Running on the Map

The Great American Road Trip: A directory

Are you planning a Road Trip? Here’s a state-by-state directory of the travel literature and travel movies we have recommended in the past 14 months, as we crossed the country on the Great American Road Trip. Find each one by plugging info into the search box on the far right.

Road Trip Across America from West to East

Hawaii: Shark Dialogues (novel) by Kiana Davenport, guest post by Kris Bordessa

♥Southern California: Farewell My Lovely (classic mystery) by Raymond Chandler

Northern California: Cannery Row (classic novel) by John Steinbeck

Nevada: Charlie Varrick (Movie) (bank heist movie)

Oregon: The Heart of the Beast (novel) by Joyce Weatherford

Alaska: Insomnia (movie thriller)

Washington: The Baker Brothers (comedy movie)Guest post by Beth Whitman

Idaho: Five Skies (novel) by Ron Carlson

Montana: The Way West (classic historic novel) by A. B. (Bud) Guthrie

Wyoming: Come Again No More (novel) by Jack Todd

Colorado: Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid (western movie)

Utah: The Mountain Between Us (novel) by Charles Martin

Arizona: Going Back to Bisbee (memoir) by Robert Shelton

New Mexico: The Guardians (novel) by Ana Castillo, My Town (novel) by Margaret Randall and Po’pay (history) ed. by Joe S. Sando and Herman Agoyo

Texas: The Last Picture Show (novel), Lonesome Dove (western novel, TV series)by Larry McMurtry. Guest post by Ruth Pennebaker

Oklahoma: Mountain Windsong (mystery novel) by Robert J. Conley

Kansas: In Cold Blood (classic non-fiction crime novel and movie) by Truman Capote

♥Nebraska: My Antonia (classic historic fiction)by Willa Cather

South Dakota: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (children’s book) by L. Frank Baum , a guest post by Kristen Gough

*North Dakota: Movie: Fargo (detective movie ), a guest post by Sam Lowe

Iowa: Movie: Field of Dreams (movie)

Minnesota: Vermillion Drift (mystery novel) by William Kent Krueger

Wisconsin: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (novel) by David Wroblewski

Michigan: Thank You, Mr. Falker (children’s book) by Patricia Polacco and Weird Michigan (humor, guidebook) by Linda S. Godfrey, a guest post by Kristen Gough

♥Ohio: The Thurber Carnival (classic humor collection) by James Thurber

The Great Lakes region: The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters, and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the GREAT LAKES (non-fiction travelogue) by Ted McClelland

Indiana: Movie – Hoosiers (Movie drama)

Illinois: The Book of Ruth (novel) by Jane Hamilton

Missouri: Puddin’head Wilson (clasic novel) by Mark Twain

Arkansas: Farther Along (novel)by Donald Harington

Louisiana: A Free Man of Color (historic mystery novel) by Barbara Hambly

Mississippi: The author William Faulkner (classic American novelist), guest post by Paul Kaser

Alabama: Gods in Alabama (humor, novel) by Joshilyn Jackson

*Florida: Nature Girl (mystery novel) by Carl Hiaasen

Georgia: A Man in Full (novel) by Tom Wolfe

South Carolina: Bull’s Island (mystery novel) by Dorothea  Benton Frank, a guest post by Margo Millure

*North Carolina: The Last Child (thriller novel)by John Hart

Tennessee: Movie – Nashville (classic movie)

Kentucky: No Heroes (novel) by Chris Offutt

*West Virginia: Movie – October Sky (drama)

Virginia: Sister Jane’s Foxhunting Books by Rita Mae Brown and Mrs. Murphy Mysteries by Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown, (all mystery novels) a guest post by Paula Price

Maryland: Chesapeake Blue (romance novel) by Nora Roberts

Delaware: The Du Ponts: Houses and Gardens in the Brandywine 1900-1951 (non-fiction) by Maggie Lidz

♥New Jersey: Independence Day (novel, also movie) by Richard Ford

♥Pennsylvania: An American Childhood (memoir) by Annie Dillard

*Northern New York (Buffalo): City on the Edge (non fiction)by Mark Goldman

New York City: Charming Billy (novel) by Alice McDermott

Rhode Island: We’re There Rhode Island (children’s book) by Elizabeth S. Grumbach

New Hampshire: The Good, Good Pig (memoir)by Sy Montgomery

*Maine: The Lobster Chronicles (memoir)by Linda Greenlaw

Vermont: South of the N.E. Kingdom (memoir) by David Mamet

Connecticut: Ice Storm (Movie drama)

♥Massachusetts: Dogtown (non-fiction) by Elyssa East

♥*Kickoff of Road Trip: Blue Highways (road trip memoir) by William Least Heat-Moon

*The asterisk indicates the most popular posts from the Great American Road Trip. (An imperfect measure, since the ones at the bottom of the list have been around longer and have therefore had more opportunity to gain readers.)

