LISTEN: This is NOT just another travelog boilerplate.

No… we’re not even sure how that would go. Instead, these are fragmented impressions… mental snapshots from a recently released inmate of the professional hamster-cage! From the baker’s-dozen months spent on the road, impressions came fast, and furious, and much of this account’s details, admittedly, come from an overamped imagination. You see, Ronnie is a student of American Gonzo Journalism. He’s a hopeless optimist, idealistic to a fault. And though this brand of idealism drew some of Ronnie’s gonzo heroes to terminal cynicism, Ronnie’s not ruined yet. He clings to a measure of confidence that the slow, steady bending of humanity’s arc advances toward justice.

What follows is a brief summary of this frantic, glorious gallop through the sun-blasted plains, the rain-slicked coasts, and the very twisted, tangled Fibrillating Heart of our Divided Nation!

PHASE I (the great Kanorado-Kush Kingdom):

Gotta start in the Heartland, where the sun beats down like a vengeful god and the sky stretches on forever, a big, blue bowl of possibilities. We’re talking KANSAS, baby! The land of Oz and Dorothy and a whole lot of self-reliance, wheat, cattle, and grit. Some call it “flyover country,” those Manhattan-bound jet-setters, but they don’t know jack! Kansas loopers? They’re a different breed! Tough as old boot leather, polite enough to make you blush, and loyal as soldiers on night-watch in the foxhole. They’ll loan you a chainsaw, they’ll hunt for your lost dog, they’ll even spot you a smoky coffin nail if you’re down on your luck! But don’t forget… they believe in karma, and it comes back faster than a tumbleweed in a tornado! That’s right, justice delivered by a man of steel. And the whole damn state’s fighting over who gets to claim him…

Smallville is EVERYtown, Kansas!

Then, BAM! You cross the line and you’re in MISSOURI, the Show-Me State! But what’s showing ain’t necessarily pristine, unvarnished truth, no sir! John Steinbeck said it best: Pure objective observation? About as likely as a snowball surviving a Missouri summer! In other words, we see the world through our own tinted, yin/yang, magic eight-ball lens, and the best one can do is try to be fair, like a tipsy judge on a bender! These Missourians? A hearty bunch! Friendly as hound dogs with a belly full of barbecue, but with a healthy dose of skepticism that’s as down-to-earth as a hand-me-down Chevy pickup. And the political tension? So thick you could cut it with a butter knife. These days it seems the two sides won’t even talk to each other!

Now… hold on to your wallets, loopers, because we’re heading west! COLORADO! Land of the “Green Solution” and everything else! A playground for upwardly mobile yuppies with killer jobs and a penchant for yoga pants! But that privilege? It’ll cost more than a designer purse! But Ronnie Hays, bless his hop-soaked heart, he was down for the real deal. Every fragrant autumn, he’d don that pretzel necklace, the size of a Texas T-bone, and descend into the sacred, noisy, frothing bacchanal of The Great American Beer Fest! A communion of hops and happiness! Rocky Mountain High… Colorado!

PHASE II (The Great Plains and Sasquatch):

First up, NEBRASKA! A land where the motto on the flag screams “Equality Before the Law!” with all the subtlety of a neon sign advertising a discount root canal! It’s a relic, a dusty-corner piece of history from the Civil War, when they removed those “whites only” voting restrictions and welcomed newly emancipated African Americans! These days, they’re too busy extolling the virtues of “The Good Life” to dwell on any radical, progressive past!

Next, through the vast, empty sky of the Great Plains we find… SOUTH DAKOTA! Where Rapid City rolls like San Francisco with a giant grain elevator added for Midwest ambiance! The drive from Chadron, Nebraska to Rapid City was a technicolor dreamscape. Yellow wood-sorrel rippled across the rolling plains like a giant, undulating welcome mat punctuated by a playful thunderstorm featuring glimpses of blueberry sky and cotton candy clouds leaking a steady stream of nature’s own mercies. Ronnie’s initial plan was to hit a car wash in Rapid City to scrub the bugs off Rocinante’s snout, but Mother Nature, in all her benevolence, had already taken care of that with her pre-dawn van wash special. And for those wondering if we were ever going to find the hot springs, BINGO! In fact, it’s in the town’s name, “Hot Springs” South Dakota. The kicker? Ronnie met a retired park ranger while soaking in the steaming mineral water. Through the fog, Mr. Scotty spun a bizzarro story. Go HERE for the details.

