I have a nickname (in the vein of Native American names like Sitting Bull, Wilma Mankiller, or Crazy Horse) in the Grathen family…. Maps Are My Life. Randy’s sister, Kristine, calls me this because I love road maps. I especially like them when we’re traveling by car, which, if you’re a regular reader, you already know is one of our favorite things to do. Here’s a link to a previous post called Road Trip!
The invention of Google Maps on smart phones removed a whole lot of uncertainty and stress when traveling in new areas. It’s a lot harder to get lost with computer in your hand. We used to peer at a paper map and wonder how we’d know when to turn in the middle of an urban area when the map in our hand only showed major traffic arterials. Then again, getting a little lost was often part of the excitement and charm of road trips in the first place.
I LOVE knowing where in the world I am. Literally. And you don’t get a good sense of that on Google. I am not giving up my paper maps. I hope states don’t stop printing them. They are getting harder and harder to find, but it’s our standard road trip operating procedure to stop at every state’s welcome center. As we age, we have to go to the bathroom anyway. And sometimes you get a bonus like the free glass of orange juice you’re offered in Florida.
Another thing that interests me these days, as regular readers know, is history. So, double delight when I see history about roads on Facebook. My interest piques and I take the reading detour offered. In today’s vernacular, that’s called click bait. I’m hooked every time.
A couple of weeks ago there was a post about the 96th anniversary of The Tamiami Trail opening. South Florida residents are all too familiar with the Tamiami Trail, also known as US Highway 41. Try though we may, we can not avoid Highway 41 down here. It’s a major business route that runs from Tampa to Miami, hence the name. There’s so much traffic on the road that it’s a very slow go.
Growing up in Wisconsin, we often traveled US Highway 41. Guess what? It’s the very same highway! In Wisconsin, US 41 is a well-traveled, major highway of which we have vivid childhood memories. When Randy and I were dating 50 years ago, I lived in Sheboygan, and he was in the Air Force stationed at K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in upper Michigan. Every weekend one of us drove US 41 to spend time with the other. It was a 5-hour trip each way. We were young and in love and full of energy. Who needs sleep?
US Highway 41 runs from the tippy-top of the Keweenaw Peninsula in upper Michigan, all the way to its intersection of US Highway 1 in downtown Miami, a distance of 2,008 miles. There are places along the route where it runs concurrent with sections of other, more prominent roads, such as in Milwaukee where US 41 follows I-894 around the south and west sides of the city. Before the interstate system (1956) US 41, commissioned in 1926, was the south’s equivalent to Route 66 and known as Dixie Highway.
If you drive US 41 from, say, Sarasota to Naples here in SW Florida, it will (information courtesy of Google Maps) take you twice as long to get where you’re going than if you hop on I-75. The mileage difference is 3 miles. I’ve never counted them (and neither does Google Maps), but I estimate there are 100 stop lights between University Parkway in Sarasota and Immokalee Road in Naples.
One day I suggested to Randy that we should take US 41 all the way to Wisconsin the next time we drive up there. I thought it would be a great adventure. He looked at me like I sprouted a unicorn horn in the middle of my forehead. “Are you nuts?” he asked. “It will take us two weeks to get there.”
That’s not what I calculated. It’s only about 1,500 miles. We could easily do 250 miles a day, even driving through all the little towns and stopping at 1,000 stop lights. That’s less than 1 week, I pointed out.
He just gave me the stink eye and walked out. I guess that journey will have to wait until I can sneak away with a friend or do the trip on my own (which is quite appealing). The man I love and am committed to ‘til death do us part does not have the patience for pre-1950s roadways, adventure or not.
Lots of people still wax eloquent about the nostalgia of Route 66. In Missouri we lived about 20 miles from where Route 66 paralleled I-44 in Lebanon. In fact, one of my bucket list items is driving old Route 66 all the way to California and experiencing the joy of a simpler life. Randy agreed that was a worthy endeavor. ‘Course that agreement took place 25 years ago or so when I first added it to the bucket list. It will, I’m sure, be a much harder sell now.
There are surely many not-to-be-missed tourist and historic sites all along the way on both roads. One road runs east-west, the other north-south, so one could legitimately claim, after completing both road trips, to have crisscrossed the country by car. I need to add that to my bucket list.
Next year Randy and I will have been married 50 years. We’ve already booked an Alaska cruise leaving from Seattle. I mentioned to Randy that I want the whole summer of 2025 to be a grand road trip. We have places to go and people to see all over the country. He hasn’t said no.
I don’t know about you, but nothing says freedom to me like getting in the car and hitting the open road. When I do that…. I’m happy, happy, happy.
Here’s to a lot of open road happiness in years to come.
P.S. The book is coming along. I hear authors talk about writing a book that ends up in a different place than they originally expected. That’s what I’m finding. This book is coming together in a very different, and much better, way than I envisioned 25 years ago. I think that’s a very good thing.
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