Clay returns home to Bismarck, North Dakota after traveling 39 days and 6,679 miles in the shadow of John Steinbeck’s great 1960 Travels with Charley journey.
Well, I’m home now for a few weeks, writing up my travels and planning Phase Two of the great John Steinbeck Travels with Charley tour of America, which begins in the second week of July.
Over the last 39 days, I traveled 6,679 miles or 171 miles per day. That’s too brisk. I will slow down on Phases Two and Three to about 150 miles per day to give myself more time to explore, read, write, reflect, and get more hiking in.
I spent time in 17 states: North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
I did some things not part of the Steinbeck itinerary in 1960. A short list includes Acadia National Park in Maine; Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, where Thomas Jefferson obtained his mastodon bones (though not by himself); the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York; the magnificent Field Natural History Museum of Chicago; Jack Kerouac’s grave and Walden Pond, both in Massachusetts; the Source of the Mississippi River and effigies of Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox Babe in northern Minnesota; and the World’s Largest Sandhill Crane in Steele, North Dakota.
Along the way, I conducted interviews in the Airstream with three important Steinbeck scholars: Bill Steigerwald of Bethany, West Virginia, the author of Dogging Steinbeck; Jay Parini of Middlebury, Vermont, a polymath and principal Steinbeck biographer; and Robert DeMott of Athens, Ohio, one of the finest Steinbeck literary critics, who signed for me a copy of his most recent book, Steinbeck’s Imaginarium. Taking my cues from Steinbeck, I offered each of them a snort of whisky in their coffee — they all declined!
I’ve taken a few thousand photographs along the way and several videos. And I’ve emerged as one of America’s unsung colored pencil and magic marker artists!! (Sung to the tune of Don’t Quit Your Day Job).
From the dining table in the Airstream, I have recorded three Listening to America podcasts, two with fellow Steinbeckian (and Lewis and Clark lover) Russ Eagle of North Carolina, and one with David Horton of Radford, Virginia, a frequent guest host on the LTA podcast.
I stayed in state parks in Minnesota, New York, and Ohio, at seven or eight KOA Campgrounds, and at a fascinating series of locally owned (Ma and Pa) RV parks, a couple of them slightly sketchy. I stayed at the Ambassador East Hotel in downtown Chicago for two nights because Steinbeck stayed there with his wife Elaine in early October 1960. (It felt like cheating.)
And, alas, I had four nights in a lonely Best Western in Wapakoneta, Ohio, when my Airstream broke down. But — there’s always what I now call an “aluminum lining” in the storm clouds of travel — I was able to spend time at the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta.
Still on my list of camp arrangements: I plan to stay in a few Walmart parking lots along the way, spend at least one night in Airstream-only campgrounds (to see how the other half lives), and try Harvest Hosts, wherein farms, ranches, wineries, etc., provide parking spaces for short stays. It sounds wonderful.
I’ve had dozens of encounters with people along the way, and all but two of them have been friendly. Keep in mind that I have spent most of my time so far in the heartland as I distill two very unscientific conclusions: 1) Most people are so exhausted from the political paralysis and the massive disruption of the Trump years that they declared that they were weary and worn down and one reason for their travels is to cut themselves off from the megaphone madness of our siloed cable “news” cosmos. 2) The Trump appeal, while diminished, is still very strong throughout heartland America.
It has been a wet spring on the eastern side of the Mississippi River. Now I understand why Ethan Allen called his insurgents the Green Mountain Boys. The eastern half of the United States is dramatically more forested than I had reckoned, and, as a plainsman, I sometimes found myself longing for the treelessness that begins at about 96 degrees longitude (the Minnesota-North Dakota border). It rained for parts or all of my days and nights for more than half of my Phase One journey.
Because of the LISTENING TO AMERICA logo on the side of my Airstream and the LTA ball cap I wore, I was asked about this project and my purposes at least a dozen times. Some people looked up Listening to America on the internet before approaching my rig in campgrounds or on the street. But the number one question I heard was, “Where’s your dog?”
Traveling alone, I’ve learned to hitch the trailer to my pickup with only a modest loss of time and dignity. And if you just leave me alone for a few hours, I can back the rig into a campsite! I witnessed husbands and wives bickering over backing up the rig in half a dozen states.
Only on three nights did I need to hook my Airstream up to a small whisper generator (it turns out to be a very loud whisper). I never let the gas in the pickup go below a quarter tank.
I was never lonely, but on a couple of occasions, I felt very alone out there, if that makes any sense. Give me a few books, connectivity, a laptop, and a caffeine source, and I can be happy and productive almost anywhere.
In short, I have thrived on the John Steinbeck trail. More to the point, retracing his 1960 odyssey has given me a new understanding of the book Travels with Charley and Steinbeck’s purposes and state of mind as he attempted to regain his creative mojo by exploring what he called “this monster country.”
Finally, I’ve been able to share with you several delightful drawings by my friend Nate C. of Colorado, with more to come.
I’m only just getting started, my friends, with two more Steinbeck phases to come. And next year, I’ll be retracing the entire Lewis and Clark Trail from Jefferson’s Monticello and Philadelphia all the way to Astoria, Oregon.
I’m using these historical and literary frameworks to try to make sense of America and its place in the world as we approach our 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. That’s my overarching purpose. I’ve been reading books that address this theme along the way, most recently Richard Slotkin’s A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America, and David E. Sanger’s New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.
It has been a blast — or was that the fire in the battery box of the Airstream?
An Assortment of Clay’s “Sketches From the Road”
Over the next few months, Clay is shadowing Steinbeck’s 10,000-mile trek around the USA (and making a few detours of his own). Clay’s expedition is a central part of LTA’s big initiative to explore the country and take the pulse of America as it approaches its 250th birthday. Be sure to follow Clay’s adventures here and on Facebook — and subscribe to our newsletter.