I’ve mapped out a tentative route for my trip from Portland to the East Coast. Of course, I’ll be contacting editors for job offers along the way, so I may never actually get to my hometown of Lambertville, New Jersey… but this is the plan so far.
View Directions to lambertville, nj in a larger map
I’m making a point of staying off interstates from time to time, so I can see a little more scenery and talk to some people. A few projected stops:
- The historic Santiam Pass, carrying Route 20 over the Cascade Range in Central Oregon.
- The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
- My family in Aspen, Colorado.
- Dodge City, Kansas (which I will then get the hell out of).
- A Kansas City barbecue joint to be determined.
- Mountaintop removal mining outside Charleston, WV.
- A cruise along the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, which stretch from Birmingham, Alabama to northern New Jersey.
I leave on August 31. I’ll be blogging the whole trip right here… and please leave your suggestions for other things to see in the comments.
Evan
/ August 22, 2010All right, you asked for it…
Kansas City BBQ: definitely Arthur Bryant’s, 1727 Brooklyn Ave, KCMO. Order a beef sandwich, of course, and take some sauce home with you.
Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, 6726 Chippewa, St. Louis, MO. If you want to sound like a native, ask people in St. Louis where they went to high school. In a city as heavily Catholic, notoriously insular, and racially tense as St. Louis, this question (often known simply as “The Question”) will, with a little research, tell you everything you need to know about someone.
If you’re interested in the creepiest of Mormon culture, stop by Provo. While Temple Square in SLC is a one-square-block fortress of cultishness in what is in essence a rather typical Mountain West city, Provo (and surrounding Utah County) are 90% Mormon and offer a slice of life “behind the Zion Curtain.” Yes, folks, this is where a good chunk of those “Yes on 8″ donations came from.
The small town of Lucas in Central Kansas was a Scav Hunt stop two years ago, and is worth the detour. It’s best known for the Grassroots Art Center, spoons growing in a vacant lot downtown, a strange structure called the Garden of Eden, and, best of all, the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things, an exhibit curated by an awesome woman named Erika Nelson. You might be able to see the world’s smallest version of the 2008 Scav Hunt list.
The private, gated streets of the Central West End in St. Louis, MO, one of the oddest manifestations of early-20th-century exclusionary zoning I’ve ever seen.
Moonlite Bar-B-Que in Owensboro, KY, for BBQ mutton and burgoo (a thick Kentucky stew).
Bill Volk
/ August 22, 2010If you wish to take a detour through Pittsburgh, I will give you a hero’s welcome and show you things both great and terrible.
Also, no journey through Kansas is complete without the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things Traveling Roadside Attraction and Museum. I was a judge during the year when Scav Hunt sent people to Kansas I can forward you all the road trip items, if you desire.
Stefan
/ August 23, 2010@Evan: Thanks buddy. I knew you’d come through. I’ll be sure to try the BBQ, and that gated-streets thing in St. Louis sounds unmissable.
@Bill: I’m very curious about Pittsburgh. I imagine it as being a lot better than everybody thinks it is.
Also, I hope my trip doesn’t descend into unhinged idiocy like this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/23/ayn-rand-world-largest-book-ad
s.mirk
/ August 23, 2010Fossil, OR! Stop for a milkshake and also the free dig-your-own fossil bed.
Branson, MO has a Dolly Parton themed dinner-theater establishment definitely worth your while.
And you would probably get a kick out of touring the Focus on the Family HQ in Colorado Springs, CO. They have a GIANT SLIDE!
Bill Volk
/ August 24, 2010Pittsburgh isn’t as Rust Belt-ey as people may imagine. The population isn’t extremely diverse, because people still don’t immigrate to Pittsburgh in any significant numbers, but it’s livable and aesthetically pleasing, and I’m meeting more noteworthy people there all the time.