these formerly local-to-local routes have been “improved” with bypasses and multi-lane expansion to the point that they resemble the interstates that supplanted them decades ago.
Superamerica, Windom, MN
Faced with this perfusion of US highways in interstate garb, travelers can detour onto a vast circulatory system of state and county highways (sometimes called “collectors”) that supplement the US highways and which, by some estimates, comprise nearly 800,000 miles of roadway. The cross country trip by collectors would cover, very roughly speaking, 6,500 miles, as opposed to 2,800 miles by interstate and 3,000 miles by US highway. Average speeds would drop from the interstate friendly 70 miles per hour to a meandering 40 miles per hour outside of towns, 30 mile per hour or less within them, and travel time would balloon to more than 125 hours of non-stop, no-sleep, no-need-for-the-restroom driving.
Such a route would, however, afford a traveler an intimate view of America. Collectors ramble through cities, towns and hamlets; countryside, mountainside and fields; the rural, the industrial and the urban. Our trip from NYC to LA leads a traveler through towns like Great Cacapon, West Virginia, Chauncey, Ohio, and Elk Horn, Kentucky; then on to Paris, Tennessee, Daisy and Milo, Oklahoma, and Kermit, Texas; through White Signal, New Mexico, Huachuca City and Why, Arizona; and finally to Rice and Old Dale, California, before sliding into LA. Interstate fuel stops are replaced with corner filling stations, and giant rest areas supplanted by local cafes and coffee shops. The route traverses two lane roads and local streets, not freeways, and each stop furnishes opportunity for unplanned encounters with local inhabitants going about their day-to-day routine, not whizzing hither and yon.
Lemonade Stand, Lake Placid, NY
And so, faced with travel options ranging from high speed, see nothing jet air travel, to interstate and US highway breakneck motoring, and finally to slow, meandering motoring on collectors, it is the last option that provides a true opening to everyday experience. The collector road mode of travel is decidedly slow and deliberate, but it is exactly this virtue that affords the traveler the real opportunity to encounter — and to photograph — America.