The Lincoln Highway Book Tour

Today marks the "official" end of our Great American Road Trip, a cross-country book tour that has allowed us to once again experience the genuine America along the shoulders of the Lincoln Highway.

We made our way through the necklace of communities and towns on the old highway in the San Francisco Bay area but devoted much of our time to visiting the iconic Lincoln Highway sites in the city itself. One such stop was the palace of Fine Arts built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, an early draw for the first Lincoln Highway travelers. The magnificent building is all that remains from the famous fair that celebrated the discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the completion of the Panama Canal.

From there we glided through tree studded avenues and the gentle sloping grounds of the Presidio with its grand views of the Golden Gate Bridge, until we reached Lincoln Park, site of the palace of Legion and also the markers signifying the western terminus of the Lincoln Highway. We posed for photos by the
concrete marker adorned with the Lincoln medallion and the distinctive "L" and when a bus driver paused next to us we coaxed him to join us for the picture session. He was delighted about the publication of the book, since the site if one of his daily stops. To mark the occasion we gave him an autographed copy
and then stood for even more photos with a group of Chinese tourists.

As we did in the book, we did not conclude our journey at the terminus marker, but instead went to Land’s End, below the ruins of the Sutro Baths and the latest rendition of Cliff House. From that point we overlooked Ocean Beach, a s pecial place that holds many sweet memories for us.

The final book signing that evening at Book Passage in the restored Ferry Building drew a big crowd including media, old friends such as Mary Jane Wall (best known as "Proud Mary"), and some of our good pals from Pixar — the studio that gave the world the magical film, Cars.

And then it came to an end. We hugged and kissed and even cried a little before splintering like a sky rocket and heading off in different directions on new journeys all our own. The tear did not last long. All of us knew there would more trips to come. We will make the cross country trek again and again on
Mr. Lincoln’s road. It is after all, the best way to go.

Do remember that life truly does begin at the off-ramp and always stick to the crooked roads, the roads of genius. Travel well.

Another Sabbath on the Lincoln Highway. Our official journey is nearing a close, but we all know our travels on the Father Road will never end. We will be making this journey over and over as we do everything in our power to bring the Lincoln Highway back to life. Michael Wallis helped do it before with his book about Route 66, and we are confident that together we can do it again. The passion and commitment are there and so are a host of road warriors across the and who will help keep the old road alive.

The morning drive through the California mountains and forests is as good as ever and all our stops along the way bring back instant memories just as new memories are made. We had a fine time in Auburn, one of the best towns on the Lincoln in the state. The old gold mining camp in the foothills has turned into a comfortable city that remains attuned to its history and culture.

Our big event in Sacramento was a total hoot! A huge cr owd — one of our largest on the tour — turned out at the Towe Auto Museum to hear both Michaels wax eloquently about old road travel versus the super slabs. Many in the audience were either friends of or familiar with Michael Williamson from his years
spent as a staff photographer at the Sacramento Bee newspaper. The line to get autographed books was endless and even after all the books were all sold, we signed book postcards for folks to affix in their books when they eventually got one.

After the event, we browsed Old Town, hit Fat City for some refreshments, and called on the bronze statue of the Pony Express rider caught forever in time and space astride his pony.

By evening we were ensconced in our digs at Davis, the home of a branch of the University of California and a reliable Lincoln Highway resting place. Tomorrow we will arrive in San Francisco and end our Great American Road Trip. Tonight we dream of the road behind us and of all the adventures that have kept us going as we spread the gospel of open road travel.

In the wee hours we crawled into rooms an an aging motel in gritty Austin, Nevada, across the street from the International Hotel, where cowboys and cowgirls danced with miners to jukebox serenades. The door to Michael and Suzanne's motel room would not lock, so Michael pushed a chest of drawers in front of it just in case some wayward soul with a snootful of suds happened to stumble by looking for a crash pad. We slept like newborns on mattresses older than all of us.

