Ours is a country founded on movement and forged by passages. Whether your family arrived last month or generations ago or has always been here, we are a people who journey out of a desire—and a need—for freedom. This constant movement, and the sense of adventure that continues to fuel it, is one of our shiniest shared traits, and one that shapes life in the USA.
Americans relocate for work, love, or just a fresh start roughly 11 times over a lifetime. But even when we don’t have to, we choose to roam this marvelously vast and diverse country because we know that what we see along the way has the power to fundamentally change who we are.
This transformative magic of movement is at the core of the American mythos and the heart of our cultural identity. Just try and imagine road-tripping without thinking of Jack Kerouac’s generation-defining novel On the Road; the dusty, faded-Levis allure of the 1991 movie Thelma & Louise; or the more recent, achingly beautiful book turned Oscar-winning movie Nomadland. Mention wanting to ride a motorcycle across the Southwest, and nearly everyone will tell you to watch Donald Sutherland and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (then they’ll likely belt out the lyrics to its theme song, “Born to Be Wild”).
In celebration of our nation’s 250th anniversary, we decided to take a look at some of the most iconic ways to see America. We chose to spotlight five distinct modes of exploring very different corners of the United States. We sent slow-travel junkie Jordan Salama aboard Amtrak’s Sunset Limited, the oldest continually operated passenger train in the United States, for a journey beginning in New Orleans and ending in Los Angeles. His reporting reminds us of how vast much of our country is, but, more so, of the lovely interactions that happen when strangers share space. About 1,400 miles to the northeast, we sent food writer Betsy Andrews to New York’s scenic Finger Lakes region. Despite having dropped her phone in the water, she paddled a 40-mile route, stopping to sample the area’s excellent wines, swap stories with barge captains on the Erie Canal, and visit some of the state’s most significant historic sites, including Seneca Falls, birthplace of the women’s rights movement.
In South Dakota writer Ashley Halpern realized her dream of motorcycling through some of this country’s most storied terrain with a cohort of women riders. Hers is a badass tale of the Badlands, a full-throttle sensory trip where you can almost feel the shimmering waves of heat coming off the highway and the ping of bugs hitting her visor. On a much quieter note, poet Idra Novey took us on a dreamy ramble down memory lane and along the Appalachian hiking trails of her childhood in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Highlands. Finally, there’s novelist Priyanka Mattoo’s solo road trip through Arizona and New Mexico along Route 66. It doesn’t get more American—the unlikely mix of incredible kitsch and heart-in-throat natural beauty—than this mythic ribbon of asphalt.
We hope these stories inspire you to explore. Talk to strangers. Learn to ride a Harley. Walk quietly down a mountain trail at sunrise. Seek out adventure, in whatever comes your way. —Rebecca Misner
