Blue Highways: A Journey into America

[bigdaddy]

In 1982, William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue Highways, which accounted his travles along the back roads of the US (the term blue highway coming from the roads marked the color blue on highway maps). I recalled the book when I looked at the nav system and noticed that the system maintained the color blue-green for some of those "off-the-beaten-path" roads in Georgia.

So, on a trip between a clients HQ in Carrollton, and my house in Duluth (a 75 mile trip) I began to travel the blue highways one evening, resulting in a very pleasant, but longer drive home. I wound up seeing some of Georgia that I really didn't know existed, and wound up seeing some very beautiful countryside. My milage went down a little, but I didn't care. I wound up cruising through a couple of round-a-bouts that I didn't even know existed in Georgia.

I am posting this thread as a place to share some of your blue highway stories in your Prius: the beauty, the disregard for routine, the encounters with the friendly and the forgotton. I betcha that if you used the nav system to get off of the expressways and cities, you might come up with some pretty cool things to share here. Maybe in a year or two, we can take the thread and publish our own book....

[coolbreezeny]

Being a new Prius owner (< 1 week) I don't have any Prius Blue Highways stories (yet), but I highly recommend the book, Blue Highways. It's one of my favorite reads.

[Fredatgolf]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bigdaddy\";p=\"110558)</div>

I am posting this thread as a place to share some of your blue highway stories in your Prius: the beauty, the disregard for routine, the encounters with the friendly and the forgotton. [/b]

Several years after reading the book, my wife and I had a month to travel and took some hints from William Least Heat Moon. The result was that we ended up with a number of interesting incidents. The first occurred when I noticed a sign in MO saying that Eoia was several miles to the right. I decided there had to be some joy in finding out how that name was pronounced. (Yoya) We learned the entire history of the place and there was some inconsistency on how to say the name. This was at the time of farm foreclosures in the midwest and we heard some horrible sad stories about this. We also learned that Crawfordsville IO and not Racine WI is the real home of the Republican party. The key is to find the local watering hole like a doughnut shop, eateries, etc.

[LewLasher]

A related book, limited to New York state and New England, is "Where the Old Roads Go" by George Cantor, published in 1990. This book describes the principal "U.S."-denominated roads in the northeast, e.g., US 1. The common theme is to avoid freeways and actually visit real places.

Come to think of it, another related book is "Roadfood" by Jane and Michael Stern, which encourages the reader to avoid chain restaurants in favor of distinctive local cuisine.