Oh boy… egg on our face. You see, Ronnie has always confused IOWA with Ohio, so when he arrived in Ohio and learned it was the REAL “Buckeye” state, he felt some nostalgic pains for the days when publishers could afford fact-checkers AND copy editors. Anyway, the egregious error was corrected, and apologies to all Cardinals AND Buckeyes. Oh… one more thing. We think it’s important to note, among the hubbub over AI wrecking creative and journalistic landscapes, the abovementioned error (confusing Ohio’s with Iowa’s state mascots) was all-too-human.

ILLINOIS, the “Land of Lincoln,” struck a dissonant chord. A state where prestigious universities rub shoulders with soul-crushing property taxes, where the “Second City’s” sports teams inspire religious devotion amidst a backdrop of political chicanery. The summers, Ronnie discovered, were steam baths, the winters, cryogenic chambers… a climate that could curdle a saint’s disposition. Yet, there are glimmers of hope. Starved Rock State Park, a Xanadu of waterfalls and canyons, promise respite from the urban sprawl. The state boasts a pantheon of American icons… Honest Abe Lincoln, of course, but also Carl Sandburg, the bard of Spoon River, and Michelle Obama, a beacon of intelligence and moxy. Even Michael Jordan, the basketball demigod (and Bugs Bunny’s unlikely sidekick), hails from these plains.

On to Duluth, MINNESOTA. A granite jaw jutting into the maw of Lake Superior. Time is a river here, meandering leisurely through a landscape of pine and granite. The locals, bless their frostbitten hearts, seem to operate on a different clock altogether, a sundial perhaps, or maybe an ancient Norse timepiece that only reads ‘winter’ and ‘summer’. Our encounter across this land of sky and water began with the stories from Ronnie’s first college mentor. A woman of the theater. She’d painted the Twin Cities as a glittering metropolis of culture, a place where the soul could stretch its legs and breathe. And The Guthrie, a temple to the spoken word. But then, a siren song lured us to the heart of Minnesota, towards the iron-rich womb of the state, Hibbing. A pilgrimage, you see, to the birthplace of a bard, where we cleaned the laundry and stood on the shoulders of giants.

Ok… for Ronnie, INDIANA is a couple things on the surface, 1.) it’s the home base of one of his favorite authors, Papa Kurt Vonnegut, and 2.) the Indy 500 auto race. Now, these things might date Mr. Ronnie. After all, he can’t remember the last time the Indy 500 was headline news. And though Mr. Vonnegut has been gone since 2007, his work is still quite popular with readers around the world. Indiana is a state of contradictions. Its people are both fiercely independent and deeply rooted in tradition. They’re known for hospitality, but their conversations tend to revolve around the weather, sports, and the price of corn. There is a certain charm to their simplicity, a refreshing honesty in their lack of pretense. Yet, there is also a stifling provincialism, a fear of the unknown that limits their horizons. Indiana is a place where time seems to stand still. The past is revered, the future feared. There is a resistance to change, a stubborn clinging to the familiar. It is a state that is both comforting and claustrophobic, a place where one can find solace and despair in equal measure.

Now… after Ronnie’s frustrating experience with Indiana, with all those Mario Andretti wannabes humping his bumper, he was pleased rolling through Northern OHIO‘s green expanse. Sure, Cleveland’s urban freeways are fast-paced, but we didn’t hold speed-demons from their ultra-important destinations like those in Indiana. Anyway, the drive from Medina to Kent was a pleasure, but this was a pilgrimage of sorts. Ronnie felt obligated to stand on the hallowed ground where four students gave their lives for the cause of ending the Vietnam war. This event held special significance for Ronnie as he was just beginning to get glimpses of the adult world. He was 10 years old in 1970, and the US appeared to be a super-hostile place for youth. Granted, things could have gone worse. For example, in China when students forced the government’s hand, hundreds were killed in Tiananmen Square. That said, the Nixon Administration, the Ohio National Guard, and the Kent State ROTC, stepped over the line asserting their authority. In the end, Mr. Nixon paid a political price and the US finally withdrew military forces from the Republic of Viet Nam, all of this before Ronnie’s actual entrance into the dangerous world witnessed every day on his family’s TV screen at the dinner hour.

Then, on to MICHIGAN, a state so vast it often feels like it’s trying to encompass an entire continent. It’s a place where the earth, it seems, took a deep breath and exhaled a colossal, verdant sigh. A land of extremes, where the summer sun can bake you like a potato and the winter wind can howl like a banshee. Michigan is a state that demands respect. That said, we found parts of Ohio and Michigan “frighteningly beautiful”. Frighteningly, because driving on some of what William Least Heat-Moon called “blue highways”, in the lake-dotted double-canopy forests, gave us a serious case of the creeps… we’re talking “Chrystal Lake” vibes, where Jason or Sasquatch pops out from the woods to do malevolent things to whomever is unlucky enough to be within a hairy decomposing hand reach. Yes… uber creepy, but straight up gorgeous at the same time.

