I’ve found on these trips that biting off a big mileage chunk on a weekend day is a mistake, so I decided to take it easy today, a Saturday — stop and browse around where …

I got a perfect country night’s sleep and woke up at 6:30 AM, unprompted. I actually swung my feet to the ground, yawned, and stretched. I never do that. I’m out of bed with my …

Jay told me the day before about a little Siamese that wandered into his room a few times. When I got up and pulled my curtains back, I saw her in a sunbeam in front …

There are two kinds of women in the world: the kind who are like, “Sam Elliott? He’s a pretty good actor, I liked him in that Cher movie,” and the kind who would knock you …

Couch Baron and I parted ways at around 10:30 AM, he to the airport, I to find a post office that, if it exists, is in a Macy’s and I never found it. Back to …

I hadn’t let myself dwell on it, because what good would it have done except to paralyze me, but a part of me believed I wouldn’t get to California, that I would end up towed …

A man from Fresno quizzed me in the parking lot, not about the car, but about whether I’d come all that way by myself. “Courage…courage,” he said. I hadn’t thought of it that way…or not …

I stopped at a CVS on the way out of town to restock on sunscreen and snacks — a warehouse-size store with slot machines by the checkout. At ten in the morning, most of the …

I began the day in a mood of grim exhilaration: the route promised the most daunting driving yet. The locals have accustomed themselves to it, no doubt, and developed methods of timing their drives and …

I’ve had Grandma on my mind a lot since Tuesday, the anniversary of her death. Thanks to the revelation the other day that the swimming hole is not an artifact of Twain’s America, but still …