Road hazards

The West Virginia Turnpike is curvy, has many hills and a view to much natural beauty. On most days, the ride from Charleston to Beckley produces nothing more exciting than the thrill of counting the Ohioans headed south.

Once in a while, though, around a corner comes the unexpected, even the dangerous. Then you have to decide: hold back, pass on the other side or pitch in.

Since emergency help was on the way, we pulled over and took pictures. Nobody was hurt, but there sure was a mess to clean up.

Travel is a lot like life. You really never know what is ahead, so don't be afraid to slow down and pull over. Take pictures so you will remember the close calls.

Milestone

Well, then. Twenty years later, it is safe to say we have come a long way, unless you don't consider a million miles all that far, I mean everything is relative, right? When we started out we had no idea where publishing the Next EXIT would lead, only that it would take us all over the country, and it has done that, over and over.

The idea was father to the fact and after six years of collecting highway information we offered it to the public in 1991, and every year since, updated. It was accepted.

We have seen new services open and proliferate and old businesses close their doors. Roads have widened and extra exits have been added to accomodate what might be 'America's best idea', the interstate highways. I agree with Ike when he said, and I paraphrase, "the growth of a nation ought not to be hampered by poor transportation," or something similar.

So where to from here? I still cannot say exactly, but this much I know: In January of 2011, we will be headed east on Interstate 40, updating as we go. We hope you will go with us.

Peanut State

I thought Georgia was the Peach State but maybe not. My father, a farmer, once told me that just one county in South Carolina produced more peaches than the entire state to its southwest and yet Georgia had laid claim to the delicious fruit for itself. Neither state produces as many as California and the term "Georgia Peach" nowadays might be confused with "Georgia Belle."

Peanuts is another matter. Hands down Georgia wins this one, growing nearly one-half of the nation's crop. There is a peanut lobby and an anti-peanut lobby. An anti-peanut lobby? Who ever thought peanuts would get into politics?

Nuts is not what they are, though. Nuts come from trees and peanuts grow under the ground, a legume, if you will. Parch them, roast them, grind them into peanut butter, some folks say they will erase hunger around the world.

Boiled peanuts are a staple, nay, a delicacy, all over the South. What beach trip is complete without boiled peanuts? Everybody doesn't feel this way, though. When I reverently mention boiled peanuts to my friends in Idaho all I get is blank stares. Boiled potatoes, now that is a different story.

There were giants

Blue Earth, Minnesota is fairly typical of many of the towns laced together by Interstate 90. Lots of them are county seats, commerce centers and nearly all, at least in Minnesota, are surrounded by fertile farmland.

Blue Earth stands out because, like the golden spike of the transcontinental railroad, the two construction crews working from east and west met near here in 1978 to complete the route that stretches from Boston to Seattle, longest 4-lane highway in America.

Unlike the Golden Spike Monument, however, this spot is guarded by a huge green giant.

Sideshow

Every now and then, we get stuck at an exit. It may be time for a sandwich, time to walk through the warehouse club, time for gas or Debby just needs to wander through a fabric store. Fabric is really just an upgraded term for "cloth," but I digress, which I do a lot. Nevertheless, do not ever call fabric "cloth" in the presence of a true seamstress upon penalty of drawing back a bloody nub.

Now as I was saying, any number of things can bog you down at an exit, but sometimes they are worth the bog. Consider this incident late last summer in Virginia. We stumbled into one of those developments where people, usually young city dwellers, live, work, shop and play without ever having to go more than a couple of blocks. It was late afternoon and a really good band complete with dancers was saturating the airwaves with vibes of joy. A block party had developed, right in the heart of it all.

We heard the thump thump a couple of blocks away and drove in to get a better look. Before we knew it, there we stood on the courtyard with all the other revelers, swaying and nodding to the beat. Some folks danced while others twirled with young children. Some participated and some just watched. Summertime was everywhere and for that moment at least, it was good to be stuck.

The Real West

In the USA, where does the East become the West, the West become the East and how broad is the middle? That depends on which route you travel.

