Week 1 (reset): W E S T W A R D

(or, a writer drives and writes, writes and drives, and sometimes eats)

this pic was literally a bit dangerous to take

IN THE BEGINNING, AN END

Let’s start at the end, shall we? See that dumb face up there? That face is (just about) as far west as you can possibly go and still be in the United States. If you drive all the way west, all the way until you hit water, and then you keep driving up (or down) the coast until you hit the Olympic Peninsula, and then find this tiny little road and drive on it until it dead-ends, and then walk for a couple of miles through the most beautiful forest you can ever imagine, you’ll find a sturdy and well-built lookout on the edge of some immense cliffs that is the furthest west you can go.

(Listen, I can hear you. ‘Bennnn’, you’re saying, in a whiny little annoying voice, ‘you must mean ‘the furthest west in the Lower 48 states! And that reminds me, you keep saying you’re going to try to drive the van to all 50 states, but how are you gonna drive to Hawaii?’ Listen, it’s very simple. If Puerto Rico doesn’t get to be a state, then neither does Alaska or Hawaii. These are just facts. They don’t count! And if you don’t like it, vote for Puerto Rican statehood and I’ll figure out how to put floaties on the van. But that just leaves us with 48 states and I keep saying 50, right? Well, in solidarity with our beleaguered siblings to the north and south, I’m including Canada and Mexico in the count. So, 50 States. If you got trouble with my logic, to quote one of my favorite Tik-Tokers, I don’t give a toot.)

Anyways! So you went the furthest west you can go in the US (ahem). And then, if you’re an idiot, you can climb underneath that lookout and skinny your way to a little strip of dirt that is right at the edge of the fearsomely tall cliffs, and then you can awkwardly hang on and try to take a selfie without losing your balance, toppling a couple steps backward, and going a little too far west, if you know what I’m saying.

I’m saying I would have fallen into the Pacific. Or, rather, a mangled bag of skin filled with broken bones that USED to be me would have fallen into the Pacific- them cliffs are pretty jagged. But I think we can all agree that the fairly generic selfie pictured above was totally worth the risk, right?

(It wasn’t actually that dangerous, I probably had a good five or six feet of dirt behind me and a very solid little tree- if you’re here for death-defying stunts you’re going to be disappointed. I have a pretty healthy fear of heights and don’t even like driving over tall bridges.)

But looking out at the Pacific, walking through these big woods, after leaving Cleveland and spending ten days racing across the country… That was a pretty good moment. I’m not always able to be present in good moments; sometimes I feel like I’m looking at the sunshine through a pane of dirty glass. But in this moment, that ol’ glass was clear as hell, kids.

That was a good moment.

Edgewater Beach. No, I didn’t get a picture with the sign and I NEVER WILL

STABBING WESTWARD (WAS FROM CLEVELAND AND SO WAS NIN)

So I was sitting in my van in Cleveland, at a beach called Edgewater which borders all three of the neighborhoods I’d spent the last twenty years in- Ohio City, Gordon’s Square, and Lakewood. I’ve probably spent more time at Edgewater Beach than any other single location in Cleveland (other than my apartment, and POSSIBLY a dive bar called the Duck Island Club). The sun was going down and I was waiting for some friends to get back to me about possibly having a drink, and I was sitting there thinking about spending another night haunting the parking lots and walmarts of my hometown, and trying to wake up early and (finally) start the Westward Plunge.

And, frankly, I was bored. I had several hours before drink time, and I just started feeling… itchy. Itchy inside my chest, inside my skull. My mood was going sour. I was looking at the sun dropping, thinking about drinking again, almost definitely (re)starting the adventure with a hangover, having to find another place in Cleveland to park the van…

And all of a sudden, the little voice whispered in my ear. The Angel? The Devil? We’ll never know, but it said ‘you can leave right now if you want’. Just hit the road. Make your excuses and start driving. No more waiting; just go.