On to WISCONSIN, the “Badger State”, and from what we’ve heard about the winters here, well, if Honey Badger don’t care, neither does winter in Wisconsin. We landed in Fond du Lac working on the blog in the public library. Earlier, Ronnie was practicing his Dylan tribute song in the Lakeside park, which happens to be at the shore of Lake Winnebago. Granted, not nearly as enormous as nearby Lake Michigan, but enormous nonetheless, 215 square miles, or 137,700 acres, and is the largest inland lake in the state. It’s about 30 miles long and 10 miles wide. So when the locals at the park informed Ronnie the entire thing freezes over in the winter… enough to drive vehicles on, well, that puts it in perspective… it gets really cold here, and stays that way for a long… long… time.

Then, into the frozen plains of NORTH DAKOTA! A land of brutal, relentless winters that’d make a penguin question life choices! It’s a Coen Brothers movie come to life, a place where excitement is as rare as a warm day in February. After the thaw, no way can you get driver’s fatigue, because it’s straight up pastoral… beautiful! The state motto, in classic radio voice, declares “Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” But hold your horses, loopers, because North Dakota liberty isn’t exactly Park Avenue window shopping. It’s more like strapping yourself to a goddamn rocket and blasting off into the great, howling void. But… there’s a peace here, a vast emptiness that allows you to breathe, to hear yourself think. We know! We experienced it firsthand on that long, lonely, pastoral drive to Bismarck!

Phase III (West Coast Wanderings):

Now, pay attention, loopers, because this ain’t your typical road trip! This is a gonzo odyssey, a kaleidoscopic funhouse of experience! Out west we go, through the Oro y Plata land of MONTANA, where the ghosts of cowboys and prospectors still whisper in your ears, where Native American oral traditions echo through the canyons, and where real frontier stories echo in the wind!

And then WYOMING! A land of contradictions! The “Equal Rights” motto proudly proclaiming a progressive past while some grapple with its present-day relevance! Yellowstone leaves you speechless, while the wind in Riverton leaves you breathless… and possibly frostbitten! They cherish their independence and self-reliance, but there’s a growing discussion about higher education! It’s a land of Esther Hobart Morris and J.C. Penney!

And what’s this? IDAHO! A land in need of some highway trash collectors! But the real star of this show is the stretch between Cody, Wyoming, and Idaho Falls! Yellowstone National Park! A geological freak show that would make P.T. Barnum green with envy! Mountains that scrape the underbelly of heaven, meadows bursting with wildflowers, and enough bears to staff a Russian circus! The only downside? No goddamn AT&T mobile service… stranded in the technological dark ages!

Onto the celestial paradise of UTAH! A land sculpted by a colossal stonemason, with towering crimson cliffs spilling out like a kaleidoscope on fire! The “Mighty Five” National Parks are a crown jewel collection fit for a psychedelic king! And the locals? A hardy bunch, the kind who’d build a log cabin with their bare hands and a smile! Sure, there’s a whiff of social conservatism clinging to the air, but it ain’t the in-your-face Bible-thumping you get down south! Just a politely phrased pamphlet tucked under your windshield wiper!

Phase IV (The Pacific Coast and Grand Canyon):

Good news, everyone! WASHINGTON STATE, a Pacific Northwest gem, offers a diverse landscape that’s as colorful as a Pollak canvas and as darkly fun as a date with Beetlejuice. First, Washington State holds a special place in Ronnie’s heart as he spent many a week in Spokane and Seattle either learning about the institutional food service business (four lifetimes ago) or tending to the computer networking needs of a western-region architecture/engineering firm, as well as a brief, but super-eventful romance with a Spokane co-worker (two lifetimes ago). And now… these reveries come crashing down on laundry day in Spokane. “Laundryland,” a facility filled with hungry hungry modern appliances. We ended up settling for the old-school machines because the new ones wanted SEVEN FREAKING DOLLARS for a single load. Now… we’ve grown accustomed to the already too high prices in Kansas, but a standard load to wash/dry was no more than five or six bucks, total. Now… these guys want even MORE just to do a single wash load (without bedding)… ARGH! Ok… rant over…

Heading down the coast, through the land of contradictions and extremes! OREGON! A place where the mountains are so tall they kiss the sky and the forests are so thick you could get lost for a lifetime! The sun shines one minute and then a torrent of rain, and you swear you see a Sasquatch lurking in the shadows! It’s a scene straight out of a nightmare, a testament to the raw, untamed beauty of this place!

