LifeTwo Interview with "Road Trip USA" author Jamie Jensen

For those who have discovered that happiness does not come from ambition or acquisition, but is found in those moments when you are concerned with neither, Jamie Jensen’s Road Trip USA is the perfect reference work. A good road trip extracts you from the numbness of everyday life, reigniting your sensitivity to the world around you. LifeTwo recently chatted with author Jensen about the new (fifth) edition of Road Trip USA and about how a good road trip may be just the stimulus America needs.

What are some of the changes for the fifth edition of Road Trip USA?

One thing I’ve tried to do in the new edition is to be more selective about the places I include. With the advent of the Internet, information is so much more accessible than it used to be (so much so that I often feel inundated), so instead of mentioning 3 or 5 nice hotels or places to eat, now I focus on one or two really special ones, and use the space to write about why I think they’re really worth a visit.

After all these years on the road, are you still discovering new sights?

Yes, even after so many years I’m always discovering new sights, and adding great roads. This time I finally made it to Chattanooga Tennessee, home of the famous “Choo choo” and location of one of the greatest old-tyme All-American tourist attractions, Lookout Mountain and Rock City, whose advertising signs can still be seen on the sides of barns along country roads all over the eastern USA.

Conversely, have any landmarks of note disappeared and become part of the lore of the American highway?

One roadside sight we recently lost was The Spindle, a fantastic piece of Pop Art that once stood off Route 66 on the outskirts of Chicago. As seen in classic Mike Myers movie Wayne’s World, The Spindle was a giant tower of 1970s American cars (capped with a bright red VW Beetle), all stacked one on top of another and all impaled on a spikey spindle, like you used to see on office desks. This super-sized commentary on America’s obsession with automobiles stood in a very unlikely spot: a suburban mini-mall, and I think the locals thought they were being mocked. But The Spindle was brilliant – I hope it may someday find another home, perhaps near that other piece of car art: Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo Texas, which is still going strong.

Road Trip USA feels like the work of a team of travel reporters. Have you actually visited all of the sights detailed in the book?

You’re certainly right that Road Trip USA is a huge project – but yes, I’ve been to all the sights and driven all the roads in the book. All 35,000+ miles! That said, I’ve also had a ton of help along the way. In the beginning, I worked with a dozen other like-minded travel writers to cover all the roads for the first couple of editions, and I still get local expert travel writers to help me keep tabs on places.

And readers write in with tips about where to find good pie and coffee, and with corrections, for which I’m always grateful (and for which I pay them in free copies!).

I love to hear about people’s road trip experiences at RoadTripUSA@hotmail.com

How does today’s harsh economic climate mesh with the idea of a road trip? Is the road trip a luxury we can do without or is it the right tonic for the times?

A road trip is definitely a tonic, a great antidote to any sense of depression, mental or economic. Hopping in the car and traveling around, looking for fun and feeling free, is great therapy, and certainly helps overcome any sense of gloom and doom.

Besides the fact that it’s a lot less expensive than a trip to Disney World et al, a road trip has a number of advantages over more traditional vacations, because a road trip is all about enjoying your time, rather than spending money. For me, road trips are about discovering less-hyped (and therefore less expensive!) destinations, going to minor league baseball games rather than the Big Leagues for example, and stopping at Mom ‘n’Pop motels in small and medium-sized towns rather than swanky big city hotels.

Also, on a road trip you can be flexible and spontaneous – you don’t need to plan way ahead of time, or go away for a whole week or two, or race to catch a plane or a train.

And a road trip doesn’t have to be an ambitious, coast-to-coast expedition. It’s amazing to me how refreshing it can be to go for what we used to call a “Sunday Drive” and remember what fun driving can be, especially when you feel relaxed enough to stop and wander along some small-town Main Street, stop for an ice cream, or to look at old baseball cards in some funky old antique shop.

Simple pleasures are still the best, and simple pleasures are what a road trip is all about.

