This journey began on the Interstate: fueling at Travel Plazas, buying  coffee at Starbucks or breakfast at Denny’s, talking to each other (a bonus) but rarely finding ourselves in conversation with anyone else.

Picking up Route 66 has taken us through small towns, local service stations, diners where conversation is a given, exchanging names is ok. Here, they’re usually curious about why we’re travelling through their town, as if the Interstate has, literally, cut them off from anything that isn’t local. We’re offered stories of lives, events, hopes & fears from small town USA, attitudes different from the metropolitan centres of New York, Chicago or even Detroit, places where conversations had to be planned, where being an outsider in the areas we visited required mediation.
People constantly expressed their desire to travel, to see the places we’ve visited in their country. Always, the everyday pull of working to pay bills draws people back to stay where they are, to remain with the known. Read More »