When dawn broke, Michael pushed the chest of drawers away and outside the door spied a fresh pile of coyote scat. Michael made his way to the International Hotel to get some coffee. The cook -- clad in a Green Bay Packers t-shirt and a few days' growth of whiskers -- was obliging as he turned out stacks of blueberry flapjacks for some local working stiffs. A sign promised a lunch special of NY steak and shrimp with all the trimmings for under eight bucks.

The cook told Michael, now joined by the rest of the crew, to have coffee on the front porch -- the domain of Samantha, a big caramel-colored hound with sweet brown eyes who likes to be belly scratched. "Samantha ain't nobody's dog," the cook told us, "she's the town's dog. She takes care of all us and we take care of her."

Then it was "Adios Austin" and hello Loneliest Road all morning with quick stops at Stoke's Castle and the Shoe Tree. Beyond that big cottonwood, we all ate a late breakfast at Middlegate Station, an oasis where the ceiling is papered with thousands of dollars of bills of all denominations. Fredda and Russ Stevanson own and run the place, and while Fredda hobbled about on her broken leg -- healing in a cast -- one of her best hands, a spunky gal who took seven orders without writing down a single word, worked the grill like the pro she is. No wonder Stephen King hung out here years back when he was researching one of his novels.

Beyond Fallon, our journey took us to a signing at Sundance Books in Reno, "the Biggest Little City in the World." Suzanne Johnson, a veteran of two of our Smithsonian tours down Route 66, was in the audience to get our book about the Lincoln, yet another old road for her to explore.

By afternoon we crossed into California, our thirteenth and final state of our great American Road Trtip Tour. Our big stop is Truckee, which gave our adventure in the land of milk and honey a great start. Visits to our favorite haunts and our appearance at the Book Shelf, one of our favorite local bookstores on the Lincoln.

A cozy lodge not far from the Donner Summit Bridge at the infamous Donner Pass provided refuge and comfort for some road wary pilgrims.  

The road gods continued to smile on us in Salt Lake City and for that matter our entire day on the old road in Utah. Our tribe gathered for a breakfast picnic within sight of both the state capital dome and the majestic Mormon Tabernacle before the two Michaels entered a large studio complex. There we were interviewed live on one of National Public Radio's most popular programs, "On Point."

Afterward our trio of vehicles departed Salt Lake. We paused for salt water taffy at the majestic Saltair, perched on the edge of the Great Salt Lake and then topped off our gas tanks and got plenty of water and snacks in Toele. Ahead of us awaited the original 1913 routing of the Lincoln Highway -- a dirt and rock path that takes us back in time on its turns and twists all the way through the rest of Utah into Nevada. It is a glorious and memorable trek every time we make it.

All day long we followed the path of the Pony Express and the overland stage. We can easily picture the nimble riders -- "orphans preferred" -- on their fleet ponies kicking up dirt as they ride from station to station.

In the Skull Valley we all stop at Orr's Ranch where for many years travelers following this route stopped to rest, to refuel themselves and their vehciles, and to vist with members of the hospitable Orr family, pioneer settlers in this rugged land.

Shirley and Dennis Andrus and their pair of playful dogs made us feel at home. Shirley was born an Orr on this ranch that her grandfather homesteaded in 1890.

The earliest Lincoln Highway sojourner pulled in at Orr's Ranch for fuel and food and some spent the night before moving on to points east and west. The ranch s still inviting and as picturesque as ever. We tour the old cabin where the Wright brothers slept and later the young Dwight Eisenhower, who stayed during that historic 1919 military caravan to test the mettle of the Lincoln.

We moved on, skirting the huge Dugway Proving Ground, the major chemical and biological weaponry facility established by the U.S. Army during World War II. Plenty of pronghorns kept our caravan company as we bumped along the road. At one of the old Pony Express Station stops we  met a crew of teenage boys and girls sporting suntans and big back packs, taking a break during their 25 mile high desert march.

