Tag Archives: road trips

Little Blue

June 23, 2018
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It was 10:30 in the morning Mountain Time when I landed in Missoula, Montana, and was standing half-awake in a rental car agency parking lot. A train snaked past, and its loud whistle perked me up some. It had been a whirlwind morning: I had left my house in suburban New Jersey at 2:45 a.m. and stood in lines at Newark Liberty International Airport at an hour when there shouldn’t be any lines anywhere, but there were lines because it’s New Jersey—there’s always traffic. Two drowsy flights later—one over Montana’s many mountains in this small Embraer jet that I’m convinced was powered by prayer and hungry gerbils—and by the time New Jersey was sitting down to lunch, I was in Big Sky country. And to be fair, that Embraer jet ride ended up being one of the smoothest flights I’ve ever enjoyed. Trust the gerbils.

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Despite on-time, smooth flights across three-quarters of the United States, I was under-caffeinated, over-tired, and famished when I explained to the car rental agency representative that I had booked an economy car online. I wasn’t in the mood for paperwork or chit-chat, but between paperwork and chit-chat, he walked me further out into the parking lot towards the train tracks and said, “Well, we don’t have much in the lot at the moment, but we’ve got Little Blue here.”

I looked up. Little Blue was an eight-cylinder, relatively new Dodge Ram 2500, with the words “Heavy Duty” next to the 2500. Not sure what 2500 meant, but I certainly knew what “Heavy Duty” meant. In fact, the Dodge Ram tagline on its website is “Tow With Confidence.” I had nothing to tow but a large purple floral Vera Bradley bag that contained three outfits, red Tony Lama cowgirl boots, and a donut floatie.

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My “economy” car, I soon discovered, required either a small private helicopter to hoist me up into the front seat or the strong arms of Sasquatch himself. The helicopter was too expensive and Sasquatch was likely on a commercial shoot somewhere, so thank God for those body sculpting classes I’ve been taking to mitigate middle-aged metabolism because my biceps were put to the test. Every time I got behind the wheel involved me grabbing a handle built into the door and pulling all of my body weight into the front seat in one quick, hopefully graceful move. My left bicep is now visibly bulkier than my right—at least for now.

I turned the key, and I won’t lie: when I heard that V8 growl for the first time and the truck quake with enthusiasm, I got excited. I felt at home. Everything about where I was and what I was doing felt spot-on. I grabbed my lip gloss and dabbed a touch of red shimmer on to my lips even though I was unshowered and looked like some English lit professor coming off a bender. I was driving a giant truck and wanted to look pretty. Don’t ask why.

GoogleMaps told me where to go, and within 15 minutes, I was at the DoubleTree Hilton on the beautiful and narrow Clark Fork River, and because it was brunch time by anyone’s standards, my room wasn’t ready yet. I greeted this news with unbridled excitement, and said to the woman behind the counter (who was showered and wearing her lipstick much better than I) “That’s ok. I’ll go sleep in my truck!”

I saw opportunity.

She appeared unfazed and quite accustomed to people announcing they’d be grabbing a snooze in their trucks. “No problem,” she said with that smile that people behind counters always have. “We’ll text you when your room is ready.”

The Dodge Ram 2500 comfortably seats six, so I crawled into the backseat, and made a nest of my Yankee white privilege items: my Vera Bradley bag, my Turkish bath towel, my Italian suede shawl. I grabbed my Qantas airline eye mask out of my bag because the sunshine was bright, and I got comfy, wishing that travel could always be like this—long hours of go-go-go capped with feeling cozy and safe inside a truck the size of my first studio apartment.

I was mildly irked when the hotel texted only an hour later to say my room was ready (damn efficient cleaning staff!). I gathered my belongings, trudged to room 332 thinking nothing could be as comfortable as the backseat of Little Blue, and then promptly dropped my attitude when I saw the balcony overlooking the river and a fly fisherman working the line. The sounds of the rushing river gave me a Norman Maclean moment, and I realized it was best to leave New Jersey behind for the long weekend ahead and chill the hell out. Just let Montana do what Montana knows how to do, and that’s to wow you with its purple mountains majesty. What was right outside my hotel door was exactly what Francis Scott Key had been talking about.