So I did. Drove out of Cleveland with the sun setting, got to bid my home city a poignant 'adeiu’ and I literally drove into the sunset. Its not often that I feel confident that I just made the right decision, but this was one of those times; as soon as I set my wheels on that road that goes ‘west’, just about every care and worry that had been dominating my life since Christmas- how to buy the van, how to pay for the van, how to survive in the van, how to replace a roof vent in a Home Depot parking lot, how to manifest shelves, and the always-present ‘OH GOD WHAT AM I DOING THIS IS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE’- All of that fell away. Left it on the road behind me.

I’d been wanting to head west since I was fifteen years old and a friend told me about Route 66. I’d been wanting to head west since I was twenty and first heard about a magical creative fairy-tale place called ‘Portland’. I’d been wanting to head west since I was thirty and performed my first plane change maneuver. Any time things would get bad or I’d be frustrated with something, that was my fondest little daydream- I could just leave it all behind, hop in a car, and go westward.

And, now, finally, I was.

Now- to be clear- there have always been exceptionally good reasons to NOT head west; friends, bands, family, romance, creative projects, a bar called the Duck Island Club, ect. I don’t regret staying for a moment. Wouldn’t be who I am without those times and those memories.

But still… But still. West. A literal childhood dream, and I was starting on the road. That was a pretty cool moment, too.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED (HAS SOME PRETTY GOOD VIEWS)

If you have never gotten the chance to drive Route 2 across the country, allow me to make a case for it: Watch the video above and then imagine seeing all those places.

Route 2, if you’re unaware, is one of the old transcontinental highway routes that got more or less sidelined by the Interstate system. It’s much more famous little brother is Route 66, close cousin is Route 1 that goes down the Pacific Coast, and mirrors Route 20 which goes from Chicago to Oregon.

Now, Route 2 isn’t technically the longest transcontinental because it gets broken up a bunch- notably around Cleveland- and you can’t stay on it all the way from Maine to Seattle. But you MOSTLY can, and if you think I’m not going to drive the rest of it- from Cleveland to Maine- before this adventure is over, you cray bruh. In any case, it’s mostly a two-lane divided highway with some sections that are more like freeways, and even a three-mile patch that was frickin’ gravel. It goes way north, hugging the Canadian border, and taking you into all kinds of places that very few people go. While there’s a little bit of Route 2 left in Ohio (east of Cleveland, and then a section between Cleveland and Toledo) there’s almost none in Michigan and you have to pick it up in the Upper Peninsula. So that’s what I did.

Side note: I actually grew up in Painesville, Ohio, which sits right on top of Route 2. I remember somebody telling me that I could get on that road, start pedaling my bike, and eventually I’d get to the Pacific Ocean. On that day, this dream was born!

I like lighthouses. But come to think of it, who doesn’t? jerks, probably

THE MIDWEST PASSAGE

The first night I stopped in Toledo, where one of my very best friends has recently moved, and had an absolute banger of a dinner and some drinks and an all-round wonderful time. In Toledo. It’s a beautiful city! When did that happen?!

So I’m not gonna lie, I did get that hangover, but I learned that a hangover when you’re on an epic, 50-years-in-the-making adventure to the West really wasn’t that bad. Plus, I spent it driving through Detroit, which is a great city if you want culture, food, or music, but isn’t much to look at when you’re driving through.

I did have an instructive moment, however; if you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that me and a Walmart parking lot have something of a love/hate relationship. On the one hand, I love that most of them put up with me sleeping there, and on the other hand I hate every single other thing about them. But north of Detroit, when I was looking around for a place to sleep, I found that far from being the last choice, Walmart had become my default choice. I knew what to expect; I felt safe there, even if I kind of loathed it. Walmart had become my new comfort zone.

Well, I think we all know what had to happen. I haven’t stayed in a Walmart since. I’m sure I will again! Probably many times; they’re just too convenient not to. But having a fuckin’ Walmart be my comfort zone? No. No way.

In any case, this little epiphany caused me to search around a little bit more and find a rest stop not too far away- so I pushed through and landed there, and boy-o-boy did I kick off a whirlwind romance with Rest Stops that continues to this day. It’s almost like they are places specifically designed to cater to the needs of overnight travelers! Paid for by the collective good and well-wishing of the US taxpayer! Oh… shit. That sounds like socialism. Crap.

