The Road East - Grand Tour of the East Coast

The Road East
Grand Tour of the East Coast

Willy Logan: Home

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Every other trip I can remember, at least any of length, started in the morning or early afternoon. But this trip was supposed to start at midnight. And I didn't know what to do with myself for most of the day. I had some packing to do, but not enough to keep me really occupied for much of the day. I had planned it this way, to reduce stress, but I suffered boredom as a side-effect. Finally, the intolerably long day came to an end. After supper, my parents drove me to the Greyhound bus station in Oklahoma City. They bade me farewell as I boarded the bus, and suddenly I was all alone. My much-anticipated voyage of discovery was finally beginning.

The bus pulled out of the terminal at 12:02 according to my watch. I watched as we drove past the skyline of Oklahoma City, first on surface streets, then on I-40. First National Center, which looks like a dwarf Empire State Building, was especially distinctive.

After the city lights passed, I made my first of several troubled attempts to sleep. I dozed a little, but I opened my eyes whenever I had the feeling that something interesting was passing (which was often). On one such occasion, I caught a glimpse of Lake Eufaula, a massive artificial lake formed from the damming of the Canadian River. In the moonlight, it looked serene. Until now, this was the farthest east I had been in Oklahoma.

Some time later, the bus crossed over into Arkansas, one of only three states separating Oklahoma from the District of Columbia. My family residence had been in Oklahoma for almost three years by now, but this was my first encounter with the next state to the east. We stopped shortly thereafter in Fort Smith, a locale I had long regarded as symbolic of the unknown "forbidden" state of Arkansas. Fort Smith didn't look like much at 3 a.m.

On the road again, I slept fitfully until reaching Little Rock. When I wasn't dozing, the Moody Blues song "22,000 Days" ran incessantly through my head. It's a fine song, but having it stuck in my head all night did a fair job of ruining it for me.

Dawn was starting to tinge the eastern sky when we pulled into the station at Little Rock. By the time I got underway again, on a different bus, the sun had fully risen. Fog clung to the meadows and fields, or dispersed wispily by the roadside. Arkansas showed more farmland than I had expected. I wondered how much was once forest.

For some reason, I could sleep better now that the sun had risen. I dozed until we crossed over the mighty Mississippi, the division between East and West. Coming off the highway bridge, Memphis fell at my feet like some tantalyzing jewel I could see but not touch. Here streets lined with high-rises old and new, there a (presumably) full-scale replica of one of the pyramids at Giza. I would have liked to see the motel where King was shot (now a museum), but that would have to wait for a later trip.

The skyline of Memphis from the Mississippi River.

The sun continued to shine in a cloudless sky as I proceeded east from Memphis. I dozed blissfully. Somehow, I knew to open my eyes when the bus passed over the Tennessee River. It was every bit as impressive as the Mississippi, if not moreso, because it took me by surprise.


The bus depot of Jackson, TN had interesting styling.	"Welcome to Marlboro Country." I'm at a loss to explain how smoking got glamorized.

Nashville was the only place I saw today which I had nominally seen before: I passed through it in 2000 and 2006. The overall effect of the city was suitably impressive, and not at all what I had remembered. I was struck by the sight of the state capitol, perched atop a hill like some delicate colonial temple. I only saw it for a few seconds. Nashville, like Memphis, deserved further investigation on a later trip.


BellSouth tower in Nashville.	This church was dominated by the bland hotel behind it.	This picture would have been much better if those power lines hadn't been there.

Knoxville, the third and final of Tennessee's large cities on my route, did little to impress me. It was so sprawled that the first I saw of it was endless "big box" shopping centers. That's never good diplomacy for a city. And there was only one halfway interesting building in the skyline: a gilded sphere mounted on top of an open truss towever. I couldn't imagine what purpose that would serve.


The mysterious gilded sphere in Knoxville, mentioned in the narrative.	Another BellSouth building.	Corporate headquarters of TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), the country's most famous electric utility.

The day's reading selection was Travels with Charley, a narrative of John Steinbeck's road trip with his dog around the United States. The book seemed almost too appropriate for my current situation. When I finished it after Knoxville, I was ready to get on to Virginia. But Tennessee adamantly refused to end. The sun set at Johnson City, which as far as I could tell was named after Lincoln's lackluster successor. Although I really wasn't tired yet, I made my first attempts at sleeping here. The overhead light didn't work anyway. I vaguely noticed when we stopped at a town called Bristol.