♥Indicates my personal favorites

Don’t forget that for each stop on our road trip, Music Road supplied musical background. Take a jaunt over there and check out some of her great suggestions. Kerry has a beautifully written and useful blog, and I encourage you to check it out.

If you have a friend who could use this list, please let them know about it with the easy share buttons below. THANKS!

What was your favorite Road Trip post? Your own state or someone else’s? Where should A Traveler’s Library go next? I’m always open to suggestions.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Oregon Trail diorama

The Great American Road Trip

Destination: Montana

Book: The Way West (1949) by A. B. (Bud) Guthrie, Jr.

(And be sure and click over to Music Road to get your recommendation for the perfect CD to listen to on the road in Montana).

The United States of America, a heady mixture of people from all over the world, has a distinct mix of restlessness and the contradictory desire to settle down and cultivate the land, personified by the mountain men and the farmers who settled the West.

The tension between exploring and settling plays out in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Way West as Conestoga wagons bump over rough and dusty paths.   Dick Summers, the mountain man, becomes uneasy with civilized ways while Lije Evans, the farmer looking for new expanses of fertile fields, shows a penchant for organizing and civilizing the awesomely raw land over the Rockies.

I have to confess to cheating a little here, because this book is not exclusively set in Montana, nor does it exclusively portray the landscape of Montana, although journalist and author Bud Guthrie lived most all his life in that state.  My excuse is that no book I have read has done a better job of portraying the far western United States. This book covers many states with a story that I believe is important and essential.

Ken and I have road tripped through the glorious state of Montana (see a paean from now part-time resident Donna L. Hull.) There is a sense of “anything is possible” in those big skies and towering mountains. We headed for Glacier National Park on that trip.

We also took a road trip that followed the Oregon trail in Idaho and into eastern Oregon. We got out of the car and walked along ruts in the ground that were made 150 years ago by wagon wheels as settlers headed west.  We  looked out over the endless sweep of brown grassy  hills under the big skies of the West and tried to imagine how thrilling–and intimidating–that sight would be to people who came from little towns with clapboard houses and general stores and genteel entertainment.

Stagecoach on the road to Oregon

One of the most interesting museums I have ever visited stands on a high hill outside the small town of Baker City, Oregon. The Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, shows dioramas, maps, and more that brings to life the experiences of families on the Conestoga Wagon road trip west.

I am particularly drawn to the history of these pioneer road trips because my great-great-grandfather Jesse Morgan left his mild life as a school teacher, not to mention his family, in Ohio and went west in search of gold.

In his recreation of the westward movement, Guthrie sensitively draws believable characters. For instance,  the young boy Brownie shows the awkwardness of late teens when the boy ponders as he rides:

What a person wondered was, were other people like him underneath or, more likely, solider and properer and not moved by crazy notions?

Guthrie gets inside his women characters as truly as his men. He made me suddenly realize why the western states gave the vote to women before the East. Lije ponders the role of women on the trail:

They had a kind of toughness in them that you might not think, seeing them in a parlor. So, on a trail, women came to speak and men to listen almost as to other men….They’d never quite believe again a woman was to look at but not to listen to.

Families on the Oregon Trail

There was a lot of time for thought as the oxen plodded along, and Lije thought:

Each reach of trail had taken toll…And yet–and yet–the thing was worth the cost.  No prize came easy.  Free land still had its price. A chance at better living had somehow to be earned. A nation couldn’t grow unless somebody dared.

Guthrie did not like the 1967 movie based on The Way West, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Widmark, or the movie based on his earlier book ,The Big Sky, either.  He knew something about movies, having written the film script for the famous  Shane (1953) and The Kentuckian (1955), always exploring that tension between settling and traveling on.

Do you have any ancestors who traveled on the Oregon/California Trails? Have you taken a road trip west to follow in their footsteps?  If you enjoy this discussion, please share it on Twitter or Facebook, or tell a friend. Thanks!

(By the way, Ken and I took the pictures on this post. Please no reuse without permission.)

You might also like:

• A Road Trip on Horseback
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Come Again No More

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Coast to Coast Dust Jacket

Destination: North America

Book:  Coast to Coast: Vintage Travel in North America (publisher The Vendome Press 2008) Originally published in French by Editions du Chéne (2008)

I have talked before about Vendome Press and their wonderful travel books.  When they sent me Coast to Coast for review, I could not stop raving about how beautiful it is.  This is a book that you want to hold, and caress, and pore over for hours and hours.  Not only does it reprint beautiful old photographs, but the publisher has hidden little treats throughout the book, like miniature vintage menus and reproductions of tickets and postcards.

Vendome publishes a series of vintage travel books, many of them reprints of classic travel literature. I cannot imagine a more beautiful book than this. It is the best time travel book I have seen. And while it weighs a ton and qualifies as a coffee table book, it is not the book that will merely sit on the table gathering dust. If your forebears, like mine, were avid travelers, you will see them on page after page.