All day we moved forward through the dusty desert, despite a few surprise twists and turns. We passed Fish Springs and many of the man made and natural sites we describe in the book.We reached Callao and eventually Ibapah trading post, close to the Nevada border. Michael Williamson finds some air for his slowly dying rear tire. 

Ahead waits our twelfth state: Nevada. Before the sun disappears, there is time to prowl the ghostly remains of the Tippett Ranch and to have a fried chicken dinner at the Hotel Nevada in the town of Ely. Before us from Ely across Nevada the path of the Lincoln Highway becomes U.S. 50, dubbed "The Loneliest Road in America." Ironically, for us, we found it one of the friendliest stretches of on the route.

We were up before first light and watched the sun come up over the Wasatch Mountains from King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City's preeminent independent bookstore. We were huddled with coffee in the company of  Anne Holman, who runs the store, and Hugh Cannon, a local resident a vintage car enthusiast who let us use his Lincoln Highway Model T replica in a live shot for "Good Morning Utah," which chose our Lincoln Highway book as its August Book Club pick. The two live segments with reporter Christiana Brady went off without a hitch.

While our entourage stayed in SLC to tour the Mormon Tabernacle, Michael, Michael, and the girls headed to Park City for a talk inside the frontier prison which is now a part of the Park City Historical Museum. The prison was packed with people and Michael Wallis was reminded of something his mother told him -- that if he was to pursue his writing, he'd end up in prison with a photographer. In this case, we are lucky her warning came to pass.

Back in SLC, we returned to end our day where it had begun -- at King's English for one of the finest stops of the tour. The crowd happily stayed put in the bookstore garden, despite a short visit from one of Salt Lake City's brief and light rain storms. After the talk, the Michael's signed books and enjoyed visiting with new and old friends.

We headed across the street for dinner at a sidewalk cafe. When Hugh Cannon pulled up and honked his Model T, offering a twilight ride around the tree-lined streets of Salt Lake City, we couldn't say no.

Our growing entourage of road warriors left the haunted Plains Hotel in Cheyenne and made a beeline for Laramie, home of the University of Wyoming, the only four year institution of higher learning in the state. En route, we paid homage to several old road icons including the settlement of Buford, Population 2, and the site of a trading post that has stood in that spot  since U.S. Grant was president. West of Buford is Tree Rock, "the famed landmark of Wyoming, " a popular resting place for travelers for generations.

Topping Sherman Hill summit at 8,640 feet, we sailed by a pair of Lincoln Highway monuments -- a giant bronze bust of Abe Lincoln and the Henry B. Joy Monument, which honors the first president of the Lincoln Highway Association.

Following a stop by the Wyoming Public Radio station in Laramie, we struck out on the old road loop to Medicine Bow, following the two-lane road the parallels the Union Pacific tracks.  We played amongst the old car corpses at Bosler and then stopped in to visit with a smiling Roy Hostler, the proprietor of a general store in Rock River.

We stopped at the "Dinosaur Graveyard" at Como Bluff to see how the old fossil cabin, built from 6000 dinosaur bones, was faring (we are still holding out hope that someone will return this historic stop to its former glory and make it a top notch Lincoln Highway destination).

Later we lunched at the historic Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, the town associated with author Owen Wister and his 1902 western novel The Virginian ( with it's famous line, "when you call me that, smile"). While we waited for our lunch, we poked around in the rooms upstairs, looking for signs of ghosts (we found them).

We drove up to the drive-thru liquor store in Medicine Bow to show the book to the gent who works there. His picture appears in the book -- in it he is feeding apples to deer who've come up to the liquor store window. He was surprised to see us and scrawled his John Hancock on his picture in our book (on page 217).

The rest of our time in Wyoming was well spent. Highlights included a bike party in our honor at Flaming Gorge Harley-Davidson in Rock Springs, and a stop by one of our favorite spots, a former Sinclair gas station at Point-of-Rocks. It's demise is a classic case of "death by interstate." We all vowed to do our best to keep such "murder" from occurring in the future. We are optimistic that the growing trend to save commercial archeology will continue.