Some time later, I awoke feeling strangely refreshed as the bus rolled into a place called "Marion." Virginia at last! By this time I was starting to get obsessive about marking progress on a AAA map of the United States I had brought for that purpose. At every stop, I would pull out the map and fill in the measly centimeter or less with orange highlighter.

My sleep between stops was of decent quality until Roanoke. Thanks to a mass turnout of travelers at 2:00 a.m., the bus got horribly crowded. I had to share a seat again. Blast. I had found a comfortable way to sprawl.

The remaining hours of the night journey were not enjoyable at all. I desperately wanted to sleep more, but I found myself stuck in foggy half-conciousness. Fears of bonking into my seatmate proved entirely too grounded.

But sleep is an ephemeral thing. One never feels oneself really falling asleep; I could never pin down my last concious thought before sleep on any given night. Awakening, a return to conciousness, is all that I have noticed regarding this strange transition. Sometimes awakening is abrupt; then it is obvious. But on other occasions (following afternoon naps, generally), awakening is so gradual that I'm not at all sure I was ever asleep in the first place. A gross taste in my mouth (beginning-stage morning breath) betrays that I did in fact sleep. But on this trip, my unbrushed mouth was so gross that I never could have known the difference.

My bus, which I had ridden all of the way from Memphis, finally arrived in Richmond right on time, 5:30 a.m. Normally, I curse this hour as the sole province of the insane, but today it afforded me a rare opportunity. I had a two-hour layover here, just enough (I hoped) to walk to Monument Avenue and see some Confederate statues.

I locked my big backpack in a storage cubby (like what I used in Lindau) and set off on North Boulevard. (I think "North" is actually the name, not a qualifier. Naming a street with two qualifiers makes no sense.) When I started, the eastern sky was barely tinged with dawn. When I made it to Monument Avenue, the whole sky was lit.

The first statue I saw was "Stonewall" Jackson, astride his horse in the middle of the street. The inscription was spare, stating only where he was born and where he died, having been shot by his own sentry.


Stonewall Jackson statue at the intersection of Monument Ave. and North Blvd.	Jackson at sunrise.

A few blocks to the east, the Jefferson Davis Memorial was the complete opposite. A beseeching figure of the Confederacy's only president stood in front of a towering column atop which was perched something that looked like an avenging angel. The whole assemblage was half-ringed by thirteen columns representing the Confederated States of America. Some incomprehensible rhetoric about saving the southern states' rights was engraved below the president's figure. Is this the South's version of the Lincoln Memorial? It was clearly a labor of love by a devoted Southerner, but while it had heart, it had no soul. I continued down the street.


Uninspiring Jefferson Davis memorial, Monument Ave. at N. Davis Ave.	Jefferson Davis in bronze.	Two of the thirteen columns on the monument.

The last monument was the one I most wanted to see. This equestrian statue, atop a towering pedestal, bore no rambling diatribes or even vital statistics. It bore one word, and one word only: LEE. That was enough. Although he fought for the wrong side (morally, not just militarily), I cannot help but admire the man.


LEE	The entire statue is 60 feet tall, including the base.

I would have liked to continue heading east on that road to see Thomas Jefferson's Virginia State Capitol, which in a few hours would reopen after a lengthy restoration. But my time in Richmond was spent.

The last part of Virginia went on forever. Bored and not a little nauseous, I would pull myself out of drowsiness hoping that we were soon to cross the Potomac, but no, it was some other town I didn't know existed.

At last, after what seemed like an eternity (a few hours in reality), the trees opened, my nausea cleared, and I spotted the looming bulk of the Pentagon. The three spires of the new Air Force Memorial stuck up behind. In a few moments I spotted the façade of the Custis-Lee mansion, then ahead across the river the white dome of the Jefferson Memorial. Off to my left I saw the clean classical lines of the Lincoln Memorial, and the Kennedy Center beyond. The tip of the Washington Monument poked up behind trees and other buildings. By now we were across the river, several blocks south of the mall. Finally, along one of L'Enfant's broad avenues I spotted the glorious CAPITOL DOME. I had arrived in Washington, DC at last.

previous:
Introduction

Grand Tour

next:
Day 2
Walk down the National Mall