America, 250 Miles at a Time
Follow into
Save into
Dear Crew of the USS Tom Clancy,
I am on the road, bound for Yorktown, Virginia to celebrate the Fourth of July with my best friend and his family; I’m currently in Mesa, Arizona visiting with my brother and his family and tomorrow I’ll be on the road to New Mexico to see some people I love there. I figured I would document and share the trip, so please enjoy and tell your friends.
Matt
Trip log
Day One—
Driving west and then south I’ll take 93 through Nevada to Las Vegas from Burley. I’d stopped off at the Historical Society for some post cards; I want to document this trip that way, with a post card from every location, a handwritten summary on each of the day’s activities, by the end I’ll have a captioned picture book documenting this journey to Virginia and back. It proved harder to find a post card in Burley than I anticipated. This will be a theme that repeats on the trip.
The first leg to Las Vegas an 8 Hour drive. On the way out of Idaho I pass wheat irrigated by wheel lines. There are windmills and gently rolling hills. The sky is blue with white wispy clouds—they got potatoes in on the field to the left, they’re blooming purple flowers
“Smile God Loves You” reads a sign hanging from a wheel line. By the two lane highway dust is thrown up by a red case tractor disc-ing up some earth.
I pass my uncle’s dairy, I see there’s 500 miles to Las Vegas.
With 15 miles to NatSooPah, a hot springs I like, there is hay neatly bound in rectangular bars, three-dimensional green tan rectangles on one side of the street. On the other side is freshly cut hay yet to be bound. I make it to Nevada, stop in at Cactus Pete’s in Jackpot for some post cards, put five dollars in the slot machine to pay my rent, lose it, move back on the road.
South of Jackpot, Nevada a sign reads open range cattle on highway as you descend through Cragie Bluffs into the jagged edges of Knoll Mountain. Respect your public lands, reads a sign, Goose Creek 4 miles.
Got gas in Wells, along with two string cheeses drove down towards McGill where there was a swimming hole so went there. Stripped out of my seersucker suit behind a towel, slipped into my swimsuit, did a few laps around the swimming hole.
Next stop is Ely, top off the tank. Leaving Ely on Grand Army of the Republic Drive, there are three hours down Vegas. This part of the drive looks like the Las Vegas New Mexico to Santa Fe. It’s a national forest—the Humboldt national forest. I’m on the down slope of the Murray Summit, 7316 feet. These are my favorite kind of mountains down there multilayered like geographically separated like three layers so I have to pay attention to the road. There’s a dust devil rising in the horizon, bisecting the sky.
The view down into these mountains is the kind that’ll have you believe in God.
Support the innovative work of “The Hunt for Tom Clancy” sign up today