The Road Trip (part 2)

Shifting Focus on the Roadside

Joel Rhymer

Sep 18, 2023

This sweet draft horse on the Minnesota roadside was just what I needed.

============================================================================

As I’ve been driving the past few days, I’ve been thinking of a photograph — Ernst Haas’ Route 66, Albuquerque, New Mexico (1969).

It is of one of the most influential photographs of the 20th century I believe, and one that I have remembered since I was young. I won’t post the photo in this blog because I don’t want to compare my meager pictures to it, so I will encourage you to go instead to the Ernst Haas Estate website and see it there.

Remarkable in its color, light, and composition, Route 66 shows a busy shopping strip full of cars and signs against a sky dark from a recent storm. The camera lens compresses the scene into an oversized jumble of advertising and mind-numbing clutter. It is a classic work of art. In the American media the photo became a famous commentary on urban sprawl and the corporate homogenization of American cities and towns that began in that era.

============================================================================

Another take on American roadsides can be found in the essay “Last Exit to America” by Wallace Stegner. It is a chapter in American Places (Penguin, 1981), a book Wallace Stegner co-authored with his son, Page Stegner.

“The tourist dollar is lifted not by competing entrepreneurs but by franchise motels and restaurant chains which make every accommodation the replica of the last one—efficient, clean, stereotyped, and sterile. You drive across the continent and sleep in the same bed every night, select from the same menu, confront the same Indian jewelry and bead work made in Hong Kong.”

— Wallace Stegner, “Last Exit to America.”

============================================================================

I planned the first part of this road trip I’m on as a zig-zag through the Great Lakes in order to visit some well-known hawk watching sites… Holiday Beach in Amherstburg, ON, Mackinac Straits in St. Ignace, MI, and Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN. That worked out better than I could have hoped. Great people, perfect weather, and amazing birds.

From Ontario, I went north from Detroit up to Bemidji. The route took me across the Mackinac Bridge, through the Upper Peninsula, across the Superior lakeshore of northern Wisconsin, and then diagonally across Minnesota. I wanted to be at certain places on specific days. So in order to keep to my schedule, I stayed mostly on major highways.

I went through some pretty outrageous tourist towns on the tedious drive. And my cynic came out. I started seeing the landscape in ways I didn’t want to see.

Restaurants were mostly franchises, or imitations of them. When I needed a hotel for a night in Bemidji, it became an ordeal trying to find anything that wasn’t an impersonal overpriced chain.

Any roadside establishment that wasn’t a franchise involved a hustle for tourist dollars - moccasins, beef jerky, smoked fish, or some kind of blueberry this or that.

============================================================================.

Americans like the familiar, whether they are in their hometown or far away. They want to know the menu before they arrive. Have it their way, you know.

Every exit, every shopping center starts to look the same. Sunoco, Michael’s, Bed Bath and Beyond. Starbucks, Staples, and Taco Bell.

I had to buy a new sleeping pad at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Duluth. The store looked exactly like the one in Albany.

If it weren’t for the size of the lake, St. Ignace in Michigan would be a dead ringer for Meredith, NH. Traffic and all.

Turn on commercial radio and everywhere it’s a rehash of hits from the 70’s and 80’s. Find a station playing new music and very soon you’ll hear a bland cover tune or a sample from a song decades ago.

Whatever it is they call country music now is especially formulaic. Some guy whining through his nose about his pickup truck. Even public radio has fallen victim to the sameness. The unavoidable pledge drive I heard in Michigan, with the banal banter between two hosts, sounded like every other unavoidable pledge drive I’ve heard for the past forty years. One nation.

============================================================================

The first week of the trip was suddenly taking a toll on me. The self-imposed pressure of a made-up schedule while rushing along major highways through touristy areas was counter to what I wanted from this trip. So I made a conscious decision to regroup.

It took some work, but I found a decent hotel in Bemidji. It gave me a chance to rest for a bit. I thought about what I really wanted, and so I started out the next morning with a shift in my focus.

I drove the back roads through northwestern Minnesota into northeastern North Dakota. I escaped the tourist zone. Last night I was in a sweet little city park in Langdon, ND that welcomes campers with hot showers and a cool breeze for $6 a night. Payment is on the honor system. The neighborhood kids have the run of the place. There’s the low hum of the grain elevator just outside town drying the harvest.

I’m set up next to the Legion ball field. There’s a woman staying here who walks around the outfield with her cat who’s not on a leash. No chain stores in sight. There is a replica of a Spartan nuclear missle standing proudly on the corner between the elementary school and the day care center which is a bit weird. Nevertheless, I’m not feeling much like a curmudgeon anymore. I’m heading out across the ocean of corn and grain that is North Dakota today.

============================================================================

Here’s some quick photos from this second leg of the trip. There were some things along the way that made it worth pulling over.