My personal view is where the tree line begins/ends and that does not happen in only a mile or two. The Big River crossing might mark the spot, but Vicksburg, Memphis, St Louis or Minneapolis look similar on both banks.

Furthermore, a straight line from north to south won't work, because well, nature just didn't cooperate. Maybe a better way is to say "where farming becomes ranching" or the reverse, somewhere right in there is where it happens.

Of course, there are landmarks which tell us what the local folks think. On Interstate 94 in North Dakota, if you catch a glimpse of Salem Sue, you are in the West!

Low country

Heat, humidity, low elevation and oh yes, plenty of rain...staples of the low country. Places with these conditions are home to spanish moss. Did you know that when it grows on a pine tree it may eventually kill the tree? Not so for its preferred host, the Southern Live Oak, for it is difficult to outdistance a tree which lives 500 years.

In a moment of nostalgia, one year we brought spanish moss home to our kitchen in the Rocky Mountains. Proudly we hung it from our kitchen curtain rod, providing alternating sun and shade, optimum light, we thought.

It said no and proceded to shrivel from gray and dangling to brown and powdery. Finally the crumbles were swept down the disposal. It was kind of sad, but the lesson was learned. Now when we long for the low country we head south and turn left on Interstate 10. Somewhere east of Houston we can count on striking it rich.

Visibility

What most businesses need, besides lower taxes and more customers, is visibility. People have to know who you are and what you do.

You can tell them by the radio, the TV, the computer or you can put up a big sign.

Or, you can stand a big truck on its head, and hope they get the picture.

What recession?

If you do not have a job and want one, or you have a business and it is not making enough money, or if you worry about making the house payment, those things are tough.

Even in hardscrabble times, most people still work, have enough to eat, have a place to live and, interestingly enough, cars and money to buy gasoline to ride around.

Judging from this view of Interstate 40 near Little Rock, the economy is looking up!

Small business

The nice thing about running your own business is that you can choose any 16 hours out of the day to work. Or not.

One of my favorite "Open for Business" signs is in a little town in Idaho where the owner makes no excuses for deer season. Anybody who wants a small engine repaired or a chainsaw sharpened probably ought to get it done before then or else take the chance that he might just not be there.

Then there is the maple syrup sugarhouse in Vermont where the owner posts this sign, just so everybody knows his hours.

Ground cover

I am told kudzu was imported to this country in order to help with erosion, particularly in the southern states. Seldom has a plant found a new home it liked so well and flourished so fast.

No one seems to know where the first vines were transplanted; did they spread south to north, east to west or what? Eventually they creeped all over much of the South, covering anything in their way.

Soon the problem became how to control or eradicate the stuff. Pull it, burn it, poison it or just ignore it, it doesn't ever go away. The only way around kudzu is to pave over it, and I suspect when the pavement comes up, the kudzu comes back.

Real America

One October evening in New Hampshire I rode down the hill from the "Old Man of the Mountain"(before his nose broke off). Taking an exit I drove to the east past a well-known lodge. The night was cold and windy and as I passed the lights of the dining hall, I could see a lot of fun going on inside. A fireplace warmed the room and people were dancing to music. It looked like the happiest place in the world was right there in that room. The partiers could not have known it, but that fire and that scene warmed more than themselves

The thing I like about taking an exit is that you go, in a few feet, from vanilla to kaleidescope. The interstate highways have their own usefulness, beauty, culture and vistas, but remember this...they were actually built to get us to that next exit, you know, the one that takes us off where we want to go. That's were everyday life in America really begins.

Time changes everything

The Ohio Turnpike, aka I-80/90 northwestern Ohio, sometime in the mid 90's. With Toledo behind us, we were headed west in the red van on a perfectly beautiful day, not a cloud, when other travelers began passing us with their windshield wipers on. I thought nothing of it, because after all, this was America before windshield wiper regulation by the government, so I figured if someone wants to use his windshield wipers under clear skies that is his business. And then it happened again. And again. Then, oddly, it seemed that everyone passing us was cleaning the windshield and the only thing they seemed to have in common was they were all passing us. Right after the guy came by cursing and shaking his fist at us, the engine light popped on and one of the boys said, "Hey Dad, there is some kind of fog following us."

