Driving to Wisconsin

August 19, 2006

Last Sunday morning (August 13) Emily and I began our move to Appleton, Wisconsin. While I was in Egypt, Emily had arranged for us to rent a duplex about 8 blocks from Lawrence University. She had also come up with a moving plan. A company called UPack let us load up our boxes on a trailer, and when we were finished they would pick it up and deliver it to our new residence after 4 work days. Meanwhile, we would make the drive to Appleton in our silver VW Bug, our dog Quinn sitting on Emily's lap.

• Day 1: Leave Snellville, Georgia and drive north on I-75 to Chattanooga, Tennessee. From Chattanooga get onto I-24 heading to Nashville. From Nashville we took the I-65 into Kentucky, past Bowling Green and took the exit for Mammoth Cave National Park where we had a cabin reserved for the night.

The first portion of the trip represented a final run through the landscape of north Georgia. We passed by the exit for the Etowah Indian Mounds.. where I proposed to Emily just about exactly two years ago.

Arriving in Chattanooga it was still a familiar landscape. It wasn't that long ago that we made the trip to Nashville for one of Emily's marathons.

We passed the big fireworks outposts along the I-24 in Tennessee, and I insisted that we get a picture of them.. thinking this was goodbye to a southern institution. But that proved wrong as we saw them further north as well.

That is Nashville.. and it was time for lunch. I had suggested we stop at Centennial Park, but with the dog and all our computer stuff in the car, getting adventurous in our stops was not appealing.

In fact, we were big on official rest areas, lying to the side of the freeway.. with helpful signs such as these.

• Day 2: Leave Mammoth Cave National Park and continue north on I-65, passing Louisville and crossing the Ohio River. We continued north to Indianapolis, and it was there that I broke with the route suggested by MapQuest. Instead of going north and getting entangled in the web of freeways near Chicago, we cut west on I-74. This took us into Illinois and through cities such as Danville, Champaign, and Bloomington. When we reached the latter city we went north on I-39, taking us directly to Rockford where we had a motel reservation (dog friendly).

What can I say about the landscape in this part of our trip? It was flat.. but not flat like Kansas. It was overwhelmingly rural, and dominated by corn stalks.

There is a strange beauty to this world that unfolds (or repeats) itself outside the window. The fields are dotted with structures.. houses or granaries.. and the standard electrical poles run forever along the roads.

The cars ran along the freeway and I wondered whether this all seemed blindingly normal to the drivers.. the vast fields of corn and the greenness, the barns and the white houses. Being about a week out of Cairo I was struck by how un-normal the landscape was. It was an American landscape that could be recognized for its singularities as easily as an Egyptian Nile landscape.

By the time we got north of Louisville, everything would be new to us. We had especially looked forward to Illinois.. which will be our neighbor state.

• Day 3: After spending the night in Rockford, Illinois, we made our final short leap to Appleton, Wisconsin. We continued north on I-39 toward Madison and then took the 151 east toward Fond du Lac. From there we went north on I-41 to Appleton.. and our waiting home.

It was an ideal day for our arrival into Wisconsin. The sky was clear and the air crisp. The landscape still had lots of corn fields, but the hills seemed to break them up into smaller blocks. We also realized that we were in dairyland.. and not just because the Wisconsin license plates proclaim Wisconsin "America's Dairyland."

The experience of the American road is inextricably tied to large trucks, such as this one. The consciousness of every driver is necessarily filled with considerations about passing them, or waiting to pass.. or just staying out of their way.

We made this move at a time when gas prices were at a high.. in many places over $3 per gallon. One wonders if someday our road-embracing ways will be curbed.. But when it happens, that will be a shame.. because the open freeway is one of the best parts of America. If I were advising someone as to how they should see America, I would advise a long road trip.. Sure, see New York or Los Angeles.. but drive a thousand miles through the Peorias of our vast country!