Saturday was special, in no small part because we touched the three big historic highways: the Lincoln, Route 66 and the Dixie. We met Keith and Jan Fitzgerald for breakfast in downtown Joliet before heading over to the crossroads of Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway for an event at the Joliet Area Historical Museum, one of the finest open road museums in the nation. The Fitzgeralds drove from St. Louis to toast the Lincoln Highway.

A wide array of road warriors and highway fans assembled to hear Michael Wallis and Michael Williamson speak and sign books. In the crowd were John and Lenore Weiss, Ms Lynn (aka Lulu) and Carl Johnson.

We hit the old road to head toward our next event across the state, in Franklin Grove, Illinois. Lynn Asp, director of the Lincoln Highway Association National Headquarters, and Kay Shelton, head of the Illinois branch of the Lincoln Highway Association, led the crowd of well wishers who greeted our caravan as we approached the town's brand new library (so new, in fact, that they were still putting the books on the shelves and our event was the first time the public was allowed in the building). Before leaving town to head toward Iowa, we stopped into the historic H.I. Lincoln Store (built by a relative of Abe), the site of the LHA headquarters, to check out the collection of highway collectibles and artifacts.

The rest of our jaunt across the Land of Lincoln went as smooth as frozen custard as we passed familiar sites in Dixon and Fulton, the last town on the Lincoln Highway in west Illinois. Just across the Mississippi River on the Iowa side we ended our day with a super event at the Clinton County Historical Museum, surrounded many Iowa's treasures -- including a shrine to Lillian Russell, and 1920's era bathing suit, and walls full of historic postcards. Jeff LaFollette, president of the Iowa Lincoln Highway Association, was on hand to introduce us and parked in front of the museum was a beautiful red 1940's-era Plymouth with an immaculately restored tear-drop shaped sleeper trailer attached.  If only we could continue our journey across the country as "tin can tourists" in this fine automobile.

   

Dividends from the publication of a book come in many forms. We reaped a major dividend this morning at Hoke's Cafe in Ogallala, Nebraska, an old cowboy town once known as "The Gomorrah of the Cattle Trail." Hoke's -- the "House of Good Food" -- is the domain of Riley and Patsy Sermeno who together have made their establishment one of the finest Lincoln Highway eateries in the state.

Weary of all the hands-on work and bad hours (they open for breakfast at 5 AM and reopen for dinner at 5 PM), the couple had decided to sell Hoke's and were waiting for someone to make an offer. That all changed when they laid eyes on our book and their photo portrait on page 188. They told us that they believe that the new book is a sign that they were meant to stay at Hoke's a little longer. They have been revitalized just like much of the old varicose and scarred highway.

That new was our dividend. That's what makes us vow that we will always work to preserve and protect that Father Road.

By afternoon, after passing the remains of State Line Truck Stop hugging the Nebraska-Wyoming border, we rolled into Cheyenne where we had lunch at the historic Plains Hotel with Michael Wallis's old friend James Sloan and his daughter Rachel. James was in Michael's 1963 graduating class at Western Military Academy. They didn't wax on about prep school, but instead probed the history of the Lincoln and swapped open road stories.

Michael's day got even better when his wife Suzanne, literary agent James Fitzgerald, and nephew James, arrived at the Plaines and joined our tour headed west.

The Michaels spoke at the Cheyenne Depot Museum, which is housed in the stunning Union Pacific Depot. Jim Ross and Shellie Graham, to major forces on Route 66, showed up at the event, a stop on their own tour of the Lincoln Highway. During a raucous late night supper, we swapped stories about 66 and the Lincoln, and Michael Williamson amazed us with slight of hand party tricks.

We slept like kings and queens in the historic Plains, just as so many travelers have done since the Lincoln Highway was born in 1913.

