Roads To Somewhere

I’m not much for resolutions, although clearly there’s plenty of room for improvement.

For example, I could resolve to learn a musical instrument. But that would require a lot of time, beginning with lengthy lessons in reading music—and I’d rather lounge on the couch watching sports.

I could also resolve to visit the weight room once in awhile. Of course, before that happens I need a spell of rehab on a nagging rotator cuff injury—which would necessitate a prolonged period away from my couch and all those channels dedicated to soccer, football, basketball…

Learn a new language, take up a hobby or whatever, my excuse is generally the same. It involves a couch, a remote, Manchester United on the TV and (quite often) a spray of Cheez-Its crumbs all over my shirt.

Hard to believe I’m still single, really.

Yet 2013 may just be the year to get up and move around a little.

Toward the end of June, a stream of cars following the old Lincoln Highway will drone through the area on their way to the official centennial celebration in Kearney. I love old roads and have traced along several: the Valley Pike in Virginia, the Post Road that connected America’s colonial cities, the Bankhead Highway, the National Road and parts of Route 66, just to name a few.

Near the Nation Road (now Highway 40) in southeastern Pennsylvania remnants of an earlier way wanes in the forest, one carved by General Braddock’s men on their ill-fated campaign against Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) in 1755. Driving on the Orange Turnpike through the Wilderness in Virginia, you can imagine Civil War armies on the march. Touring strips of asphalt in Belgium’s Ardennes forest, you still see scars from World War Two’s Battle of the Bulge—including, at one point, a disabled German tank.

Wagon ruts still mark some stretches of the Oregon Trail. Indeed, wagons also gouged narrow grooves in the ancient stones of Rome’s Appian Way.

The Lincoln Highway—the nation’s first coast to coast route—saw little of the major battle or cartloads of gladiators bound for the Coliseum-style drama, of course. But scars from the original lanes (the modern Highway 30 sometimes deviates from the historic layout) can still be seen in local fields.

Perhaps drivers involved in the 1908 automobile race from New York to Paris bounced along the same path, five years before the highway’s designation. They did stop in Kimball.

A trip along the Lincoln Highway to Kearney a few months before the celebration would take me to the annual Crane Festival, as more than a half million sandhill cranes and other birds swoop in.

Hmm…better keep the convertible’s top up for that one.

To the north, outside of Bayard, a group operates covered wagon rides on the Oregon Trail, followed by a chuck wagon cookout. Despite the obvious touristy aspect, the idea carries some appeal. Like many Americans I tend to romanticize the pioneer days and the Wild, Wild West.

Should probably head up to Deadwood, too, driving the course closest to the old stagecoach route.

Roads here and all around the world leave traces and tell stories. They lead us somewhere new or draw us back into the past. Without much effort, they can take us on a nearby adventure that would mark the summer of 2013 in our minds forever...

Guess I’ll have to kick back, flip on the television and think about that.