Although I love road trips, this will be my first since 2019. I’d originally planned this upcoming one for summer of 2020 but, of course, the pandemic changed everything. Beginning in March 2020, nobody traveled anywhere. We not only didn’t travel, we were afraid to leave home.

History is marked by events that change both the courses and perspectives of those who live through them. Plagues, major wars, natural catastrophes–it’s impossible to collectively experience these traumas and emerge the same as we were before they happened. Wherever we spent the pandemic years, however we absorbed the impact, we all have some form of PTSD. It touches each of us in a different way, but we have all changed.

As I re-visit this particular trip, I’m aware of how different I really am. In the past, planning a trip was exciting. This time, I’m tentative to the point of indecision. It’s hard to commit to a reservation without my mind ticking through every possible thing that could go wrong. I probably won’t believe I’m taking this trip at all until I pull out of my driveway and make it through several states unscathed. I’ve dealt with blips on past trips–car trouble, unfortunate route surprises, days where I wasn’t operating at 100%–but this is different. I feel like a target for disaster, like if something can go wrong, it will. I’m more vulnerable, less in control (with no relief to be found in the current world situation).

This makes the trip even more necessary. There may be a few more safety nets this time (looking at you, trip insurance), but I need to prove to myself that I’m still capable of doing this thing I love. I need more than ever to escape the limitations of time, to challenge the undercurrent of fear that has insidiously ingratiated itself into my mindset.

There’s no going back to who we were before. The best I can do is engage my babbling mind in the drive so that I can get in touch with who I am now and regain clarity about what really matters.

My daughters and I are on the fourth day of what will become our first cross-country road trip. Armed with maps and Triptiks, we’re traveling from Baltimore to San Francisco, down the California coast, and back through the southwest part of the country. In an era before GPS technology, whoever rides shotgun knows they’re responsible for emergency navigation help should the driver (me) need it. I’m not, however, a road-trip novice. My father’s love for road tripping (combined with his natural curiosity about cultures and history) means that my childhood was filled with them.

We’re only about an hour and fifteen minutes out of Omaha, our stop for the night. So, following the now-ubiquitous road signs, we veer onto IA-173 N in search of the Danish Windmill.

Part of Dad’s job with AAA involved mapping out Triptik routes for AAA members who’d ordered them. With no computers to reference, Dad used road maps and memory to carefully mark each route in yellow highlighter. We used to joke that if there was a gas station at some remote intersection in Wyoming, Dad knew about it and used it as a landmark. All of this means I have full faith in a map’s ability to get us to and from any place we want to go.

The Danish Windmill feels a lot farther than the signs promised (“Just off I-80!”). It probably doesn’t take even fifteen minutes, but not knowing where you are tends to elongate time. The signs, however, seem even more excited (YOU’RE SO CLOSE!).

Finally, as promised, the Danish Windmill appears on our left.

It’s exactly what it says it is: a Danish Windmill. It’s the only working Danish windmill in the U.S.–a fact that doesn’t surprise me, because how many Danish windmills can there be in the U.S? But, of course, there’s more to the story. We learn that Elk Horn, Iowa is home to the largest Danish population in the U.S. (who knew?). We also learn how the windmill ended up in Iowa.

Back in 1975, one of Elk Horn’s residents visited Denmark. He already had a passion for windmills, and it concerned him to discover that the old windmills there were falling into disrepair. Hoping to save one for posterity (and benefit his home community as well), he spearheaded a project to dismantle an 1848 windmill in Denmark, ship it to the U.S., and reassemble it in Elk Horn. (You can read about it here.) The reconstructed windmill now anchors a museum complex that provides education about and preservation of Danish culture.

The windmill isn’t working on the day we visit, but it does its job: we leave knowing more than we did when we arrived.

The drive back to I-80 feels quicker than the trip to the windmill did. We’ve traveled this patch of road before, so we know what to expect. Still, I value the disorientation I felt when we first pulled off the highway. Seemingly endless cornfields, an unfamiliar roll to the land, signs for different foods, brands, businesses … aspects of Iowa are as different from back east as Denmark is.

I confess to occasionally rolling my eyes when Dad showed us how to follow our daily road-trip route on a Triptik or made me stop reading in the back seat to look at an interesting landmark or beautiful scenery. If we were driving to Quebec, he told us the history of French Canada. If we were passing through Lancaster County, we learned about the Amish. Sometimes, I was mostly thinking about what I’d order for dinner when we stopped for the night. I didn’t yet appreciate the shift of perspective that travel can ignite.