And then CALIFORNIA! The land of pop culture and dreams! NorCal, where Eureka is a beach town crawling with former pirates. And Redding… like Garden City, Kansas, with palm trees! And then Steinbeck Country… Salinas! A weekend visit to the Northridge Mall where thousands of people, a rainbow of DEI, all having a grand time shatter the abandoned shopping center stereotype! An oddly refreshing experience for Ronnie, an average white male, being on the other side of the majority! Then down to SoCal, a place overrun with future Texans and Coloradans fleeing the high cost of living, the constant threat of earthquakes and wildfires, and the mind-numbingly long commutes! But let’s not forget the good stuff! Yosemite National Park, the birthplace of the film industry, and Silicon Valley! And Bakersfield! The home of country music legends Buck Owens and Merle Haggard!

And then, NEVADA! The Emerald City of the Desert! Las Vegas! Ronnie’s got a personal history with this place, a mountain of convention lanyards and memories of being propositioned by “escort” solicitors flicking cards in his face! It’s a land morphed from “Sin City” in the 1970s to a post-Y-2-K “Disneyland for Adults”!

And ARIZONA, a land where the sun beats down like a vengeful deity and the cacti stand guard like prickly sentinels. It’s a place where the Grand Canyon yawns like a cosmic chasm, a testament to the Earth’s ancient whimsy. But the beauty and awe-inspiring grandeur is only one side of the coin. This state is a microcosm of human endeavor, a place of both wonder and woe. Imagine Flagstaff, a city where the air is so crisp it could shatter glass. Then picture Phoenix, a sprawling metropolis where the heat shimmers like a mirage. It’s like comparing a snow-capped mountain to a fiery furnace. Arizona is a land of extremes, a place where the delicate balance of nature is constantly being tested.

A hiker’s lesson learned in NEW MEXICO: The waffle stompers Ronnie was counting on for long hikes in semi-challenging environments turned out to be unambiguous “cruel shoes”. This reality first emerged on the Grand Canyon “Bright Angel” hike, but became belligerently true, like the Kool Aid man, on the intermediate Albuquerque trail (Embudito). Did he make it to the summit? Hell to the no. Did he give it the ol’ college try? Sure, and this is where Ronnie FIRED the boots. His pinky toes, both of them were screaming the entire six mile trip (roughly half way to the summit). But no shame… it was a semi-challenging hike, and toward the end, his knees (those whiny little bitches) were singing harmony with the pinky toes. Ronnie resolved to engage the shoe experts at REI to hook him up with trail hikers a little less inclined to torturing the wearer. Oh… and a trek pole to make sure he doesn’t have to whittle a perfect stick a’la natural for knee-punishing descents.

Phase V (Southern Comfort):

Alright, let’s dive into the heart of TEXAS, a place where the sun beats down like a jackhammer on your skull and the wind howls like a pack of Wiley Coyotes across the endless plains. As a lifelong Denver Donkeys fan, Ronnie has a personal vendetta against this state, courtesy of that Super Bowl debacle in ’78. But hey, even a man with a grudge can appreciate the bigger-than-life beauty of Texas. Picture this: a landscape painted in shades of burnt orange and turquoise, where weeds tumble and armadillos scurry. It’s a place where the only thing bigger than the sky is a ten-gallon-hat-wearin’ Texas oil-baron’s ego. And don’t even get Rocinante started on the heat. It’s like being trapped inside a giant oven, with more sage and fewer cookies.

OKLAHOMA, the Sooner State, Woody Guthrie’s stomping grounds, is a land where the contrasts are as stark as a prairie sunset against a storm-laden sky. It’s a place where the Wild West still whispers in the wind, where oil gushes beneath the earth, and where a Dust Bowl ghost haunts the plains. Imagine a state that birthed the Black Wall Street, a testament to post-slavery prosperity, only to see it crushed by a racist mob. Yet, today, it’s a tapestry woven with threads of Native American heritage, African American resilience, and the hopeful dreams of countless immigrants. Yet, from this crucible of contrasts, Oklahoma has forged a unique identity. It’s a land of country music legends, basketball heroes, and political figures who shaped the nation. It’s a place where the past and present collide, where hope and despair intertwine, and where the human spirit endures.

