Home Again

Appalachin Mountains

 14 National Parks, 10,793 Miles, 23 States, 36 Days. Not that I'm counting.

I arrived back in my home state of New Jersey on Friday July 29, two days ahead of schedule. I'm not sure of the exact moment when I decided that my trip was over, but suddenly going home was my only goal.

That moment may have been when the air started to grow heavy with the sultry summer murkiness so familiar to Easterners. It may have been while traveling along the comforting green folds of the Appalachian chain. All I know that, instead of musing expectantly about the next destination as I had for the past 5 weeks, I longed to sleep in my own bed at home in New Jersey.

So, instead of staying on the orange route across country that I had highlighted in my atlas, I picked up the blue highlighter. Blue was reserved for deviations, usually short cuts. Concessions. Surrender. In this case, I traced over the Interstate highways that would get me home faster than the original scenic routes I had mapped for my return.

Since my homecoming, I have busied myself with putting my life back in order. No longer confined to the back of the car, the things I brought with me and the things I acquired along the way seemed to multiply and explode throughout the house. Piles of books, clothes for all seasons, gifts for family and friends. Suddenly, mounds of stuff are everywhere. I'm still not quite sure how my little Jetta held all those things so compactly.

One of the first tasks was to take the Jetta to the car wash, where the dull film of road dust accumulated since California was scrubbed away. The car emerged gleaming, except for the little round white Park- to-Park tour sticker I had on the back window, which looks proudly weathered. Gifts are being distributed to their intended recipients. Books and other resource materials are moving to a special shelf for the real work that will come later.

Memories of the trip, however, linger on. The sweet scent of dry sagebrush after the rainstorm near Joshua Tree. The odd sensation of traveling half-blind into the fog on “Going to the Sun Road” in Glacier National Park, with the stone cliff rising straight up from one side of the narrow road and a several hundred-foot drop-off on the other. The amazing turn in the road from an arid section of Washington State into the entrance of Mt. Rainier National Park, where suddenly you're in a verdant rainforest. Getting up before dawn to catch the new day coming to the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde.

The most striking thing I discovered during this trip was the amazing beauty of each park. Each had spectacular aspects that were unique. And each park was preserved thanks to the heroic efforts of a small number of dedicated individuals who believed that these spaces should be preserved - not for economic benefit, but simply for their remarkable, breathtaking beauty.

What started out as a re-creation of the Park-to-Park highway dedication tour of 1920 and an exploration of the architecture and landscape design of the western national parks turned into something much more. First, I developed a deep appreciation for the sufferings that the first tour members endured on their trip. I found that, in many cases, the even the most direct roads taken in 1920 were impossibly circuitous. Much of the 1920 route consisted of dirt roads. Cars lacked the sophisticated suspension systems we have today. The passengers enjoyed only minimal protection from heat and cold. I marveled at the stamina of the group, especially on the road through the impossibly hot and unending plains that stretch from Casper, Wyoming, toward Yellowstone. Although there are times I felt I was “suffering” on this trip as I zipped along at 70 mph in my comfy, fully air-conditioned car, it was nothing to what they endured. We are the happy beneficiaries of the good roads that were built between and within these special places as a result of their efforts.

Second, I was completely overwhelmed by the monumental and dynamic landscape of the American West. Unlike the complacent, undulating hills I have always known on the East Coast, something is always on the move in the West -- earthquakes, landslides, cloudbursts, volcanos, wildfires -- at any moment, a dramatic natural event of enormous proportions might happen. It's somewhat disconcerting to someone like me, who is used to a more sedentary (or sedementary) life.

During the course of this trip, I took some 4,800 photos. Many of these are just visual notes, meant to trigger a memory, record a thought, or document something I thought interesting. Other, more ambitious photos tried to capture a mood, the delicacy of a wildflower, or the fleeting light of sunrise. I am still not sure how successful those efforts were.  It will take a long, thoughtful look through the images to sort that out.

So, this part of my trip is complete. It was amazing. Thank you to all who shared the journey with me along the way. Thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to follow along vicariously. Now the real work begins. I will keep you posted.


National Parks Visited (June July 2010):

Yellowstone (WY); Glacier (MT); Mt. Rainier (WA); Redwood (CA); Crater Lake (CA); Lassen Volcanic (CA); Yosemite (CA); King's Canyon, formerly Gen. Grant (CA); Sequoia (CA); Joshua Tree (CA); Zion (UT); Grand Canyon (AZ); Mesa Verde (CO); and Rocky Mountain (CO).


Most Useful Reference Books on the trip:

Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways: The 275 Best Drives in the U.S. 3rd Ed. Washington DC:  National Geographic Society, 2007.

Kaiser, Harvey H. The National Park Architecture Sourcebook. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.

Laine, Don and Barbara. Frommer's National Parks of the American West. 6th Ed. Hoboken NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2008.

Whiteley, Lee and Jane Whiteley. The Playground Trail: The National Park-to-Park Highway: To and Through the National Parks of the West in 1920. Boulder CO: Lee Whiteley and Jane Whiteley, 2003.

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