Anyone who is tired of being bored silly on the super slab needs to follow our lead and get off Interstate 80 and onto the Lincoln Highway, a/k/a US 30. We guarantee you that you'll never regret it.

Our journey westward following the Platte River, the twin steel ribbon of the Union Pacific and, of course, the old road, was as unforgettable as always. Not only did we encounter old friends and see familiar places, but we saw plenty of new sites and met folks who became our road pals after a handshake and a few minutes of conversation.

For example, at the Fort Cody Trading Post, a big tourist draw in North Platte, the line of folks queued up for a signed book included retirees, school teachers, a gnarly 90-year-old woman with a walker, a couple of nuclear physicists, wide-eyed kids of summer, a Lutheran pastor, a rancher, and many more.

Our very hospitable hosts, Leigh and Chuck Henline, kept the book pile stacked and fed us BBQ sandwiches and killer coleslaw that would make your granny jealous.

Our evening event at Ole's Big Game Steakhouse in Paxton (right over the border in the Mountain Time Zone) was about as good as they get. Tim Holzfaster, the owner, and his mother and grandmother regaled us with local lore and one of our favorite Lincoln Highway waitresses, Sam, gave us hugs and that trademark smile that melts even the crustiest traveler's heart.

Indiana -- the Hoosier State, with 163 Lincoln Highway miles -- treated us like royalty. A night's rest in Fort Wayne was followed by an early A.M. stop at Cindy's Diner, without a doubt one of the city's and the Lincoln Highway's most revered eating establishments. Cindy herself had the day off after feting a diner full of grandkids for a birthday bash. Her husband and chief cook John Scheele was manning the busy grill, ably backed by Angie, a most competent waitress who is better known by the moniker "Brat." As always, the chow we consumed at Cindy's did not disappoint.

We journeyed a short distance to a book signing at Woodson Motorsports, a bustling motorcycle dealership housed in a recycled historic building. Among attendees was Jan Shupert-Arick, the esteemed national president of the Lincoln Highway Association. While reporters scribbled notes and cameras clicked, we all discussed preservation issues and future Lincoln Highway events over glazed doughnuts and steamy coffee.

Despite a hurried push to cover the road between Fort Wayne and our next official event in South Bend, we made time for drop-in visits at some of our favorite Lincoln Highway sites in Indiana. Of course, we had to stop at the Magic Wand, a drive-in restaurant in Churubusco, also known as "Turtle Town USA."

Judy Myers, owner of the Magic Wand, was sweeping the sidewalk when we pulled up for our big hugs, coffees, and ice cream cones. Three of her grandsons work for the Magic Wand and there's little doubt this establishment will remain in family hands for a long time to come.

Our midday event was at the Studebaker National Museum, where the cars were made for many years at what was billed as the "Largest Vehicle Manufacturer  in the World." Only about a year and a half old, the museum still has that "new car smell." Both Michaels spoke to an audience of car and road buffs and signed stacks of books. Among the crowd that greeted us was David Hay, the energetic Executive Director of the Lincoln Highway Association.

We headed west out of South Bend to LaPorte, where we had the good fortune to find John and Billie Pappas, owners of B.J.'s American Cafe in LaPorte, with some time to visit after a hectic lunch crunch. For eight decades, the Pappas family has maintained this restaurant, which is as authentic as they come.

We closed the evening in Schererville at the intersection of U.S. 30 and U.S. 41 at Teibel's, a restaurant founded in 1929 and is still run by the Teibel family. These days, Bob Teibel is at the helm and he, some family members, and lots of highway lovers welcomed us. Brian Butko and his sons, Chuck Biddle, and David Hay also joined in to celebrate the venerable highway over a complete chicken dinner served family style. We ate off dishes made by Homer Laughlin, the pottery maker on the Lincoln near Chester, West Virginia.

A few miles to the west, Illinois awaits. The Land of Lincoln.