DISPATCHES FROM THE ROAD

Inspired by Thoreau and the inevitability of time, Clay undertakes sorting through a six-decade collection of thousands of books.

My Adventures in Downsizing

After spending five or six decades buying books, an enormous number of books, I have begun to downsize.
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A rare photograph of John Steinbeck, his dog Charley, and the truck camper, Rocinante, taken in the hills near Salinas, California. The image is one of the few that exist from Steinbeck's 1960 road trip that became the basis for Travels with Charley.

You Don’t End up Here By Accident: Rediscovering Steinbeck’s California Beneath a Lone Valley Oak.

Inspired by an image of the famous author in an old poster, and after years of searching, Listening to America’s Russ Eagle, with the help of intrepid friends, discovers the remote spot in the hills near Salinas, California, that John Steinbeck, his dog Charley, and the truck camper, Rocinante, visited on their 1960 journey.
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near Fremont Peak

Where Steinbeck Said Goodbye to His California Home — Video Dispatch

Clay and Russ Eagle recently visited Fremont Peak, which overlooks California’s Salinas Valley and Monterey Bay. It was an especially important spot for John Steinbeck and deeply tied to his youth. Russ reads a passage from Travels with Charley, where the famous author writes about his last visit to there. 
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Rocinante keys

Were They Dreaming? A Rare Visit Inside John Steinbeck’s Iconic Rocinante

Clay and sidekick, Russ Eagle, spend time hanging out in John Steinbeck's historic truck camper, Rocinante.
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Clay and friends enjoy a late summer afternoon on a remote section of the Missouri River in central Montana. (Photo Bryan Hall)

Four Perfect Days

Clay and friends are just off four perfect days canoeing remote sections of the Missouri River in central Montana.
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Clay Jenkinson's Listening to America Airstream trailer and truck at a campground

Assessing Two Years on the Road in My Airstream 

Clay assesses the good and bad as he wraps up his second season traveling America's byways in his 23' Airstream.
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Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast. It was near here in early 1806 that Sacagawea insisted she be allowed to join the expedition team going to see a whale that had washed up on the shore.

Sacagawea and the Blue Whale

Sacagawea’s insistence that she be allowed to join the reconnaissance team heading to see the great beached whale is one of the rarest instances in the entire Lewis and Clark journey where we hear her voice.
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Earlier this week, Clay made a pilgrimage to the site called Dismal Nitch, where Lewis and Clark were marooned for six miserable days in November 1805. There is a somewhat confusing academic debate about which of the three or four identical nitches within a two-mile stretch of the Columbia River estuary is the actual, official, certified Dismal Nitch. This seems to have sent Clay into a bit of a spin.

Ode to Dismal Nitch

Has our friend Clay Jenkinson been too long alone on the Lewis and Clark Trail?
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Meriwether Lewis was ignobly shot in the buttocks by his visually impaired hunting companion, Pierre Cruzatte, on their return to civilization in 1806

How Meriwether Lewis’ Unfortunate Hunting Mishap Brought to Mind the Bounty of American Consumer Capitalism

On the 221st anniversary of Meriwether Lewis’ hunting calamity, Clay ponders salt, macrobiotics, and an earlier extended personal journey on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
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My Montana Summer

Clay Jenkinson reports on his month-long adventure crisscrossing Montana in the long-since-passed footsteps of Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery.
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