Onto ARKANSAS, home to several natural hot springs, many of which are open to the public. The most famous is Hot Springs National Park, which features 47 naturally occurring springs. Other notables include those found in the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozarks. Arkansas has a rich cultural history as well, with several famous landmarks. These include the boyhood home of Johnny Cash in Kingsland, the birthplace of Al Green in Forest City, and Billy Bob Thornton, born right there in Hot Springs. Ronnie has family from the state and they are doing quite well. They’re a hearty breed, known for their hospitality and their dry wit. They’ll welcome you with open arms, but don’t be surprised if they also give you a sideways glance and a knowing smirk. It’s a state where folksy wisdom and modern cynicism coexist.

Next up, GEORGIA… the home of former president Jimmie Carter. Do you remember Mr. Carter’s family business? That’s right, he was a peanut farmer. Peanuts are everywhere here in Georgia. For Thanksgiving, Ronnie and Rocinante were holed up in some backwoods Georgia manor, a relic of the Old South, courtesy of Ronnie’s kin who threw a Thanksgiving feast that would make a Roman emperor blush. The pièce de résistance? Peanut butter pie! Yeah, you heard right. A sweet and savory peanut butter pie. Only in the Peach State, where they grow enough peanuts to choke an elephant, and the peanut butter pie was a stone cold home run. If Ronnie ever hosts Thanksgiving dinner, there will be a peanut butter pie.

After a brief holiday stop in Savannah, Ronnie and Rocinante made a plan to escape the worst of 2024’s winter bomb-cyclones. So, Southward they traveled intending to follow the southern coastal towns. But then, waking from an overnight stay in Tallahassee enroute to Mobeele, AL, Ronnie opened his news feed to reports of Ol’ Man Winter reaching tentacles into his Midwest stomping grounds. This awakened a realization. Specifically, the point of this tour was to avoid any and all extreme weather, a priority for our van-life vagabond heroes.

Anyway, with time to step back and regroup. Hot Springs or Busk phases one, two, three, and four covered the West and the Midwest. Now, with winter bearing down, we found ourselves learning some Deep South lessons (HSoB Phase V), starting with Arkansas and Georgia. The lesson? It gets cold there too. Granted, we were confident about missing the snowfall, let alone all those bomb-cyclone blizzards, but, it wasn’t what we had imagined. Specifically, we expected nighttime temps between 40 and 60 with day temps between 50 and 70. Apparently we brought the 20s and 30s from Kansas along with us for the ride.

So there we were, a new “This Land” tour motto ringing in our ears: “Ever thus to the best laid plans,” like some cosmic Rodney Dangerfield whispering sweet nothings of misfortune. Or, as Iron Mike would say, “everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.”

Now, for geography-minded loopers, Tallahassee is in the panhandle, East of St. Augustine, our first FLORIDA stop. Well, that’s in the North, and we needed to be heading South, waaayyy south, in order to avoid all hints of Ol’ Man Winter. So… yea… we had to backtrack a bit, a significant course correction. Spring Hill was the first stop enroute to Key West, all the while hoping for the best for friends and family up North.

Nearly three months in the southern tip of FLORIDA before embarking for the coastal South gave us a deep reverence for Mother Nature’s “River of Grass“:

Remember remember, the lessons of the wild,
the delicate balance that’s easily disturbed.
Remember remember, our schoolyard sorrow,
the shattered peace, the pain of tomorrow.
Protect this wilderness, protect these children,
till silence swallows both… in a rolling river of grass.

And so… onto ALABAMA: We landed in Foley, en-route to Mobile. Our “boondocker’s workflow requires landing somewhere close to an urban center large enough for Planet Fitness without traffic snarls, but small enough for us to function at a pace suitable for wayfaring senior citizens. Foley, AL is perfect! Less than 50 miles from Mobile with all necessary accommodations located along a single boulevard. Once settled, we met some nice folks at the library and the nearby dog park. And some of the stories… well… For instance, this one fella, an Uncle Remus sort of elderly gent, told us he’d seen a Sasquatch stomping around Conecuh County. “A hairy beast hollerin’ and crossin’ roads like he’s late for supper.” He said. “Back in my day, we had ‘possums, maybe a bear. Now folks are scared. It’s prob’ly lookin’ for a decent sweet potato pie. Ain’t that somethin’?”

Now, they say MISSISSIPPI is a great place to commune with ghosts, that Mississippians love a good story. And so, in honor of the great state of Mississippi, here’s a real doozy of a ghost story. Mostly inspired by a dream from our first restless night here. For some reason, Ronnie awoke around 4:00am, probably from a limb scraping against the side of the van nudged by a gentle breeze (or something like that). Anyway, fragments of the dream are drastically embellished here… Enjoy!

