Journal entries from the record of my first road trip encounter with the immensity, variety, and beauty of America in Daydreaming on the Porch

June 21, 2026, 3:02 a.m.
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Public

The years 1984-1993 were what I describe as my time of wandering in the proverbial “wilderness. Nothing in the entire decade lasted more than a year or two. It was a period of being displaced and unsettled, year after year, and one disillusionment after another in jobs that were temporary, graduate school that was a refuge from the tumult, and during the latter part of the decade, jobs that were all wrong for me and which came with heavy consequences. The only saving grace, the one constant, were the five road trips I made around the country during this decade, in between jobs and grad school studies. They were inspired by my reading William Least Heat Moon’s now classic road book, “Blue Highways.”

Those road trips were pure escapism, in the best sense of the word. I loved every day of every one of those journeys through countless small towns off the Interstate and through landscapes and scenery I never imagined I would see, and which it now seems I never will again.

I kept a journal every day of my travel adventures and experiences and took a lot of pictures with my Nikkormat FT3 film camera. These were the last years of analog film cameras’ widespread use before the introduction of digital cameras in the mid 1990s.

Below are the introduction to that first road trip journal in the Spring and summer of 1984, the first and last entries in the 53-page manuscript I typed on the battered old Smith -Corona manual typewriter I had used in a previous newspaper job in 1977-78.

The photos are images from color film negatives on 4x6 prints. They focus on my trips in the Eastern U.S. during that decade. The bulk of my photos were of the Midwest, West and The Pacific Northwest. I crested 6 photo-books of pictures from all my trips and these are a source of much pleasure as I reminisce. I do a lot of that now.

INTRODUCTION
(written in the summer of 1984)

I think everyone at one time or another would like to pack up, get in the car, and just follow the setting sun with no particular timetable, no pressing deadlines. The opportunity at long last came for me this Spring and Summer of 1984, and I took off with hopes high for seeing all kinds of new places and experiencing long stretches of road as I never have before. All my highest expectations were realized many times over, but it is probably only in years to come that I will fully understand the significance of this last, somewhat youthful, adventure. Traveling just increases your appetite for more of it, the excitement and novelty being such elixirs for most of us weary sojourners along the road of life. Seeing the country means taking some time to savor bits and pieces of it, not rushing through on the interstates making time. Time is precious enough and short as it is without us trying to compress it any further.

For years, after hearing people describe their travels in the country, I’d hear myself weakly responding that I’d only been as far west as Houston, Texas. I guess I always knew I’d remedy the situation one day, and now, I’m pleased to say, I have. The following pages of journal represent a modest attempt to capture some of the spirit and sights of the trip along the way while they were still fresh in my memory. What a wonderful journey it was

PART I

Crystal Springs, Miss.
Sunday, May 6, 1984

The day finally arrived. Left New Orleans about 8:45. Drove through beautiful countryside north of Lake Ponchartrain and crossed the Bogue Chitta River at Franklinton. Highlight of the morning was the drive along Highway 583 through gently rolling Mississippi countryside. Scent of honeysuckle along the road perfumes the air everywhere. This morning has been mostly overcast, but is clearing and windy. I am now at a small park in Crystal Springs, Miss., a town which proclaims itself to be as “refreshing as it sounds.”

Little Rock, Ark.
Monday, May 7, 1984

Drove along a winding road through Vicksburg Military Park in Mississippi yesterday past hundreds of Civil War memorials, monuments, and inscriptions. The battlefield is located on hilly bluffs along the Mississippi River, and the park road winds for sixteen miles through all the significant points of interest. It was too much for a short visit. Civil War enthusiasts probably relish this place as if it were a shrine.

Once away from Vicksburg, the terrain for the next 200 miles was flat as a pan as I drove along Highway 65, the Great River Road through the Mississippi delta regions. Endless huge, flat fields and a road stretching straight ahead for miles; virtually no curves or uplands are present. It was a thrill to see the Arkansas state line and enter a state I’d never set foot in before. I was intrigued by the huge oxbow lakes that were once bends in the Mississippi River. Lake Chico was unusual in this regard, and they apparently were good places to situate a town as is evidenced by the attractive community of Lake Providence.