Anyways, while my memories of this time are amazing and crystal-clear, I did not take a ton of pictures and there’s not a great deal interesting to relate. The Upper Peninsula was beautiful but nowhere near it’s reputation- but then I was hugging the lower coast and I get the impression that all the truly spectacular stuff is up on the northern coastline. I would have loved to go see it, but I only had about ten days to get across the country- my exploring would have to be limited to the places I encountered on Route 1. No Apostle Islands for me!

The little bit of Wisconsin I saw (the very northern tip) was quite lovely; it had my favorite coffeeshop of the trip and I had a lovely time sitting on a grassy slope overlooking Lake Superior, sipping a latte and pretending to write. Minnesota was nice, too, but honestly everything so far kind of looked like Ohio with a couple of the dials turned up, know what I’m saying? Same trees, same hills, just different road signs. I’d love to go back and explore more, but I was craving that west.

I went to a famous cheese barn and bought too much cheese (lactose intolerant but not willing to let my dumb body TELL ME WHAT TO DO) and stopped and checked out the towns whenever I felt I could afford the time. Bemidji was awesome, Duluth looked cool but I didn’t stop, and Grand Rapids was sweet.

But it was all still pretty… I don’t know. Midwest, know what I mean? Even North Dakota was kind of Ohio.

Until…

kickass brewery and VW bus graveyard, right next to each other

A MAGICAL LITTLE TOWN CALLED MINOT

So I remember this feeling clearly from when I was young, and I was taking my first trip across the country. My sister was moving out to Arizona, so me and my best friend at the time and my OTHER sister all hopped into a very small compact car and started driving south and west. It’s a spectacular drive for a lot of reasons, but I remember kind of being disappointing all the way down into Texas that everything just sort of felt like Ohio with the dial turned up, right? And even the eastern part of Texas- at least from the freeway- felt pretty similar. Trees, hills, on-ramps, McDonalds signs.

And then, about halfway through, I remember going around a turn, up over a hill, and BAM. You were somewhere else. Sky from hell to Albuquerque. You could watch thunderstorms play around in the desert, fifty miles away. It was incredible.

North Dakota pulls the same magic trick; somewhere around the last third of it, you crest a hill and BOOM you are in the west. The sky gets REAL big, REAL quick.

Hard to describe the feeling of being out there, the road pointing at infinity ahead, the tiniest haze of mountains in the distance… Big feels. And what do we do with big feels, kids? That’s right, we find the nearest brewery and we drink them away!

So I did; found this absolutely amazing brewery in Minot, ND that I literally had to climb through a VW Bus graveyard to get to and met some kickass locals and felt even BIGGER feelings. Drat! But it was a genuinely lovely moment, one I’ll remember for a long time. Having a beer under a big sky.

roads, mountains, racing trains

MONTANA IS WEST, RIGHT?

I don’t know if I actually have much to say about Montana. It’s mostly ultra, ultra flat until it spectacularly isn’t. Those mountains in that picture seem tiny tiny but they go ALL THE WAY UP. All the way up into Glacier National Park, in fact!

So this part of the trip was really fun for another reason- as you may know, part of this adventure is about writing, not just seeing cool new roads and eating street foods. And all the way from Wisconsin to Washington I was doing nothing but driving and going all the way in on some story ideas. I’d pull over to the side of the road and frantically take some notes, dash off some ideas for feedback to my writing buddies, drive and think, stop and write, drive some more, figure more stuff out…

It was glorious. It was everything I wanted when I bought a beat-up construction van and decided to drive it around and finish my book. It was just so much damn fun.

And the western part of Montana is just ridiculous; Route 2 skirts just under Glacier National Park and through the mountains; if you like that sort of thing, it’s hard to beat.

get used to the hat, i love it now

So they’re nothing like disasters, but I did have a couple of hiccups in ol’ Montana. Montana- and Glacier National Park- were one of the big reasons I wanted to drive this northern route. I’d been there before, you see; in fact one of the very first versions of the thing we’re doing now was when me and my wife at the time rented a minivan, tossed an air mattress in the back, and drove through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and maybe more I honestly don’t remember. But driving through Glacier National Park (there’s only one road that goes through it- the Going To The Sun road, and to this day it was the most spectacularly beautiful thing I’ve ever seen) was a huge standout. Ever since I decided on this van thing, I was determined to drive that drive again.

