Completing the Spirit of ’39 journey 78 years later!

What a journey. I set out 78 years and a day after my grandfather did from Florham Park, New Jersey for San Francisco. While I didn’t get bitten by a rattlesnake, fight forest fires to pay for car repairs, or ride freight trains for transportation (all things that occurred on my grandpa’s trip), I did battle strep throat, drive through the Mojave with no air conditioning, and run into a mama bear and her three cubs. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Bear with me as I try to condense a month of adventure and research into a short and sweet blog post.

My friend Erica Schneider and I loaded up my ’06 Chevy Impala in Northern Virginia and drove up to Florham Park, NJ to meet my mom (my grandfather’s daughter) and her friend from the town who has been doing a lot of research into my grandfather’s childhood in New Jersey. After a town tour, we left from the same lot he did and headed for Fort Nonsense, a small hill outside of town that the boys used to test the ability of the bus’s engine. My V6 engine had no trouble and we were on our way. We wound through the east on the Lincoln Highway, a well preserved but little known cross-country route (Times Square to San Francisco) that my grandfather traveled on. We saw the Laurel Highlands of Western Pennsylvania, small towns linking us across Ohio, and after two days, Chicago. Here we visited Oak Street Beach, one of the boys’ first memorable destinations.

From Chicago we continued on the Lincoln Highway through Iowa. This was interesting, as Iowa was very set on preserving the EXACT route of the Lincoln Highway. We were routed through small downtowns that looked like their heyday was perhaps in the 20’s to 40’s. Very pretty buildings, and neat, clean streets, but there was absolutely no one around. Businesses weren’t open, and we were quite often the only car on the road. The “highway” also sometimes took turns onto long stretches of gravel roads through corn fields, where we could go about 25 miles an hour. This put a bit of a damper on things, especially since we were relying on the open windows to cool us down in the 95°+ heat. But we pushed on through Nebraska (more corn and soy), and made it to “the west” when we dipped down into Colorado for Rocky Mountain National Park. Even though it has been written about for hundreds of years, I cannot even begin to explain the feeling of driving through flatness for days (at least four!) and then seeing the flatirons outside of Boulder rise out of the horizon. Though I have flown out west and visited the Rockies before, experiencing the change of the American landscape through a long, slow road really helped me to more fully understand their grandeur.

During our trip, I had created an Instagram account (@spiritof39 if you want to check it out) that I was trying to update daily. Not only did it serve to let people know what we were up to (and it turns out a lot more people were interested in my trip than I thought would be!), but also as a way to connect what we were doing to what my grandfather experienced. I would often re-read his account of the area we were in as I drafted the captions to my posts. As the trip went on, my narratives became longer and more involved, as I really came to enjoy writing about what we were seeing. Below is an example from our day driving into Utah:

July 19th: Wyoming to Utah

A sleep in was in store after our late-night arrival. We treated ourselves to the singular avocado that had finally ripened and strong coffee. We got on the road destined for Salt Lake City. To get there, we drove through most of Wyoming- a state neither of us had any conception of aside from Yellowstone in the north.

Luckily for us, the dolphin (my ’06 Chevy Impala) made it through in one piece (aside from the still broken AC). Grandpa and the boys didn’t have it so great. Two miles from the Rockies, an engine gasket blew, and Grandpa and Joe Phair hiked the 20 miles back to Laramie to secure a new gasket.

They probably hiked through the flat, dry, agricultural part of the state, which is actually in sharp contrast to central and western Wyoming, which contains the most unique rock formations I have ever experienced. And right from the highway! I was tempted more than once to pull over and hike into an intriguing canyon or to the top of an outcrop, but Erica snoozing in the passenger seat kept me pushing on to Utah.

We followed the Lincoln Highway across Wyoming (I-80 all the way through) but deviated to Salt Lake instead of Ogden, UT. The boys had some bad times in Ogden, so we didn’t feel the need to visit. A car that ran a red light there crashed into the bus, with one casualty. They ended up staying 5 days there, processing and doing odd jobs while the bus was repaired.

Our Utah experience was a bit different. We met up with a high school friend of Erica’s who took us out to eat at the best Mexican place in town, and then graciously let us use his wifi and shower (thanks Caleb!). Traveling in the dead of summer with no AC or showers can make you feel some sort of way, so our time in Salt Lake was much appreciated and needed.

That night, we set up camp about an hour out of the city, up in the mountains of Wasatch National Forest. We hammocked by a roaring stream and woke up to a beautiful drive out of the mountains while overlooking the entire valley.

Utah also gave us the Bonneville Salt Flats before handing us over to Nevada and The Loneliest Road (yes, it is actually called that). The Nevada Desert will definitely be a highlight of my trip. The vastness, the dry, swaying grasses, being able to watch a thunderstorm for an hour and never get wet. These are things I still think about. It was a quiet, gorgeous drive, and unlike anything I experience out east. I can’t imagine driving through that area in 1939 in a bus prone to breakdown, and just miles upon miles of open desert; no towns, just mountains on the horizon.

We broke out of the desert to its exact contrast: an azure lake ringed by snowcapped peaks. Lake Tahoe welcomed us to California, and after enjoying her for a day, we spent two days hiking around Yosemite. As this post has already become much longer than anticipated, I will assure you it was amazing and promise more detail in my final product (or check out my write up on Insta!). We made San Francisco at the end of two weeks, our first stop being the site of the 1939 World’s Fair. Erica stayed in San Fran, and after two days there, I started my journey south. Unfortunately, Highway 1 (the scenic route by the coast that the boys took) was closed for a large section due to landslides, so I deviated a bit and took 101 south until it turned into Route 1. I camped in the mountains outside of Santa Barbara, enjoyed the next day on the beach, and then started by goodbye California drive to the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. The Grand Canyon was my next stop, and I unexpectedly ended up staying there two and a half days, as my father arranged last-minute to join me! He says it’s because he wanted to hang with me, but I really know it’s because he wanted to see the Grand Canyon.

From Northern Arizona (also home to the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest), we followed Route 66 through New Mexico, Northern Texas (Palo Duro Canyon), Oklahoma (first armadillo sighting!), and Missouri (St. Louis Arch). From there, 66 heads up to Chicago, but Grandpa was still going east, so we rolled through Southern Illinois, Indiana (tallest waterfall in Indiana is 20 feet…), Ohio, and back to Pennsylvania. Once in Pennsylvania we were retracing our westward steps a bit, but it looked so fresh after experiencing the dry, dry west. In Florham Park we were met by a long-time local, my mother and pup, and the Mayor! Since then, I have been processing, learning a ton about my grandfather’s early life, and attempting to finish posting my narratives of the trip to the Instagram.

In my next post I’ll talk a bit more about the research I’ve done, the GIS program I’m using to compile geographic data and media from the trip, and a little about the oral history I’ve been able to hear from my grandfather’s (living) older brother.

P.S. A couple of newspapers picked up on my story during the trip, if you want to read a little more about it, here are the links!

http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/keeping_the_spirit_of_39_alive432

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/east-hanover-slash-florham-park/articles/the-spirit-of-39-on-the-road-78-years-later