rock-and-roll and beer on an arkansas summer night; or, welcome to the middle of nowhere.

I packed up after a week in Saint Louis and drove southwest through southern Missouri and into the topmost sliver of Arkansas. It’s easy to forget that this part of Missouri is the edge of the west until you’re hurtling through middle-america in a stupor of strange fascination. Moving towards the western united states the colours around start to turn orange and space lengthens. Driving across the country allows me to experience regional differences, moving through gradual changes in topography and geology, in perspective and lifestyle, as both the natural and cultural worlds shift around me. On this leg of my trip I diverged from my norm and only listened to music (I was particularly fond of the radio station 92.9 around Rolla, Missouri -easily my favourite station I have listened to so far). Just around nightfall I arrived in what is likely to be the most unusual stop of this trip: Bentonville, Arkansas.

 

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Bentonville is bizarre, almost more of an experiment than a place to live. The small town is located in the very northwest corner of the state and should be a prime example of a place no one would ever visit- a tiny town in the middle of nowhere with boring culinary options, bars that close by midnight, and no alcohol sales on Sunday. However, what puts Bentonville on the map is that it's home to the original Walmart. The Waltons throw money to the city in order to build state of the art attractions (aka the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, which brings in people from outside the area). There is a weird sense of being in an artificially created tourism experiment located in a rural-turned-suburb town.




Michael Derian, the worst kid out there,
but the reason for my Bentonville stop.

Instead of spending labour day weekend stuck in Bentonville, Derian and I explored the more interesting surrounding areas. On Saturday we drove half an hour to Fayetteville, the fairly typical college town where the University of Arkansas is located, to watch the football game with a couple of fans. A nice thing about Fayetteville is that it is a place where people might actually want to live. After perusing an expansive used bookstore with a hilarious new age section, we went to mellow mushroom to indulge in pizza and beer and figure out our plans for the next day.

Oklahoma at it's most attractive angle...

 

On sunday we set off to accomplish our big dreams; packed up backpacks, pillows, and beer, got gas and snacks, and made our way to Oklahoma. Natural Falls State Park doesn’t have much in the way of challenging hiking, but it does have a couple worthwhile views and some good spots for taking IPA breaks (which is essentially the basis of mine and Dorian's friendship). After hiking through the entirety of the park, we got in the car and drove to Fayetteville to go out for the night. Naturally we wanted to clean up before re-entering normal society so we snuck into a coed dorm behind a student, parted ways, found our respective showers, and got ready to go out in Fayetteville. (thank you gregson hall!)



give him a Bells Two-Hearted*, ask which
Beatle is the best one, and you've got an instant friend.
*Bells not pictured

 

After a satisfying meal, we slipped into a little bar where a band caught our eye (it’s hard to resist stand-up bass and banjo). The band ended up being fairly abysmal, but the bartender was great. We finished our beers and endured a particularly unimpressive Tom Petty cover before making our way to the bar our mellow mushroom waiter recommended to us. He’d told us it was a whiskey bar with “young, bearded intellectuals” and given that Derian and I have been known to engage in such pretentious activities as reading Kerouac, staying up late discussing the best bands of all time, and spending 30 minutes choosing what IPA we should try, it sounded like the place for us. We agreed that this bar was indeed the place we’d want to frequent if we lived in Fayetteville, but we ended up heading home a little after midnight due to exhaustion. This proved clutch as our original plan was to crack the windows and sleep in the car until morning and it ended up pouring down rain overnight.

Arkansas always looks best after a chocolate break.

Labour day started off damp but by the afternoon sunshine was in abundance. It took us at least five hours of watching Daria before we managed to get out the door and drive to Devil’s Den State Park. We spent the rest of the afternoon on a wonderful hike full of chilly caverns and lovely views of Arkansas. There is a spectacular and unexpected stacked rock expanse which only makes this state park better.

Sea of Stacked Rocks: Devil's Den State Park, AR

I left Arkansas the next morning. It was cold and grey. I hope you never have to move to the northeast of Arkansas, but if you do, good luck.