Having traveled on many of the highways in your book, we’re amazed at just how “open” the open road is. Even during the summer travel season, once you’re off the interstate, driving is a traffic-free pleasure. Do you ever look at the great modern cars stuck in rush hour traffic and think, “That coupe would really enjoy a week or so on the Oregon Trail?”

Using cars for urban transit seems like more of a waste of time and resources than ever – so for people who are sick to death of driving in 10mph rush hour traffic, I highly recommend heading out from the city to rediscover the joys of the open road, for sure.

And for people who think a road trip means a long drive down I-5 or I-95, think again: the way to go on a road trip is to head off onto some of the old-fashioned and much more enjoyable stretches of two-lane highways like I cover in Road Trip USA – roads where you can actually (and legally!) pull off to the side and enjoy the view, or stop for a milk shake – without having to fear some huge 18-wheeler crashing up your tailpipe.

Along those lines, what is your vehicle of choice for a memorable road trip?

I have a few different road trip vehicles. For longer trips, I often fly most of the way then pick up a rental car and do a loop trip – you can get some great rental car deals out there, thanks to the tanking economy. Hopping into a brand-new rental car, and letting someone else deal with depreciation (and oil changes!), immediately makes me feel richer and happier.

And when I travel around the wide open spaces of the western US, where motels etc can be fewer and far between, I take my trusty VW camper so I can linger in the parks and carry whatever food and supplies I might need, without worrying about getting on to the next town. The camper is also my “family travel” vehicle, since it has enough space for all four of us to stretch out (so long as my pre-teen boys stop growing some time soon).

We agree with your characterizing the interstates as “soulless,” but we wonder why it has to be so. Is it because, by the time the interstates went in, the corporatization of America was complete and mom-and-pop had no chance of establishing a foothold? Or is it the fault of Americans who need the predictability of the same old franchises when they come down the off-ramp? Is fast food the new comfort food?

That’s an interesting, but very complicated question. My sense is that the spread of highway systems, especially after WWII, more or less inspired the franchises because people who were away from home were drawn to the safety and security of familiar signs and menus. Given a choice, people who were hungry and in a hurry chose to eat at places they had already tried back home, and to sleep at Holiday Inns and the like, where they’d know what to expect.

Nowadays, thankfully, people seem to be rediscovering the pleasures of new and different, regional American experiences, and I think we’re more likely to take a chance on some local, Mom ‘n’ Pop café and enjoy local specialties, rather than wanting to eat the same thing for dinner no matter where they go.

That said, I once had a roommate who drove all the way across the USA eating only at Pizza Huts, so my taste may still be a minority opinion.

Do you have some tips for the novice road tripper, some common mistakes he/she should look out for?

The main mistake "newbie" road-trippers tend to make is one of over-excitement: they tend to drive too much, and not stop often enough or long enough to really absorb much from the places they visit. I fully understand the "white line fever" feelings that can hypnotize road trippers into driving and driving, but for me the whole point of taking a road trip is the opportunity that independent travel offers us to encounter new, different, interesting scenes -- not just gas stations and Pizza Huts! My warning, especially to fans of the Cannonball Run: A road trip is not a race!

Where do you stand on satellite radio? Does it enhance the modern road trip or do you miss the flavor of local radio?

That’s a tough question (not least because I’ve never invested in the gear you need to get Sirius or XM…). But to be honest, there are so few local radio stations anymore, I am tempted to give satellite radio (or Internet radio) a try.

In the 20 years or so since I’ve been traveling around the USA (make that 27 years – my first cross-country adventure kicked off way back in 1982!), I’d say more than half of what you used to be able to listen to has gone off the air. And if they are still in business, chances are they’ve been bought up by some mega-corporation and are broadcasting some satellite stream of their own, which is kind of sad, considering how much variety you used to get, with different music and different accents all over the country.