On the road in LOUISIANA, Ronnie and Rocinante pulled into a mud bug shack for a bite before settling in for the night. Striking up a conversation with the bartender, Ronnie asked about all those Apostolic churches he was passing on the Louisiana back roads. In the next hour and a half, Ronnie got way more than he bargained for. The bartender had a mellow drawl Ronnie found mesmerizing… a combination of Southern gentry and creole. His ample snow white beard reminded Ronnie of those Park Avenue Santas helping New York parents discover the hopes and dreams of their little ones. He had the dark skin and flashing blue eyes of an avid sun worshipper, projecting the relaxed countenance of a lifelong beachcomber. His loose fitting color patterned shirt reminded Ronnie of African Dashikis, but the style was more like something you would expect to see at a Grateful Dead concert. The bartender seemed intrigued about Ronnie’s curiosity, and so began to unspool a strange tale of spiritual divergence in the great state of Louisiana.

Now… there we were… Memphis, TENNESSEE… home of Graceland and, if we may be so bold, some of the worst highways and city roads poor Rocinante was forced to endure on this tour. We didn’t hit a tire killer, but that’s only because Ronnie practices hypervigilance when traveling Tennessee roads. In other words, he’d seen this show before… he came prepared. That said, we had a super pleasant stay in Memphis. Not all of the roads were peppered with tank-traps. For example, the eastside Germantown area is quite nice. It reminded Ronnie of some of those old money neighborhoods in Kansas City. Anyway, on laundry day, waiting for machines to do their business, Ronnie struck up a conversation with one of the patrons. We’ll refer to him as Ronnie’s “laundromat companion” (LC). After some brief introductory exchanges, Ronnie’s LC launched into a string of Music Biz-related anecdotes, slightly embellished here.

Phase VI (East Coast Shenanigans):

Now, after a springtime tour of the coastal south, we headed North, a furious, fevered dash to the final HSoB phase, East Coast and New England. Starting in the Carolinas, and the Virginias. Along the way, Ronnie confessed to feeling like an exposed nerve. It may have something to do with the change of scenery. After all, as a Kanorado native, Ronnie’s comfortable with wide open spaces and alpine mountaineering. But starting in North Carolina, approaching the beginning humps of the Appalachians, Ronnie started developing a contracting state of claustrophobia. This sense of dread actually started earlier, in South Carolina, with conjured imaginings of what it would be like to navigate congested urban sprawl nestled amongst relentless steep grades, up and down and up and down, trying not to ride the brakes but sometimes unable to avoid it. Then what do you know? The two West Virginia college towns Rocinante stumbled into (WVU and Fairmount State) presented conditions exactly like Ronnie’s worst roller-coaster imaginings.

Ok, let’s take a high-speed, neon-lit, pinball-machine journey through the CAROLINAS! It’s a two-state demolition derby of contrasts, a sociological smackdown, a… well, you get the picture. First, the cities! NORTH CAROLINA, with its Chapel Hill, that bastion of Ashville cool, where the air crackles with Ph.D. energy and the bookstores overflow with Derrida! SOUTH CAROLINA? They’ve got… GreenvUlle! And Columbia, where the statehouse gleams, the humidity clings, and the barbecue joints are serious business! The music scene? Oh, sweet home Carolina, the music! Up north, it’s flutes and dreads, the earthy strum of acoustic guitars, the faint, sweet smell of patchouli oil wafting through the co-op. Down south? It’s hiking gear and bandanas, the twang of banjos at a bluegrass festival, and enough Realtree camo to outfit a small militia! Religion? North Carolina, with its burgeoning tiny home communities, whispers of Zen, and a general suspicion of anything too… organized. South Carolina? Mega Churches! Sprawling complexes with parking lots the size of aircraft carriers, where the faithful gather in their Sunday best to hear the good word, amplified to stadium levels!

To be clear, Rocinante is no stranger to mountaineering. In fact, she was literally born in Colorado Springs, her first initiation over Independence Pass through the valley of the Roaring Fork northwest of Aspen, where Owl Farm, Hunter S. Thompson‘s redoubt sits. A gorgeous, exhilarating trip and Rocinante handled it without a hitch. Now, this is all familiar territory for Ronnie, a native of Kanorado. He’s seen it all, from Black Bear Road to the high plains of Western Kansas. That said, it’s hard for our heroes to stay focused traveling through VIRGINIA as the lush Edenic land goes on and on and on. Our heroes made a point to stay on what Heat Moon dubbed “Blue Highways” and by arrival in Waynesboro, Ronnie was overwhelmed with the beauty of Virginia’s interior. So much he began to doubt his ability to return to the flatlands. But we digress… the story of Virginia is one of stark contrasts, of light and shadow, of triumphs and tragedies, all woven together to create a snapshot as compelling and enduring as the land itself.