(from 6 September 2014)



discovering asheville, which is pretty much the way everyone says it is.

Today I pack up and leave Asheville, heading west into Tennessee. I’m a little bummed to leave this wonderful city but I am lucky enough to be en route to one of my favourite places, Nashville, TN, where I get to see one of my favourite people and a fellow yule log, TJ. Asheville has been amazing and I can’t wait to come back this direction, although preferably with some friends (so far the hardest part of this trip is often being alone and motivating myself beyond my anxiety to go explore).

I am infatuated with everything about Asheville. It’s a manageable size and easy to navigate and, despite being a city, it’s surrounded by glorious mountains and lots of trees. Even the sky is consistently stunning. There is so much to do here- good food, good beer, good spaces, shopping and art and really just about anything you want to do outdoors, all within easy reach. In many ways, Asheville resists the societal norms. It veers off from the mainstream and is much crunchier. There are more people with funky styles than those in suits. So often things that effuse this out-there, unusual quality have a terrible habit of trying too hard to be different which results in seeming pretentious and fake. Asheville amazes me because it is so genuine and true and beautiful. It is wonderfully refreshing to be surrounded by an authentic vibe.

If I were to personify Asheville, I’d probably have to get married to him. Asheville eats good food and drinks fabulous beer and has great music taste. He owns a dog and a kayak and spends his free time outdoors. The amount of tie dye he wears is just a little over the normal ratio and his hair is a little too long. Asheville drives a Subaru, and even if it’s a newer model, it already has at least two bumper stickers. He plays a musical instrument, he composts, he buys locally, and he wakes up in the morning to drink coffee in his hammock. And, best of all, he somehow does all of this without annoying everyone else.

my favourite street sound
(to all my dear friends)
 

 I should probably do some rating of the places I go, so, without further ado, I present to you a listing of my favourite things about Asheville and how it ranks on the absolutely arbitrary kg index:

·         Music: lots of it. Buskers play on the street corners which is highly desirable. There is at least one quality record store in town.

·         Dog friendly: dudes, everyone here has dogs (including aforementioned buskers!) and that earns lot of arbitrary kg points! Some stores have water and dog biscuits by their doors.

·         Quality bookstore: yes.

·         Wanderers who look like half yeti half hippie: yes.

 Combine these cool things plus all the other awesome stuff I mentioned above then factor in the potential negatives (no major league sports team within an hour, ~500 miles from Camden Yards) and you get a 27 out of 30 on the kg index. This is not a viable method of determining quality though; I just picked 27 because it sounds good. Regardless, yay Asheville.

heading southwest and asheville bound on the first real leg of my trip

 

After a week in the DC area I head southwest, first for a lunch break in Charlottesville, and then onto my first real stop of this road trip: Asheville, North Carolina. Despite knowing my general way around DC, I find that I feel overwhelmed navigating the city alone and other than when I am people watching on the metro or heading across the Potomac into the familiarity of northern Virginia, I feel lost from myself.

The drive to Asheville is beautiful- Virginia and North Carolina have always been my favourite states for driving. The roads and highways are bordered with endless hills and valleys seemingly made up entirely of trees that roll continuously in green until the dark green blends into shades of blue against the horizon. Even if you were never told, you would know you were in the blue ridge mountains. There is a softness to the vast expanse of the mountain ridges and as a child I perceived the tree-laden peaks as I did clouds; it is as if you could fall into either of them and they would cradle you in a gentle cushion. Moving further southwest the greenery changes subtly and everything drips with ivy and leaves and the mountains seem somehow bigger and the horizon slips farther away into the distance.

looking out onto the blue ridge mountains

I arrive in Asheville right around sunset, just in time to see the sun rupture and spill out all golden against the mountains. As I drive the last 25 or so miles the cars surrounding me on the road are bumper stickered and homey, rather than sleek and uninviting. A man in worn out threads with a large grey beard and a walking stick waves from across the highway as he continues to trek the opposite way. There is something contented about him, something that reminds me momentarily of the unusual luxury of detachment from normal society. Even before I have completely arrived in the city, Asheville is welcoming me in.