I was SO HAPPY when I realized that this cool transcontinental road I wanted to drive ALSO went through Glacier National Park, and since we all know there is only one road that goes through Glacier, that means Route 2 must go through Glacier! AND immediately after that, it runs through one of my favorite towns in the whole world, Kalispell, a little mountain town I’d been dying to go back to since I saw it, twenty-five years ago.

Well, kids, for a former cartographer, I’m shit at reading maps. I didn’t realize until I was almost through it that Route 2 and the Going To The Sun road are not, in fact, the same road. Route 2, in fact, doesn’t actually go through Glacier National Park at all; it just hugs the lower border of it.

You know how excited I was to see Going To The Sun Road again? I actually got to the foothills of Glacier in the morning, but it was overcast. I ain’t driving no ‘prettiest road in america’ under no damn cloud cover! So I found a gas station, took a nap, read a book, glared at the sky, waited some more, took another nap, glare, sky, you get it, until it was almost the evening. And then it cleared up, and I was ready to drive.

Heartbreaking. And by the time I realized it, it was getting dark. I could still drive the road but I’d lose two whole days and have to backtrack- the schedule wouldn’t allowe it. But, I consoled myself; Kalispell awaits! I was going to try an Elk Burger as part of my street food thing. I was super excited!

And then I realized, driving through Kalispell, that my twenty-five-year-ago brain was actually remembering a town to the south of Kalispell called Missoula, and while Kalispell is a lovely and wonderful town it isn’t the place where the cattle herd ends up in Lonesome Dove and I didn’t have lifelong golden memories of it and GODDAMN IT, BRAIN!

Well, anyway. For you disaster tourists, those are the only ones I got for you. Well, other than the bugs.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE SUICIDAL WILDLIFE

You guys, life on the Great Plains must be hard. There’s not a lot of comfort out there, not a lot of company; life is brutal, short, and hard.

…Or that’s the only thing I can take away from the fact that every single bit of fauna in North Dakota and Montana seemed absolutely determined to die on the front of my van. Everything must be miserable there! I mean, forget the bugs. Yes, it was absolutely bananas to the point where I would have to stop at a gas station every hundred miles and clean my windshield or I wouldn’t be able to see. But those are bugs; their natural lifespan is meant to end on seventy-mile-an-hour glass.

But I swear to god every bird in both of those states saw me coming, and realized it was their chance to end it all. These frickin’ things were dive-bombing me from out of nowhere! Bursting out from bushes on the sides of the road! Appearing as if by magic two feet from my front grille!

And then word got out to the deer- they certainly made an effort. I missed three deer by about twenty feet. And then there were all the bicyclists- but I was aiming for them. I don’t know if they count.

THAT’S PRETTY MUCH IT, NOTHING MORE TO SHOW YOU

Well, I’m getting the dreaded ‘Nearing Email Length Limit’ warning, so you know what that means! Part 2, baybay. I think it’s because I put a lot of pictures in here. Can’t be that I don’t know when to shut up- couldn’t be that. So I’ll leave you here, right on the border of Washington State, where I stayed in a little rest stop up in the mountains, listening to birds have sex all around me.

Hey, look- that’s what birdsong is! I didn’t invent procreation. Let the birds get their jam on, I say; I just wish they could occasionally do it a little farther away from my pillow.

I’ll probably toss Part 2 at you tomorrow, if I can fit it in between having my eyeballs seared out of my skull by the natural splendor of the Pacific Northwest and being hunched over a laptop, ignoring the natural splendor of the Pacific Northwest for a made-up fantasy world that I decided was going to be very dark and very miserable and with very few trees. It’s an odd juxtaposition!

Thanks for readin’, y’all