But I know, now. It’s illuminating to feel “other” now and then, to explore a place where you have more questions than answers. A map can get you there, but the rest is up to you.

Thanks, Dad.

I know. I didn’t connect that stuff with the twenty-fifth president of the United States, either.

Every president since Herbert Hoover has an official presidential library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). This means that NARA currently administers fifteen presidential libraries/museums. That leaves out twenty-nine men who served as president prior to Hoover. No worries: they have presidential libraries and/or sites/museums too, each supported by a trust, foundation, society, or university. The McKinley Presidential Library and Museum is run by the Stark County Historical Society and was my first experience with a presidential museum operated outside the NARA system.

The museum sits next to the William McKinley National Memorial, a majestic domed building atop a hill. The memorial is the final resting place of McKinley, his wife Ida, and their two young daughters. Dedicated in 1907, it’s a serene place of reverence that can make the hodge-podge nature of the museum next door feel like a bit of a disconnect.

To be sure, the museum has a McKinley exhibit — it even features animatronic versions of William and Ida, happy to converse about various topics if you’ll just press the button. The figures feel like relics from a long-ago tech era. I may have pushed the button more times than necessary, weirdly fascinated by the stiffness of the figures and the way Ida’s neck creaked whenever she turned her head.

Nestled in-between the planetarium, dinosaurs, replica of a street filled with 19th-century shops, and an expansive exhibit of Stark County history, the McKinley exhibit feels a little small. I couldn’t help wondering when something that’s meant to be an honor might not be construed as one.

On the other hand, the best presidential museums provide both biographical information and historical context. I left the McKinley exhibit with greater knowledge about not only the man who served as president but the times and events that formed and compelled him.

William McKinley isn’t a president most people remember. When they do, it’s usually because he was one of four U.S. presidents assassinated in office. (He was third, shot at the height of his popularity in 1901.) McKinley tends to be overshadowed in history by the vice-president who succeeded him to become the nation’s youngest president, larger-than-life Theodore Roosevelt. But in Canton, Ohio, the city where William and Ida McKinley spent their most significant years, pride and memory are very much alive. Canton has a story it’s eager to tell.

So maybe the museum’s busy layout can be seen more as a bonus than a distraction. Maybe the Stark County Historical Society knows that in order to share a story that more recent generations may not find relevant, you need to diversify the lure.

Maybe sometimes you need a dinosaur.

Bangkok Kitchen is in Maumee, Ohio, roughly 476 miles from my house.

That’s a little far for carry-out.

I got hooked on Bangkok Kitchen during a road trip to Chicago over ten years ago. Maumee is a southwestern suburb of Toledo, an easy exit off the interstate. The stop was supposed to be a quick overnight in a place I’d never see again, but after a hit of Bangkok Kitchen, I knew I’d be back. It was easy enough. My daughter lived in Chicago, so there were real reasons to drop in. But after said daughter moved to D.C., I had to face the depth of my addiction. (We won’t talk about that trip to Denver where I purposely ignored straight-shot I-70 to drift up to I-90 for a Bangkok Kitchen fix. What’s an extra thirty miles or so when excellent drunken noodles are at stake?)

Thing is, I can get perfectly decent Thai food about five minutes from my house. It’s really good. If I’m being honest, the menu and execution isn’t that different from what I get in Maumee. Why, then, doesn’t my local place rise to the same mythic proportions as Bangkok Kitchen which, considering the way I talk about it, may as well sit serenaded by heavenly choirs on a sun-drenched hilltop instead of planted amid chain restaurants and hotels?

I suspect it has more to do with me than with the restaurant itself. Whenever I’m in Maumee, I’m just passing through. I never stay for more than one night. There are no obligations or responsibilities waiting for me there, no pre-conceived identity to inhabit. Anything is possible in Maumee, Ohio. Filling my car’s gas tank at a station I can’t drive to in my sleep, wandering down grocery aisles lined with brands my home store doesn’t stock, listening to accents slightly different from the ones I usually hear…it’s all interesting simply because it’s unfamiliar. Maumee is usually my first stop heading westward, a gateway to potential. Those drunken noodles carry a punch that comes from more than holy basil and Thai dragon peppers: they symbolize adventure.

I know. That’s a lot to ask of food.

The past 2+ years have grounded most of us, and the familiar can feel even more deadening than usual. I last visited Bangkok Kitchen in September 2019. (I was heading to Vancouver, so Maumee was legit ON THE WAY.) Every now and then I google Bangkok Kitchen, just to see if they’re still around. They’ve changed, too, and currently offer only take-out and delivery. I hope we will both snap back soon.

