Road Trip Day 4: The South (2001-09-28)
We crossed the humpbacked Ozarks and sank into the cotton fields of south Arkansas. Brown and white puffballs lined the road like a summer snowdrift. We steamed through tiny burgs, their houses sagging under the heat, the humidity and too much history. Listless dogs and rumpled kids watched the dust of our wake. The air was warm and clear, dappled with cotton fluff fairies like a sunlit dream.

We hit New Orleans at midnight, parked, and strode into the rank blur of neon, beer fumes and cigarette smoke that hangs over Bourbon Street, heralding the debauchery bought and sold there for five-dollar daiquiris and buck-a-piece Jell-O shots. Blue-shirted conventioneers staggered down the sidewalk past doormen in shabby tuxedos shouting drink specials to passers-by.

Road Trip Day 3: Colorado, Kansas (2001-09-27)
A clear, cold morning hits Rocky Mountain high. We woke up steepled among the peeks of Frisco. We descended into Denver’s thin brown haze and rocketed past Buffalo Bill’s grave, non-stop to Kansas’ unrelenting flat farm country, home to a six-legged cow, the world’s largest prairie dog, and, once, Bob Dole--or so I’m told by the road signs that punctuate the featureless landscape. Someone decided to repave Kansas: They are tarring Highway 70 from gray to black clear across the state. Sunflowers bob, heads bowed in homage to their celestial namesake.

Road Trip Day 2: Utah (2001-09-26)
We drove through ochre rock redly looming over our cement river. Further east, the rocks gave way pistachio hills pointing to the great Salt Lake and her dry and flinty city. We left her behind and struck out through Utah back country on Route 6 through stone castles bleached by a relentless summer sun. We came out on a sage valley dotted by sun-shocked shrubs resolute in the clean heat. In the western distance a kingdom of stone rings our bone field mesa.

Road Trip Day 1: Oregon (2001-09-25)
We headed out of Portland on 84 East as it follows the Columbia River. We skirted the wide, flat, dam-tamed water and climbed hills covered in grass burnt to the color of buttered toast. Scraggy rock knuckled the road exposing scars where the river cut through long ago.

A black bird with white-tipped wings startled up from the pavement and flew into hills growing greener with our easterly course. The hills' rocky angles gave way to large round curves -- like giants asleep under a honey-colored quilt. We drive over their thighs and shoulders and watch the moon rise. Trees stand sentry over this God's country as we follow the moonrise.