Our luck held long enough for us to exit and head south to old US 20A. The engine doctors at Wood Trucking opened her wide, said um-hmm, diagnosed a transmission aneurysm that had burst and pronounced it fixable with surgery, but it would take about 24 hours. They loaned us a 1960 something truck and turned us loose in NW Ohio.

"Where to stay?" we asked. "Only one place," they said, "the Chief Wauseon Motel. Not fancy but clean." And so it was. We ate tacos, drove out to Sauder Village, toured town and cooled our heels generally, all with faith that our patient would soon be healed. The next day she was.

Since that day we considered the Chief Wauseon a marker of sorts, an indicator of economic change in that part of the country. It was one place we rode by consistently, just to refresh a memory. "Why this drug store," you ask? That is where the Chief Wauseon stood.

Fall colors

I am no expert on poison oak, since it grows mainly in the Pacific Northwest, where I often visit but seldom traipse. Poison ivy, now that's a different story. Whenever traveling east I start watching for it to appear about the same time the trees come into view...Minnesota in the north, eastern Oklahoma in the center and eastern Texas down low. I am seldom disappointed. Vine or bush, waxy green, sometimes with berries and sometimes not, it thrives over most of the eastern US. Healthy, I call it, for it almost never looks undernourished.

Owing to a number of miserable encounters with this uncontrolled substance as a youth I learned, out of absolute necessity, to identify what I am sure is one of Satan's favorite play things. Stay away from it is the only solution, for once its active ingredient, urushiol, contacts the skin an allergic reaction is almost certain. Unless of course, you just don't get poison ivy, in which case you are excused.

Like other foliage, poison ivy is deciduous and turns beautiful colors in the fall. But unlike other leaves, you can look, but you'd better not touch.

What it was, was football

Football in the South is not a business, a culture or a religion. It is much more important than any of those. It is what folks talk about most of the year. When the college football regular season ends, the bowl game that one's team earns...is the topic. After the post-season with whatever final ranking is achieved, recruiting sets in until signing day, around February 15. Then six weeks of spring practice is culminated by the spring game. Where else in the world could you ever find anywhere from 45,000 to 90,000 devotees in attendance for a PRACTICE event?

Summertime is for volunteer workouts and then August camp produces the staring lineups and depth charts of the teams that take the field the first weekend in September. The season lasts through November and it starts all over again.

One of the fortunate side effects of traveling all over the Southeast via the interstate highways in the fall updating the Next EXIT, is the increased likelihood that an important game and our route will intersect at the right moment.

So it was recently when the Clemson Tigers and the Auburn Tigers or War Eagles played near Interstate 85 in Alabama. Our team lost, but no matter. The setting, color and pageantry of the event were great. And boy was it hot!

Why We Update

Now and again, someone's eyes will open and they will see, as in it will be revealed to them, the magnitude of visiting well over 10,000 exits strung out from Bellingham to Houlton every year. It happened one day a couple of years ago when Debby showed a copy of the Next EXIT to a stranger who had asked how we made a living. When she told him and he leafed through its pages, you could see the wheels of his mind turning as he counted the exits then timesed (you know, the past tense of 10 times 3 =) that with 48 states and then added in the miles between each exit and then calculated how many services were listed at each exit. Did you know that Interstate 10 in Texas is 880 miles long? And that I-5 in California is only 797? Most people do not but the kind stranger seemed to understand and walked away thoroughly impressed.

Many folks ask "you mean you have visited every one of the USA Interstate highway exits?" as if it were a once in a lifetime event and having done so we could now put our feet up and sit back. We answer with "every year", at which time their eyes glaze over in, not disbelief, but unseeing.

In an economy like ours, you'd be surpised at how many businesses open, close or change names. Sometimes, the next time you go looking for them, they are not even there.

