**** I set off from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in July 2011...and ended up in Aspen, Colorado, in February 2012. Along the way, I visited 28 states, three countries, dozens of national parks, hundreds of cities and towns, and countless friends and strangers. Why? Why not? In fact, I lost my job of seven years when Berkshire Living, the regional magazine I helped launch, folded. Then my apartment building burned down while I was in Miami for the weekend. A breakup and a stolen bicycle figured in shortly thereafter. Wouldn't you hit the road, too? Enjoy my virtual scrapbook of anecdotes and eye candy from a freewheeling, cross-country, cross-cultural odyssey--past, present, and future.Amanda Rae Busch
amandaraewashere@gmail.com
John Steinbeck (via Kiko)
[Woody Creek Tavern, Woody Creek, Colorado, February 15, 2012]
![“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.”
—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945
[Monterey, California, November 17, 2011]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luw9s5XtNg1qloi1ho1_1280.jpg)
“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.”
—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945
[Monterey, California, November 17, 2011]
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley (1962)
[Old Faithful Visitor Center parking lot (on vehicle with Michigan plate), Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming]
[Tower Falls parking lot (on motorcycle with Montana plate), Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming]
