It’s hard to comprehend America’s vastness. Nebraska in its infinite emptiness, Utah in its otherworldly desolation, these are the things the world prepared me to see on my first cross-country drive. What wasn’t obvious was just how manageable this grand expanse would feel.
Explorers on a westward drive had ample reason to write otherwise. Those harbingers of Manifest Destiny braved unseen obstacles in total confidence. They fought weather and tribes with better claim to the land than them, faced natural barriers unlike anything in Europe, and crossed spectacularly sparse plains without assurance the blandness would end. Having survived that, you understand why these explorers sought to carve their story into our national bedrock. Charging into the wayward wind is a birthright, if you can hack it.
These days, moving west is a far easier task. Not only can the infrastructure support an impulsive mind, but the metal can, too. Every new car is capable of a cross-country drive in 100-degree heat, no lease-deal special built poorly enough to require special consideration for the journey. The ruggedness of the modern car is so well established that even a 17-year-old car has little risk of letting you down. I bet on it and set out in my 2004 Lexus LX470 with 190,000 miles behind it already.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a better tool for the job. Moving cross country while exploring the rugged West in January demands a rig both gigantic and capable, qualities the Lexus has beyond reproach. With full-time four-wheel drive, height-adjustable hydraulic suspension, and Land Cruiser quality standards, the defining feature of this rig is its ability to never leave you fenced in. Plush seats and extensive service records allowed further comfort.
The starting point was in Cleveland, Ohio, the destination San Diego. Not just culturally and geologically a world away, San Diego is also about as physically far as you can get from Cleveland without crossing a national border. Love for home and my people there runs strong, but two decades of Ohio winters and featureless landscapes brought dreams of a run to the West. Time in New York City only confirmed that I wouldn’t find what I wanted east of the Mississippi.
So, lease signed, car packed, plans drawn, and best friend aboard, I set off for the Pacific expecting to find the land so gargantuan that it’s almost cruel. If nothing else, Iowa will confirm these priors. Day one, a 662-mile blur, one of flat land and open interstates abutted by nothing in particular. Andrew noted that even the hospitality industry here accepts its place as more of a waypoint than a destination.
“Just passing through?” the hotel clerk had asked him when she checked us in. Even in downtown Des Moines, no one expects a weekday visitor to be anything but transient.
Day two was supposed to be the hardest. It delivered if only for lack of challenge elsewhere. The entire distance between Des Moines and Denver covers damned near nothing of note, just enough farmland to feed the world. During harvest, this place would surely buzz with activity. In January, the land is a test of fortitude. Like those before us we dipped into supplies of salted meat as morale sank and the horizon stretched on, but unlike them we also plundered our stockpile of podcasts and albums. Bob Dylan, Crooked Still, and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History sustained us through Nebraska’s desolation.
Colorado came and we expected life to come with it. Yet the borderzone on the Colorado side is sparser still than the Nebraska plains. Eventually the flatlands yield to the Rockies. From that point on it was never again hard to remember why we did this. After two days of uncaring plains, we saw the mountains rise up in the darkness. Monotony conquered, we prepared for the grandeur that lied in wait.
Daylight brought it to our door in Idaho Springs. From the deck of our motel we heard a rambling river, and craned our necks at the rock face that rose like a skyscraper from its bank. In the lot we spotted snow-capped mountains and evergreen trees, the postcard picture of the Rockies in winter.
The hike is short, easy, and utterly breathtaking. The view at the top is so serene that we fell into contemplative silence. Andrew, who hadn’t seen real mountains until today, was reeling from the adjustment. I’m the one that gets to tell him that, so far as I can tell, that feeling never goes away. Stand on one mountain or a hundred, it’ll stupefy you every time. Just the night before I’d had my first experience that I could call an anxiety attack. On that mountain top, I’d never felt more at peace.
We set off the next day, the big-name national parks in our crosshairs. Before we could get there, we had to negotiate Vail Pass and Glen Canyon, traversing the highest point on the interstate in the midst of a winter snowstorm. Four-wide snowplows served as pace cars, keeping the endless stream of traffic flowing at no more than 35 miles per hour through the treacherous, steep, snowy pass. Knuckles went white even with the comfort of a brawny four-wheel drive and a rolling roadblock to keep speeds down. We found comfort in Eisenhower Tunnel, the highest point on the interstate, knowing that it was quite literally all downhill from there. The road kept falling away until we reached the buttes and red dirt of the Utah high desert plateau.
I was once again doubting that a national park could ever live up to its reputation or the effort required to get there.
Never entertain this doubt. Zion, in its red rock drama and its unthinkable vistas, is the kind of place that stirs the inherent love we hold for creation. No painting or photo can capture the feeling you get looking over this canyon, no story can contain what it feels like to stand in the shadow of a thousand-foot rock wall littered with the scars of its 270-million-year history.
It is of a scale and beauty that can be matched by few places in this world. One of them, though, lies just two hours away. So we detoured East to Bryce Canyon, again marred by hesitations that it couldn’t possibly be as good as Zion. Three hundred feet from the trailhead parking lot, we knew we were wrong. Bryce is at once an entirely different world to the rest and utterly familiar, its drizzle-castle spires and Ponderosa Pines inspiring the same bated breath and solemnity we’d become so familiar with. That, too, feels like a moment beyond repetition, until we reached Joshua tree and felt it again. The way granite boulders spew from the ground like spilled marbles and form into layered playgrounds inspired the same appreciation for Earth’s ingenuity.
Each of these places offered stillness to match the void of space, terrain you’d expect to find in distant galaxies, and opportunities to feel like an alien on this Earth. They delivered cool water to parts of us we didn’t know were dried up, beckoned us to stand at their faucets long enough that we’d be comfortable never drinking again. Yet the next watering hole was never too far away.
I arrived in San Diego not ready to leave the trip behind. I walked ten minutes from my new home to cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The journey done, Andrew home, the snow-capped Colorado mountains a world away. Away from the trip, away from everything, I felt that feeling again. I stood incapable of speaking because of how good the air felt in my nose. This beauty, this country, it may go on practically forever. But, as this trip taught me, that doesn’t mean it’s ever out of reach.
Arguably the most fickle member of the Road & Track staff, Reviews Editor Mack Hogan is likely the only person to ever cross shop an ND Miata with an Isuzu Vehicross. He founded the automotive reviews section of CNBC during his sophomore year of college and has been writing about cars ever since.