my great american road trip

on thursday, 7 august, i will pack up my beloved subaru, leave akron, ohio,  and drive across the country. inspired from literature and music about the american narrative (especially the themes of the west and the road trip), as well as from general uncertainty, my trip out west and then back around will take nearly four months and span more than 20 states.

major stops along the way include:
Washington D.C.
Baltimore, MD
Asheville, NC
Nashville, TN
Memphis, TN
St. Louis, MO
Betonville, AR
Denver, CO
Grand Teton National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Seattle, WA
Portland, OR
Redwood National Park
San Francisco, CA
Yosemite National Park
Big Sur
Los Angelos, CA
San Diego, CA
Santa Fe, NM
Austin, TX
New Orleans, LA
Atlanta, GA
Charleston, SC
Charlottesville, VA

these are not all the stops i will be making and the length of time i will be spending at every place varies from one day to two weeks. i will be posting on here, hopefully regularly, about traveling, food, getting lost, meeting weird people, music, my unfortunate (but most likely inevitable) first speeding ticket, america, and books.

if you hate blogs as much as i do, but you're still interested in any of those things, especially when they look nice, there will be lots of photo updates (http://instagram.com/killagraham_).

la cienega just smiled (ryan adams).

when i'm feeling lost i take to the road and the countryside. today i've let myself slip into a dangerous diet of parliments and ryan adams and so i fill up my car and head away. most of the snow has melted but there are enough icy drifts still left in the fields that the late afternoon sun hits the ground and dances across the endlessness in a thousand moving, sparkling pieces of light.

there are no answers out here, but the rolling hills and winter bare trees and the sweet sound of the music soothes my questions. i love driving through the country, especially the country as you head towards the South. there is as little as lovely as the hay and the rotting, decrepit wooden buildings, the rusty train bridges and the silver silos, the golden sun setting amidst the hills and trees.

i'm not sure of all the reasons for my travels and i don't think there will be answers when i drive out west, but movement and travel are cathartic. there are millions of tiny, beautiful moments and the glorious, open expanse of the road gives me hope for a glorious, open expanse of experience.

whatever i find when i drive across the country, i hope it leaves me with more of these tiny, beautiful moments to help fill up the dark spaces, the empty spaces, the questioning spaces. and i don't worry so much because when i finally turn around to head back the sun has dipped below the horizon and the clouds are flames of orange and purple behind me, the road is still kind and inviting, and i don't feel so lost.

sound of the road

i drove back to akron the other day and i left oxford the morning after a long downpour caused flash flooding the night before. a warm front had moved in and the weather was gloriously warm for late december. the clouds we're stacked on top of each other in deep grey-blues stretching for miles against the sky, but the sun somehow managed to slip through. it was optimal weather for driving. headed along the south-western ohio roads reminded me of all the beautiful drives i had been on when i was younger and how the time i spent on the road was one of the motivating factors in my decision to travel west.

we spent a fair amount of time driving when i was a growing up; trips back to virginia, up north to spend summers in michigan, visits to my older brother at school in durham. sometimes the hours in the car were tortuously long, but they are also some of my fondest memories. during these car rides it was impossible to escape the influence of my family. rare was time without conversation, and my parents and brothers possessed not only an excellent ability to talk incessantly, but also an impressive breadth of knowledge. given that we were inclined to speak often and loudly, the trips were full of cacophony because the only time the music ever stopped in the car was when the CD was being switched.

music was an important part of driving with my family and it is the sounds of the allman brothers, bob dylan, neil young, and countless others that accompanied our travels. to me, the road is a place for music and it is hard to detach the two from each other. every summer as we drove deeper into the wooded roads of northern michigan my parents would put a dead show on and the connection that the two have for me is inseparable. this music is the voice of my country and when i listen it calls me.

both music and travel are an escape, they are an invitation for something new. the road stretches on ahead for thousands of miles and all with the possibility of adventure. i heard something in the music and in the road and it beckoned me to follow it, so i will.


**posted late. v late. oops. i'm too good at wasting time in order to avoid posting things.