And neighboring WEST VIRGINIA… a veritable Janus of banjos and 5g smartphones. Even before the rabble in Philadelphia started their tiresome bleating about liberty and taxes, this land of craggy peaks and shadowed hollers harbored a glorious dichotomy. On the one hand, rugged frontiersmen, creatures of axe and rifle, suspicious of anyone wearing hats indoors and whose idea of polite conversation involves hitting the spittoon bullseye. Folks of fierce independence mind you, who’d sooner wrestle a bear than abide a revenue agent or a banker.

Alright, alright, alright! Ronnie and Rocinante started this tour from the great state of Kansas, and in his stompin’ rock-n-roll salad days, Kansas was famous for springtime tornadoes. Well, times change, people change, and apparently weather patterns change as well. For instance, here in the Southeastern states, March and April 2025 subjected Ronnie and Rocinante to three, count ’em, three white knuckle evenings where one eye was on the online tornado trackers and the other on streaming movies. Two of those evenings featured sirens screaming, “take cover people, a funnel has been spotted!!” And so… with interrupted sleep comes memories of crazy dreams… here’s one for KENTUCKY.

Onward through the fog… the extent of Ronnie’s personal history with PENNSYLVANIA is from the dark days of the 1980s. A time of self-discovery, good times, and madness. Ronnie and a few other lost children formed a brief tribal bond, and one of those lost children was a native of Pennsylvania Amish Country. So… rather than dig up a bunch of boring travel-blog fare, let’s relive a version of this story. Without further adieu, the saga of “Dangerous Dan, the Sonesta Stud.” WARNING – nearly all of the following names and places have been changed in order to avoid future heartbreak or litigation. Consume at 2025’s level of truth-decay.

Ok… Ronnie wants to share another vivid dream. This time accompanied by a lone, mournful saxophone moaning a melody from some vaguely familiar smoky jazz club. The scene is a dusty phantom TV studio at night with the sound of a flickering fluorescent light, buzzing like a trapped fly. The dream conjured a vision so preposterous, yet so uniquely American in its blend of earnest naivety and jaded cynicism, that it deserves attention. To the mournful strains, a debate between two ladies, from drastically different eras, denizens of that diminutive state of DELAWARE. A place known for its accommodating incorporation laws and its haste in jumping on the Federal bandwagon.

MARYLAND and DC? The decision to plant the nation’s capital in the embrace of Maryland was a stroke of genius. It was an implicit recognition that the strength of this republic lies not in its ability to enforce a bland uniformity, but in its capacity to absorb and celebrate its manifold diversities. The future of this nation, if it is to have a future worth mentioning, will not be found in the sterile pages of Project 2025, but in the noisy, vibrant, and gloriously untidy reality of places like Maryland. Let the hollow sycophants preach their gospel of homogeneity; the rest of us, the free human beings in this republic, will continue to draw our strength from the rich and fertile soil of our diversity.

Now, if you want to understand the United States of America, and you’re in a hurry, you could do worse than look at CONNECTICUT. It’s a real grab bag of a place. It’s got all the shiny things and all the sharp, rusty things America keeps in its pockets. It’s a place of beautiful, brilliant minds, some of which are put to work making new and interesting ways to blow people to pieces. We imagine old Sam Clemens would have a thing or two to say about it. He’d look at the internet, where everyone has a megaphone and no one has an editor, and he’d probably light a cigar, pour himself a whiskey, and rack the billiards. He might have watched that movie, “Idiocracy”, and said, “They got it mostly right, but it should have been sadder.” He knew the score. He knew that human genius was a beautiful and dangerous thing, like a bottle of nitroglycerin. You could use it to help prevent a heart attack, or you could use it to blow up the world.

NEW JERSEY gets a bad rap. A real thumping from the wits over in New York, the titans of 30 Rock, who probably only ever see the bits that look like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag… all that industry flanking the Jersey Turnpike. “Garden State,” they call it. And you drive past refineries that look like metallic dinosaurs coughing up their last, and you wonder about the gardener. Blue state. Thoroughly blue. But even in the bluest of states, you’ll find some folks trying to repaint the town red. Some genius, some absolute card-carrying comedian without an audience, tried to change the name of little Clinton to “Reagan”. Reagan, New Jersey. You can’t make this stuff up. The universe just hands it to you on a slightly greasy, very confusing platter. Who needs The Onion when you’ve got municipal politics?