Though on local radio at least you can still get local sporting events and news – I still tune in to AM stations, where you get much more local interest (in between the nationally syndicated talk shows). Especially with local ads – I love it when a station is “Broadcasting live from Ed’s Ford and Tractor, down on Main Street in Pleasantville” or what have you.

The one bright spot is college radio, way over there at the left end of the FM dial, which still seems pretty lively and local.

When local radio is co-opted by big media, is your best bet is a mix-CD? If so, which artists do you have to save room for?

With all the indistinguishable “modern country” and “oldies” stations out there, I usually bring enough CDs in case local radio ever does let me down. And the range of music that makes a road trip great is pretty varied – you’ve got to have some Johnny Cash, some Merle Haggard (“White Line Fever”), and some Willie Nelson; some blues (Howling Wolf comes along with me, wherever I go); also some Bob Dylan (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” is the best traveling song ever, imho), and of course Chuck Berry, an overlooked national treasure who really is a poet of roads and cars: “No Particular Place to Go” is pure poetry, to my mind.

When I’m doing Route 66, I often find myself drawn to 1940s swing and jazz – Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, and Nat King Cole of course, who had the first hit with the Bobby Troup song “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”, later covered by everyone and anyone you can imagine, including the Rolling Stones.

Any list of road trip tunes will have to be a work in progress, but here are some more of my personal faves: “Radar Love,” by Golden Earring (curiously enough, a band from Holland, I think!), anything by Ry Cooder, especially the soundtrack to Paris, Texas; “Sweet Home Alabama”, which has the greatest guitar riff ever. And to lighten the load, any On the Road music compilation would have to include Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road, Jack,” and Roger Miller’s tongue in cheek “King of the Road.”

I’m sure I’m forgetting some classics, but how’s that for a start?

That should get us to the next filling station in great spirits. We can’t end without asking if you ever found “the perfect stretch of two-lane blacktop?”

Fortunately, I’ve found dozens of “perfect roads”, all over the country. Being a California boy, I have to say I love the Pacific Coast Highway, especially the beachfront stretches through Malibu and between LA and San Diego, and the absolutely stunning section through Big Sur, where the road hangs at the edge of the continent, between the mountains and the Pacific.

I really love driving around the red rock deserts of the southwestern US – near Monument Valley, Arizona’s stretch of Route 66 east and west of the Grand Canyon, is fantastic, and the Rocky Mountains have some great roads – US-2 across western Montana, especially the Going-to-the Sun Road across Glacier National Park, is unforgettable. The Million Dollar Highway in western Colorado is pretty magical, too – and at 13,000 feet, it must be about as high as you can get and still stay on the pavement.

The Great Lakes and New England regions all have great roads, too – Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was a real eye-opener for me, and I could list many miles of two-lane highways in Vermont that tick all my boxes as well.

Then you’ve got other classic “All-American Roads”, like the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, which not only offers great views but really makes you appreciate civil engineering as it winds along the Appalachian crest.

And last but not least, the unforgettable “Overseas Highway” which is basically one long bridge across the Florida Keys, floating about the brilliant blue waters of the Caribbean. Add in the many tasty roadside seafood shacks, and constant access to Key Lime Pie, and that’s as close to a perfect road as I can imagine.

About the Author: After spending his early twenties bumming around the country and ghost writing a book for the Grateful Dead, in 1990 Jamie set to work researching and writing Road Trip USA. Since then he has traveled more than 400,000 miles in search of the perfect stretch of two-lane blacktop. Far from burned out, Jamie has trips in the works that include the Appalachian Trail (an October "fall color" tour, from Maine to Georgia), and The Great River Road (built around the many end-of-summer blues festivals in and around the Mississippi Delta region).

About the Interviewer: This interview was conducted by Steven Phillip Petralia who has just joined LifeTwo as our lead reviewer. Mr. Petralia is a screenwriter and author and has reviewed movies and books for TimeWarner media properties among others.