Part 2
The last entry and Afterward:
August 1984

…over the state line into Oklahoma. At Ponca City the Arkansas River is wide and extremely shallow and almost dried up. The same is true of the river in Tulsa, 100 miles to the southeast. There is a large statue in Ponca City commemorating prairie women pioneers and a museum dedicated to them.

East toward Pawhuska is dry land and oil fields, but arriving at the town, and for the next 50 miles to Tulsa, there are lush forests of oaks and other deciduous trees, the first real woodlands I had seen since leaving the forested western flank of the Oregon Cascades. The countryside was slightly hilly and reminiscent of the nearby Ozarks.

I was astonished to see the extensive collection of Western art at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa. Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, Charles Russel and others are prominently represented. The museum has a beautiful collection of 19th century American landscape painting. Several places I had recently visited and photographed on this trip were depicted in paintings at the museum. They included the Shoshone Falls in southern Idaho, the Green River in Utah, and a magnificent painting of Multnomah Falls and surroundings in Autumn.

Beaumont, Texas
August 14, 1984

Tulsa seems to be a kind of borderline between West and South. Green and slightly hilly, it’s still dry and has a certain Western atmosphere about it. To the south and east I stopped at Ft. Gibson historic area and at Tsa-La-Gi, the national museum of Cherokee history and culture. Two miles to the north is Tahlequah, capital of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokees were forcibly removed to this area of eastern Oklahoma from their homes in the mountains of Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. They followed what became known as “The Trail of Tears” in 1838.

South through extreme eastern Oklahoma lie the hilly Ouachita Mountains. I reached them after stopping briefly at Heavener Runestone State Park. Here, on an enclosed 12-foot high slab of sandstone, are a series of runes, or Norse letters from their ancient alphabet, purportedly inscribed by Vikings in 1012 A.D. This, and several other such inscriptions, are cited as evidence that Vikings explored the pre-Columbian American interior.

Crossing the broad Red River, I entered Texas. It had been clear for some miles that I was in familiar geographical terrain. This was the South, even if the people are Texans and hold rodeos in these parts.

Driving down from the northeast corner of Texas toward Longview, I saw some of the most beautiful woodlands I’ve ever encountered. A mixture of pines and deciduous trees, interspersed with broad, flat meadows and pastures full of grazing cattle and horses – it all seemed like some golden summer dream. All this beauty helped ease the weariness I felt at that point in the day’s travels. Creeks and rivers were brown and sluggish and cicadas droned in the trees. It was getting more and more humid.

Today I drove through the historic towns of Nacodoches and San Augustin. San Augustin has many old Southern-style homes.

In the afternoon I at last got the chance to see the Big Thicket National Preserve in southeast Texas. A huge area of diverse woodland, 84,000 acres of representative forest have been set aside and protected from development. The Big Thicket is a biological crossroads and is a meeting place for Eastern hardwood forests, the Southern wetlands, and the arid Southwest. The preserve units contain a varied mixture of plant communities. I walked for a short ways down trails in two sections of the preserve. One was through a magnificent beech and magnolia forest and the other took me into a mixed bottomland forest that bordered Village Creek. Both places were very still and quiet, serene sanctuaries from the outside world.

The Big Thicket was a fitting conclusion to my journey to the West and back, for it is a timeless, unspoiled place which will be treasured by future generations hemmed in more than this present generation by shopping malls and suburban sprawl.

Heading along the miles-long causeway across the huge Atchafalaya River swamp basin, I knew also that here, too, was a place that deserved to be left as it is, a remnant of wilderness in a land fast being harnessed by the engines of progress.

AFTERWORD

A journey of epic proportions, for me at least, has been concluded. I set out to see the country, 20th century style, and came back with memories and images of a land that’s big, and glorious and beautiful.

It’s been a dream fulfilled, a chance to come out of the cocoon once and for all and experience the diversity and grandeur of this land.

Each day offered surprises and delights I could never have imagined had I not been there. The only way to know the immensity of Mt. Rainier is to be there near it up close, gazing at its glacier-capped summit on a clear day in summer. In the same way, what an experience it is to be physically present out in the middle of some wide-open plateau in southwestern Wyoming. There’s only the wind to disturb the silence of sagebrush and desert.

Over mountains, hills, and buttes; across plains and through valleys where rivers carved the land I entered worlds of the senses and imagination I’d never known before, and this was the greatest fun of all – seemingly endless discovery and newness, as if I were a pioneer of sorts myself.

Waterfall, North Carolina