Teddy Roosevelt at Yosemite Valley, CA. 1903.
Imagine America if Theodore Roosevelt had never been president. During his tenure, the “Cowboy President” set aside an astounding 230 million acres of U.S. public land as National Parks, National Monuments, National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, and National Game Preserves.
John Steinbeck loved Montana — actually, he fell in love with it. So far as we know, he had never been there before 1960. His travels across the country had all been at lower latitudes.
John Steinbeck spent the night of October 12, 1960, in Beach, North Dakota, just a few miles from the Montana border. He was about to fall in love with Montana. 
This morning I crossed the great Yellowstone River 27 miles west of Glendive on old Highway 10. There are not many places on the John Steinbeck Travels with Charley tour where you know you are PRECISELY where Steinbeck was, because so much has changed.
On my way back to North Dakota I visited my modest cabin 2 miles from Yellowstone National Park I wanted to make a pilgrimage to Old Faithful.
I have a special claim on the Little Missouri — or rather it has had a special claim on me. If I had to spend eternity in a single landscape, it would be about 10 miles north of Marmarth, North Dakota, where the Little Missouri just begins to carve up the viewshed.
May 9 / John Steinbeck, his dog Charley and his camper rig.
Clay visits John Steinbeck’s Sag Harbor home where the noted author began his 1960 cross-country journey, immortalized in Travels With Charley.
Clay leaves his home in Bismarck, North Dakota, and heads east on a circuitous route to Sag Harbor, New York, where John Steinbeck began his famous 1960 cross-country journey.
Airstream
April is the cruelest month, says T.S. Eliot, perhaps because it brings you some false spring that often enough is put in its place by late blasts of winter. This is certainly true on the Great Plains. But I am leaving on my big John Steinbeck Travels with Charley Tour on April 27 …
A whirlwind journey takes Clay from Bismarck, N.D., to Brooklyn, N.Y., to Farmington, N.M. and a view of America’s extraordinary multiplicity.