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Over the next four days, Little Blue and I went everywhere together: Jack’s Saloon in nearby Lolo where I compared truck sizes with the dudes who parked next to me; the downtown Missoula Shakespeare & Co. bookstore where Maxim Loskutoff’s new book was temporarily out of stock; Clyde’s Coffee not too far from the bookstore, which serves a fantastic gluten-free breakfast; Polson at the base of Flathead Lake where our paddleboarding reservation was cancelled due to chop on the water; Bigfork, near the top of Flathead Lake, where a breeze blew my donut into the water, resulting in me taking off my sweater and my jewelry and easing myself into a freezing lake to swim in my workout clothes after a flotation device that has accompanied me to four continents, five countries (Cuba, twice!), and six states. Little Blue was parked outside while I ate a bowl of butter pooled around my risotto. He was parked nearby while I accidentally walked into a food truck rally and live concert that ended up being a ton of fun. He was there when my friend and I sat on a ridge at the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas in lovely Arlee. I loved seeing mud streaked on its sides. I loved how after the rain it became a brighter blue (and Montana needs rain). I loved how people got out of my way on the freeway.

Like some loyal steed, Little Blue stood in pouring rain or glistening sunshine waiting to see where we’d go next. In four days, I put approximately 400 miles on that truck. I imagine the only other better ways to see and experience Montana is to ride an actual loyal steed or paddleboard across Flathead Lake—when it’s not choppy.

Before that first visit to Montana, I always viewed myself as a Prius-kind-of-girl, driving something thoughtful, leaving behind minimal carbon footprint, patting myself on the back for being a good citizen—all the classic urban blue state virtues.

Yet there was something immensely visceral and satisfying about driving Little Blue through the mountains, curving along the road that hugs Flathead Lake, my hands on the wheel, the road unspooling before us. Mountains. Cherry tree orchards. Rivers. A giant lake. I realized then that perhaps no matter where I go in this world, no matter how liberal I may claim to be, how much recycling I do or tweeting trash against the NRA, I am simply an American woman who loves driving a big-ass truck while wearing lipstick.

My Quixotic Search for Small

April 27, 2015
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Maybe it’s because I live in the shadow of the Empire State Building or that I’ve been in a car accident during rush-hour commuter traffic on the George Washington Bridge or that a homeless guy in the West 4th subway station peed on my foot (I was wearing flip-flops, a no-no in New York), but lately my travel interests have shifted to anything that feels smaller, more green, less crowded, and reflective of the past because my day-to-day can be too big, too gray, too busy and sometimes too 21st century.

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(American Gothic by Grant Wood, 1930)

It’s a tall order. Small, green, uncrowded and old are hard to come by in this sprawling, metropolitan, monochromatic area of millions where too many people dress in black year-round. History lives on every block, but New Yorkers themselves don’t seem to have an awareness of these places. Ask strangers passing through the subway where George Washington threw a party to bid farewell to his officers at the end of the Revolutionary War and you’ll likely get a quizzical look (it’s the Fraunces Tavern, a great place for charcuterie and live Irish music). Washington’s name is all over the Big Apple, but 21st century New York City doesn’t seem to remember its 18th century self after so many face lifts. The Fraunces Tavern down in the Financial District near Battery Park is a great example of old, but it can get crowded. Heading north of the tavern to Chelsea, the High Line is a great example of something green, but it’s always crowded. Continuing north, I suppose Central Park is somewhat old and usually green but it’s way too crowded. Long story short, occasional bouts of green and vintage can be found across the city, but nothing uncrowded, even if I were to inch my way up to the Bronx and into Westchester where there’s a lot of green.

So where in America can a gal stretch her legs and quiet her mind?

Plenty of places, but not many that I find super-inspiring (with exceptions of our national parks; I’m talking about unprotected land). I’ve driven coast-to-coast three times so far and have become increasingly turned off by what I see, the “golden arches,” rampant obesity, billboards for Walmart, malls, malls and more malls. Yes, there are many Americas in America, but the one I just described is the one that’s most obvious from the highway, and it makes me wonder what the United States looked like before corporate consumerism swallowed us whole. I’m looking for something very particular, old like a random 19th century farmhouse on a slow road, not manicured Colonial Williamsburg-old. Or something not golf course-green, but an uninterrupted forest green like Vermont (it’s in the state’s name after all), where billboards are illegal and the farm-to-fork movement isn’t a movement but daily practice.

