IVColor It Blond To achieve any exciting goal is a thrilling experience. For two kids from rural Michigan, used to swimming in quiet, cattail-fringed lakes, to step out into the Pacific Ocean, which stretches all the way to China almost without interruption — that is far more than exciting. For us, it was magic. It […]

IIIGoals Three and Four California is not a state; it is a state of mind. As we discovered during nearly three months — and well over 3000 miles — of travel, up and down and back and forth across Californialand, it is a state of mind so expansive and feverish that even its never-ending Pacific […]

IITwo Goals Accomplished 1922 Having graduated from high school in a sleepy Michigan town surrounded by cow pastures and lakes, we figured that college could wait. With our parents’ blessing — so we recounted to the Eberlys — we set out to hike America’s 48 states1 and work our way as we went. Some of […]

IHoneymoon Chariot 1920s The rutted dirt road which years later would be known as America’s “Main Street” — Highway 66 — did not even widen as it skirted the wind-bitten service station and general store that made up the business section of Peach Springs, Arizona. On our map the place stood out boldly, the only […]