The book takes a road trip down the East Coast, then works it way West, region by region with period photographs. The two perky turn-of-the-century gentlemen on the dust cover, wearing their fedoras and perched on Pulpit Rock in Utah, invite you on a grand adventure. Even the hardback cover itself entices with a turn of the century photograph of a beach in Maine.

The book is definitely driven by the period photographs, many of them from advertisements.

Modes of Transportation, 1910 Lithograph, reproduced in Coast to Coast

Don’t expect to see every state or even site you may find interesting. Instead, this collection resembles one you would find in an old family box of travel memorabilia, on the closet shelf in Grandma’s house. It hits the high points of early twentieth century travel in the United States and Canada.

With ever increasing speed, travelers got around on stagecoach, canal boat, steamboat and then railroad. From 15 miles a day to the train that advertised itself as the “Mile a Minute”. The first rickety airplanes started flying, and off we went, criss-crossing the country. Imagine what those who whine about the discomforts of flying by jet today would have to say if they had to travel  by canal boat?

Once travel in America meant exploring new lands. Once Lewis and Clark had shown the way from East to West, and stagecoaches had carried families to new homes on the frontier, more and more people traveled just for the hell of it. You will see here what the railroads did to lure people West, what the government did to convince people to “See America First” and to reach out to Europeans to travel in America.

The brief text in each section relies heavily on quotations from people and newspapers from the period– New York Times, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens. It gives us snapshots of the traveler’s life in our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ travel days.

List price for this book is $55.00, but Amazon has[amazonify]0865652597::text:::: Coast to Coast [/amazonify]advertised for less.

The interesting authors of Coast to Coast include Antony Shugaar, writer and translator from French and Italian, who lives in Virginia; Marc Walter, graphic designer, lives in Paris, most recently published Empire Splendor; and Catherine Donzel whose most recently wrote Luxury Liners: Life on Board.

If you have wanted to learn about RSS feeds and how you can subscribe to A Traveler’s Library, check the 1st column to the right. So if you have not yet subscribed, take this opportunity to sign up.

Were your grandparents travelers, like mine were? Camping their way form Ohio to Florida? Restless to hit the road, take a train or a bus to the Rockies?

If you like Road Trips, check our older articles on

• Top Five American Road Trips
  
• Eleven Literary Road Trips,
• Blue Highways,(the beginning of our Great American Road trip)
  
• Travels with Charley,
• The USA Book,
• Waiting on a Train,
• and a road trip thriller.
  

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Canyon de Chelly

Destination: Earth

Books:

Wind and the Rock by Ann Zwinger

The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons by John Wesley Powell

Undaunted Courage, by Stephen E. Ambrose

Maybe I’m being species-centric here, but I’m assuming that everyone who is reading this is interested in traveling somewhere on the planet Earth.  Therefore, I’m also assuming that they are interested in the survival and thriving of our planet.  So, here are some books to add to the traveler’s library to celebrate Earth Day, coming up on April 22.  I am posting now to give you time to get started on your reading. (You may notice that my choices have a bit of bias toward my part of the U.S.)

Undaunted Courage: Merriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, by the late Stephen Ambrose, masterfully tells the huge story of Lewis and Clark’s expedition across America.  Until I read this book, I was not fully aware that the purpose of Thomas Jefferson’s idea went beyond the commercial and, well, let’s be honest, boundary-expansion/imperialism.  Indeed, I should have known because of Jefferson’s love of knowledge that he would instruct the explorers to take samples and make minute observations of plants, animals, geography and cultures as they traveled West. A fine book for Earth Day because it shows us what the West was like 200 years ago and helps us decide what should be preserved or restored.

The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons by John Wesley Powell is a classic of information about the western United States. MyPenguin edition has an introduction by Wallace Stegner, who points out that (in sharp contrast to the Lewis and Clark expedition) the Powell adventure was not government backed, had no imperialist aims, and the group was not led by nor peopled by scientists.  However, Powell, an amateur scientist, turned out to be an extraordinarily excellent observer, under unthinkably difficult conditions,  and his journal and drawings bring us descriptions and pictures of places that still look familiar today.

Wind in the Rock: The Canyonlands of Southweastern Utah compiles essays by the naturalist Ann Zwinger, who loves the west and Canyons particularly. I like to read Zwinger because she teaches me what to look for when I am strolling through the desert.  All those details, and all interrelated. She has a poetic way with science.

In case none of these three books strike a chord with you, or they are already ensconced in your traveler’s library, here is a source of carefully selected books from the wonderful travel book store, Globe Corner in Cambridge Massachusetts. Check their Science and Natural History List for Earth Day Choices.

Photo by VMB. All rights reserved.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.