The Old Road

In most cases, the interstate highways were built alongside the older US roads which tied the country together by connecting towns and regions. Some of these original routes garnered a measure of fame for various reasons of use, like US 1 which ran from Maine to the tip of Florida. It was what we called "a main route" north or south, depending on where you were and which direction you were headed. Same thing with US 51 from Lousiana to Chicago, US 101 on the coast or US 89 which tied the states of the intermountain west to one common winding ribbon of road.

You can still see them most places as they wind back and forth under and over the freeways. In some places, taking an exit immediately takes you back to a simpler time. If you are lucky, the access road gives you a view of old businesses that flourished years ago, maybe even after the interstates were built. It's like history from a car window.

High Miles

Cars, like people, begin to die the moment they are born. I don't mean the ones that sit around in museums and places like that, I am talking about working automobiles. When you drive one off the lot, you know it loses value, you knew it would fit your needs and you evidently liked it well enough or you would have looked elsewhere. One of the things you cannot tell is when and exactly where its milestones will occur, you know, like where it turns 100 or 1000 or 10,000 miles. It would be even more difficult to predict that all important indicator of 100k on the odometer. That is the moment, in my mind at least, that a vehicle "matures". Youth is a thing of the past, old age is somewhat yet future, but there is no mistaking that this is an adult machine, equally proven on the battlefields of I-5 Southern California and the Atlanta perimeter at rush hour, not to mention I-90/94 through Chicago.

So today, not too far from the Nissan plant in Mississippi this sacred moment arrived. A Honda by birth, this one rolled over 100k as sunset sliced through the trees to our west on I-55. To commemorate her passing from youth, we pulled over and snapped a picture of the odometer. On this model, 100 thousand is really just broken in good. That's fortunate, because we still have a long way to go.

On Florida...

What is Florida, like 2 feet above sea level? Whenever I come down here I am of two minds...I want to enjoy the exotic nature of being in the subtropics, see the sights you cannot see anywhere else and relish the idea of being half a day's drive from the Gulf or the Atlantic.

Then again, I get antsy about being so low down near sea level and wonder, somewhere in the back of my twisted mind, what would happen if the whole state tilted even a little. Did everyone from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania buy a retirement home just off the Next EXIT along I-95 or I-75? In reality, I suppose I am just jealous that where I live in the winter is nothing and I mean NOTHING remotely like any part of the sunshine state unless you include the northernmost tip on the coldest day ever recorded there and be sure to calculate in the humidity. That type of cold goes bone deep, but seldom lasts very long, and which is one very good reason for the aforementioned middle Atlantic states emptying out from January until April.

When it gets hot in Fla, the same humid conditions apply so that it really FEELS hot, all those ocean breezes notwithstanding. All in all, though, it's a good trip. Since most folks are from somewhere else, it's easy to get along.

Trip One...

September, 1950. Mom and Dad put me, their 6 week old infant into the foot of a black Nash sedan, distributed 6 other children in the remainder of the car and headed west from South Carolina. I do not remember the trip, and only what the older siblings have told me has formed my mental pictures of the journey.

What did we "see" on that trip? What did we talk about? With no interstate highways and plenty of small towns in our path, it was likely eventful and colorful. Motels and TV sets were brand new to my family and the Rocky Mountains may very well have been in a foreign country. I am pretty sure that this experience set wheels to turning that have yet to brake.

20th Anniversary Edition

Over 25 years ago, we started collecting USA Interstate Highway exit information. Our travels around the country with our larger-than-average family had identified the need for a guide which showed, in advance, what services you could find at ANY Next Exit. If we wanted to know what was ahead, we reasoned, so did other people. For over 6 years we gathered, collected, sorted and tabulated every vital piece of information we thought the typical traveler might want. Then we did it again, and again. In 1991, we began publishing our book the Next EXIT. How we ended up calling it the Next EXIT is a story for later on, but for now we will blog about some of the interesting things we see along the interstate highway. Since this is our 20th anniversary edition, we thought you might like to know something about us and our last 20 years. Buckle your seat belts, because there is a lot to see!