In the meantime, in one of the hotels near my house sits a person who pulled off the highway for the night, eager to head elsewhere in the morning. For them, the everyday scenery that makes my eyes glaze over represents a launchpad to something different.

One person’s blah is another person’s fresh start.

The first time I made the drive I stayed on I-84, which runs mostly alongside the Columbia River. The river has a spirit all its own, ancient and powerful. It’s a magnificent work of nature, and although its surroundings are equally beautiful, the immediacy of the river to your right can’t help but draw the most attention.

The second time I passed through, I exited I-84 soon after entering the Gorge. The road climbed upward, finally reaching what must have once been a well-used overlook before the interstate diverted much of the traffic from US Highway 30 in the mid-20th century. The spot was empty that day, a stone-walled circle overlooking a panorama of river, trees, and sloping hills. From this distance, the Columbia gained more context. The expanded view showed how it cut and flowed through the landscape, where it was going and where it had been.

The older I get, the more distance I gain from specific events in my life. I always expected that time might dim their impact, but instead it deepens it. Looking back over a growing expanse of years, I see aspects I couldn’t notice while living through the original moment. The situations themselves, whether crushing or exuberant, took up my entire view at the time. They were immediate; they required action. The choices I made in response to them determined the next steps along my road, but their influence is not confined to a frozen moment in time. With the grace of distance, I can see how past events and choices fit into the patterns of my life. I can sense what might have happened had I made a different decision, and I can better understand why I chose the way I did.

Certain memories draw me back again and again. Re-visiting the good stuff often pumps positive energy into the present and helps center me. What I haven’t figured out yet is how to deal with the regrets — times I could have done more, been better, responded in a way I might know to do now but did not understand at the time. Although it’s not helpful to carry that negative energy now, these are the memories that refuse to let me go. They surface again and again of their own free will, and I’m not adept at calming their turbulent energy into something more useful.

After my first drive through the Columbia River Gorge, I suspected I’d be back. It wasn’t finished with me; there was something more for me to learn there. I don’t feel that way, now. Whatever I was meant to grasp along that particular stretch of road has been accomplished.

I wonder how far above the river I will need to be before I understand what my most persistent memories want me to know.

Feel free to poke around. I’ll leave you to it, but before I go, I’d like to point out the gorgeous stained-glass window at the top of the page.

This is the Allegorical Window, and it overlooks the Grand Hall of Union Station in St. Louis, MO. Hand-made from Tiffany glass, the window is original to the building, in place when the first train left the station in 1894. It was there when over 100,000 people swarmed though St. Louis Union Station daily, making it one of the busiest train stations in the world. It presided over celebrity photo shoots featuring the likes of Joan Crawford and Joe DiMaggio. (That famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” photo? That happened at Union Station, too.) The window stayed put during World War II, when the Grand Hall sacrificed several of its signature architectural embellishments (including a two-ton wrought-iron chandelier with 350 light bulbs) to the war effort.

Allegories are tales within tales; peel back the top layer and another story will be found beneath the scene depicted. It’s no surprise, then, that something called the Allegorical Window has more to say than may appear at first glance. The neoclassical goddess on the left represents San Francisco. The one on the right is New York City. And there, in the middle, sits St. Louis, proud of the pivotal role she plays in connecting America from sea to shining sea. In 1894, this ability to link the country by rail was seen as a triumph of human purpose and ingenuity, and judging from the expressions on their faces, all three goddesses know it.

But just as these ladies graced St. Louis Union Station in its heyday, they also watched as the last train pulled out on October 31, 1978. The station’s size and elegance, once desirable attributes, were now liabilities. In a changing world where air had become the first choice for long-distance travel, Union Station was too expensive to maintain.

It’s easy to dismiss the symbolism of the Allegorical Window as something frozen in time, a quaint notion as obsolete as the train station itself. But even though the underlying narrative of the window’s story has changed, I still sense vitality when I look at the goddesses. I like their confidence. They’re strong, so aware that they have something to offer that change seems more like an opportunity than a roadblock.

Today, St. Louis Union Station is a National Historic Landmark, and the fact that trains no longer stop there doesn’t mean it’s lifeless. The Grand Hall with its breathtaking barrel-vaulted ceiling is now part of the Hilton Hotel’s Curio Collection. Union Station is home to various restaurants and attractions, a reinvention that still invites people to explore, even if the landscape has changed.

To me, the figures in the Allegorical Window aren’t goddesses. They’re more like muses with attitude. Their self-assurance reminds me that purpose and possibility always exist, even when situations change. These muses not only inspire, they encourage reinvention.

… which is why I want them on my team.