The open road in North America, celebrated in movies, books and song, is the archetypal American travel experience. All human life resides along the highway, from Art Deco diners to turnouts and trailheads from where the magnificence of America’s natural beauty can be accessed.

The talk reflects on over a dozen journeys over forty five years, including through historic sites, the Appalachians, the ‘frontier’, and the deserts and mountains of the American and Canadian west. Through the changing seasons - with stories of encounters with gun toting state-troopers, Native Americans,  Mormon bigamists, and with Thomas Jefferson (brought back to life), and hundreds of friendly ‘just plain folks’.

In celebrating the open road we celebrate America the Beautiful; a world in a single country.

View from alongside St Mary's Lake, Glacier NP, Montana

Big Sur, Calfornia

Flume Covered Bridge (1871), over the Pemigewasset river, New Hampshire