Ok, so farmhouses are often smallish—at least smallish compared with McMansions—uncrowded and green and old, right, so maybe I’m on to something there? I can already hear my 11-year-old’s eyes rolling with this one (though she does like my idea of AirStreaming through Canada into Alaska and picnicking on salami and salmon along the way). I do like farmhouses, so maybe I drive around America checking out old farmhouses and taking pictures of them the way photographer Robert Dawson and his son Walker traveled America photographing public libraries. Nearby in Brooklyn is a Dutch saltbox farmhouse built in 1652 that has successfully weathered urbanization as well as generations of hippies, hipsters and the craft beer revival. It’s called the Wyckoff House and it looks like a fun day trip, but it’s also spittin’ distance from a BJ’s, so not very green, and definitely not uncrowded. I could meander up the Hudson into the Catskills, back into Vermont’s verdant valleys, around New England and find some old farmhouses in sparsely populated towns there. Maybe that will quell this urge. We’ll see.

My quest for smaller, quieter space is undoubtedly a Quixotic one, but I’m convinced these places, these old farmhouses and less developed nooks in America exist, though they are getting harder to find because so many are being encroached by suburbanization. (Suburbanization is simultaneously ruining cities; stand in the middle of New York’s Union Square as I recently did and every store front can be found everywhere else: Children’s Place, TGIF Friday’s, Barnes and Noble, Staples. Yes, Union Square has a bustling farmers’ market but those veggie stands are besieged by Corporate America.) Lately, I’ve been wondering what Washington would think if he could see America now? Would he applaud our entrepreneurship or mourn the loss of land and landscape?

My need for these quieter, unvarnished slices of Americana is in direct reaction to the suburban affluence that surrounds me. As I write this, construction workers are hammering away at a couple McMansions; two are going up right now on the next street over. I jog or bike by them daily. Mid-century homes are getting bulldozed left and right while my husband and I work to renovate our quirky 1926 Colonial. We’re getting backyard chickens this spring, and, yes, while Brooklyn hipsters are also doing this, I know my interest in raising hens is to create at home what I am losing in my community, something small and sweet, hopefully green, not too busy, with some age to it—before someone knocks it down.

Vermont: A Study in Red and White

February 21, 2015
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Zigzagging over Vermont this week brought to mind this very meditative William Carlos Williams’ poem titled “The Red Wheelbarrow,” which was first published in 1923:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

In February, actually—I’m guessing throughout much of the winter—the Green Mountain state is a study in red and white, red barns dotting snow-covered fields so white and smooth and completely unblemished they look lakes reflecting the sky. A few times we would look at a field and ask aloud “Is that a pond or a field?” because there were places where the two appeared identical and we couldn’t tell what lay beneath all that alabaster snow. There are several weeks, actually a few months more to go before white chickens and red wheelbarrows will be back outside, but the poem repeated in my mind like a song as we drove scenic Route 100, a north-south road that twists through the center of the state’s forests and farms.

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Everyone drives a Subaru Outback in Vermont, but the red barn is the state’s true workhorse, the one that has weathered not just the 20th century, but the latter half of the 19th century as well. No one can convert a Subaru Outback into retail space or houses of worship, but Vermonters have converted old red barns into artists’ studios, ski shops, flower shops, restaurants, welcome centers, event space (with for rent signs out front), and one peach-painted barn served as the town synagogue. I stopped to look at a red barn decorated with weather-beaten Buddhist prayer flags. Some red barns simply stored hay, housed cows and served as a place to keep tractors until grass grew again. I learned about this beautiful, five-story barn that’s part of the Farmhouse Inn in Woodstock, Vermont. Built in 1915, this barn protects about 40 dairy cows from harsh winter weather. I wanted to go inside, but we were just passing through on our way to meet a friend for lunch in Brattleboro.

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I drove by some gorgeous red barns that I wanted to stop and photograph, but there were no where safe places to pull over. Plowing had created four-foot high snow banks alongside the road, so I reluctantly passed up some gorgeous, iconic red barns, some still with Christmas decor clinging to giant front doors. At our lunch in Brattleboro, our friend told us about his brother’s annual fall festival barn party and I invited myself simply to go spend an October weekend partying in someone’s barn—because partying inside a historic barn probably feels a lot different than sipping cocktails on some midtown skyscraper rooftop. I grew up surrounded by barns and sometimes miss them living in suburban New York City. Red barns exude endurance and hospitality. There’s something very reassuring in seeing these barns stand strong against windy white winters; someone has taken great care of the land that nourishes the animals and people residing there, that inside the barn it is warm and safe and welcoming, that the snow will always melt and that spring will always return.

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