By Gary Sprengel

My cousin and I were enjoying tea and scones one evening last February when our other cousins walked through the door. “Gary, you’re going to Reno!” Say what? And that’s how this insane adventure began, this trip that felt like a dream and a full circle moment.

When I was thirteen, my family took an Amtrak train out of Newark Penn Station to Chicago. We had enough time to go to the top of the Sears Tower before boarding a second train, the Southwest Chief, to Gallup, New Mexico, where we rented a car and eventually made our way to California. We hopped back on Amtrak again in Oakland and took the California Zephyr back to Newark. It was an epic trip that left a lasting impression, a yearning for the great wide open of the American West, an appreciation for all the different people and places that make up this country, a restlessness for exploration. I spent a lifetime wanting to get back to the Pacific Ocean but somehow never getting west of Indianapolis. Out of nowhere, I had a chance to get pretty damn close to my dream destination. All I had to do was hop in a car with my cousin and drive four sets of golf clubs to Reno!

Did I mention I was being paid to do this? And that room and board were paid for? You would gasp if you knew how little I spent out of my own pocket over twelve days. To quickly answer your burning questions, my cousin was in the military, they have a yearly conference, golf was on the itinerary, and he and his conference companions didn’t want the clubs going on a plane, so he hired his brother and myself to drive them. Now I famously loathe golf, so I do not understand the aversion to sending clubs on a plane ride across the country, but who am I to question professionals? Everything about this trip was insane. It was impossible for me to commit six months in advance, though, so I spent the whole time worried something would happen to screw it up. Nervous till the bitter end. It was just too good to be true. I didn’t commit until late July. And then Monday, August 14 rolled around. 8AM. My cousin’s car pulled up out front. It was happening! My God, it was actually happening! Up the 280 ramp we went! We were on Route 80 in twenty minutes. One road all across the country. One road that would take me to the Pacific Time Zone for the first time since I was thirteen!

We made incredible time. We were in Reno by 1AM Eastern Time on Thursday. Sixty-five hours. We drove straight through that first night, only stopping for roughly ninety minutes at a rest area in York, Nebraska, where I enjoyed a glorious misty sunrise over wide open fields. The first night’s highlights were visiting the world’s allegedly largest truckstop in Walcott, IA, driving through Omaha, and experiencing my first Kum & Go. Leaving the rest area, I was running on adrenaline and gladly assumed morning driving duties as we neared the Mountain Time Zone in western Nebraska. I had been reasonably bored until we got past Fort Wayne, IN, where I had driven just two years prior to a cousin’s wedding. Anyone reasonable knows that Pennsylvania is a tedious nightmare to drive through, and Ohio isn’t much better. Approaching Chicago is where it starts to really feel like another part of the country, and my excitement level ramped up several notches as soon as I finally got past that Indiana longitude barrier I couldn’t conquer for so many years. The only thing that kept me on the edge of my seat before Chicago was looking for tornadoes. Sadly, as I amusingly complained via text to my mother, I failed to see one despite hours of ominous clouds. This might have been the biggest disappointment of the whole trip. A lifelong weather freak, seeing a tornado is on my bucket list. From a distance, mind you; I am not interested in being fatally sucked up by one.

I could write a book on this trip, so it’s a challenge keeping this to article length. Wyoming was a massive highlight simply because I had never been there before, and the state proved to be a revelation. We made it to Cheyenne by early afternoon on the 15th. I got to experience the friendly neighborhood Family Dollar as I sought a car charger for the new phone I mercifully managed to buy the night before we left. The streets of this capital city were clean and full of history. We stopped in a western store to check out the hats and boots, and drove by the capitol building and governor’s mansion. We actually ended up seeing the capitol buildings of four states, an unexpected perk of the cross-country jaunt. We roamed Salt Lake City the next day, and did drive-bys through Lincoln, NE and Des Moines, IA on the ride back east. Salt Lake City’s capitol was the most architecturally impressive, but all of them put Trenton to shame. 