Now when Ronnie thinks of VERMONT, his brain immediately goes to Senator Bernie Sanders. And why not? The man, with his rumpled suits and his waving arms, and the voice of gravel mixed with moral indignation, is practically a walking, talking, quintessentially American ideal. He’s the guy who reminds you of what Grandma told you about doing the right thing, even if nobody else is. He’s a fearless avatar, this Sanders, straight outta Vermont. And Vermont, well, it’s got this weird, similar history: secular, sure, but with a moral compass that points due north; revolutionary, absolutely, but grounded in a kind of unvarnished pragmatism that’d make a brick wall seem flighty.

Then after some missteps in Pennsylvania and Delaware, NEW YORK! Everybody’s got a New York story, right? A slab of concrete crammed with eight million other schmucks all trying to get somewhere faster than the next guy! And the subway? A moving petri-dish filled to the rim with way too much humanity and the distinct aroma of “what the hell is that?” So, hunkered down in Horseheads, a name that just rolls off the tongue and lands in a pile of “what the hell”, a place with a Stephen King-esque backstory that just puts the weird right out there on the welcome sign, we compose our New York yawp.

And what’s this? These postage stamp states… NEW HAMPSHIRE and RHODE ISLAND. On New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, they call it… the “World’s Worst Weather.” Hurricane-force winds every third day. Through the years, more than a hundred visitors underestimated that fury, and now they cant. Little dwarf trees, all matted and gnarled, like angry bonsai. So it goes. And the Old Man of the Mountain, a face carved by nature itself, watched over Franconia Notch for ages. Then, one day in May 2003, poof! Gone. Just like that. And Ronnie thought Kansas had windy days. And Rhode Island? A place so steeped in its own absurd contradictions that its best legacy is a perpetual punchline delivered by a cartoon with a metric ton of ironic jokes! Peter Griffin himself, lampooning the place he inhabits! A place called Providence that was founded by a human who was probably too goddamn weird for the Puritans! “Rogue’s Island,” they called it! More like Rage Island!

Then Tewksbury, MASSACHUSETTS? Ronnie’s eyebrows shot up like a rocket. What the Sam Hell? Serendipity, it seems, often arrived in the guise of a geographical screw-up. For lo and behold, a stone’s throw from their new, accidental roost, stood the Tewksbury Public Library, and just beyond its brick façade, a short, almost ominous stroll away, loomed the Tewksbury State Hospital, its Gothic spires reaching for the heavens like skeletal fingers, steeped in a history as thick and dark as molasses. SERENDIPITY NOW! A drumroll, please, for the universe’s peculiar sense of humor. Like the Pilgrims, their faces grim with conviction, seeking a place to worship God without all the fuss and bother of the Old World. They clambered off their creaking wooden ark, the Mayflower, and promptly set up shop in Plymouth, a desolate spit of land that would forever be etched in the annals of American myth. A mere decade later, in 1630, another wave, an even more earnest phalanx of Puritans, arrived, their heads buzzing with the grand, almost hubristic idea of building an “ideal” religious society, a shining city upon a hill. They called their settlement the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a name that would eventually be swallowed by the booming metropolis we now call Boston.

And then there’s MAINE! The final stickpin on this quixotic tour! The land of sprawling nothingness and the occasional Dunkin’! Bangor? A bust! A Gordian knot of SUVs and pickup trucks! Ronnie felt like a single, tangled strand of dental floss in a Sasquatch’s beard! Downtown felt less like a literary pilgrimage and more like the prelude to a particularly grim Edgar Allan Poe story! The meander back south was a blur of paranoia and close calls, a truly unsettling, unforgettable vibe of a state where you “can’t get there from here!”

And so, alas, the road calls, that siren song of adventure echoing in his ears! that siren song of adventure echoing in his ears! Ronnie’s homing pigeon instinct has them headed back to Kanorado. A break for tending personal business! After that, it’s the final leg, the grand pilgrimage back to the River of Grass! The salt air and the gentle lapping of the waves will serve as the backdrop for the main event, the book, the reason for this grand odyssey! Working title? One Year on the Road: Searching for the Fibrillating Heart of our Divided Nation! A grand ambition, indeed.

Stay Tuned… much more to come.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

This land is your land…
This land is my land…
From California…
To the New York Island…
From the Redwood forest…
To the gulf stream water…
This land is here for you and me!