Back to Wyoming, though. We toured the Lincoln Monument at the highest point on the Lincoln Highway, then drove around Laramie for a while, where I sadly couldn’t help but think of Matthew Shepard’s savage murder there in 1998. We ended the day by getting a hotel just a few minutes from the Utah border in Evanston, which had the fine distinction of being the only place on the entire trip where the MAGA cult made me briefly uncomfortable. Or maybe it was a Biden voter driving the loud pick-up truck full of rowdy young men with a huge Confederate flag plastered to the back; I shouldn’t make such rash judgments. An hour or so later, after our merely adequate Jimmy John’s dinner, I decided to go to the bar next to the hotel so I could check “got a beer in Wyoming” off my bucket list. I quite purposefully ordered a Bud Light, which provoked a juvenile and borderline hostile reaction that I could have scripted in the drunk next to me. I was forced to endure his kidding for the duration of my beer. Thanks for playing along, cowboy! Evanston is clearly backwards, but I loved Cheyenne and Laramie, and the landscape of Wyoming is stunning. 

Utah was also gorgeous. Salt Lake City unfolds in front of you in a slightly more dramatic way than Newark and New York do when you come down the 280 mountain through West Orange. It’s a very charming and walkable cosmopolitan city, mountains and lakes just minutes away. We went to the Great Salt Lake—bring bug spray!—and then drove through the salt flats, which I remembered from the train trip at nighttime all those years ago. It was breathtaking to see the shimmering white surface in daylight, stretching as far as the eye could see under the hot August sun. The vastness of open land out west is something you never get over. By the way, an interesting thing many western towns do is putting the first letter of their town somewhere on the nearest mountain, either with paint, rocks, or clearing land to carve out the letter. Nevada kind of bored me in comparison to Wyoming and Utah, though rambling through relatively bustling Winnemucca for dinner and gas was a real treat. It was one of many towns I remembered from the train trip. Route 80 and the Amtrak line parallel each other through much of the country, so it was a real kick to drive through so many familiar places from long ago. And so many trains! A constant sight in the middle of nowhere were so many hundred-car (at least) freight trains.

After a very boring few hours through Nevada’s empty landscape, we finally saw Reno laid out before us. Lights everywhere. Civilization! I couldn’t believe I was there. We arrived the night before everyone else, so got to relax and explore a bit. When I finally hit the streets solo around 11:30PM that Wednesday, I have to admit that Reno immediately gave off a depressing vibe. This is a city with a lot of down-on-their-luck people downtown. Gambling is its biggest industry, so this isn’t a surprise. There were more homeless and clearly mentally unwell people on the streets than tourists close to midnight, and daytime was not much better. This is not a family vacation destination. The streets of downtown Reno always felt empty and sad, like its best days were decades ago. Everyone was inside the casinos and hotels. There weren’t finance bros crowding the sidewalks going to and from their shiny office tower jobs. I was never fearful of walking around, but you have to exercise common sense. I’m drawn to gritty environments, so I was hardly phased, and downtown bleeds seamlessly into more residential neighborhoods like the artsy Midtown and University of Nevada campus just a few blocks away. Reno’s faded grittiness is actually its appeal when it comes to the staggering number of old motels, many of them vacant. This is a signage and architecture freak’s dream city! Walking through downtown or Midtown, you feel transported to the fifties or sixties. I could have spent days just walking around taking photos of the vintage signs. Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of the so-called biggest little city in the world. 

The conference itself consisted of five very full days of dinners in western wear, a trade show, and sky-high suites full of liquor and snacks, all of it capped off by a closing concert by country singer Josh Turner. I’m still sorting through my five bags of trade show goodies five months later. Powdered drinks, pens, notebooks, frisbees, sanitizers, towels, shirts, socks, water bottles, keychains, coasters, a back scratcher. I swiped everything in sight. Free time was rare, but I made the most of it. Thank God I can survive on very little sleep. On Monday afternoon, August 21, I had a chunk of free time in the afternoon to fit in a very exciting pilgrimage on foot to In-N-Out. As soon as I started thinking this trip might actually happen, I hatched a scheme to finally visit this western burger mecca. Upon googling locations, I was overjoyed to learn one was only eight blocks from my hotel. After spending like ten minutes taking pictures and analyzing the menu, I ordered my two burgers, fries and strawberry shake. I’m ecstatic to report that it generally lived up to the hype, though I wouldn’t get my fries animal style again. Oh, I also roamed the local supermarket because I’m a weirdo who believes this is essential vacation behavior.

I had a very special request that Tuesday morning we left Reno. Could we go the few miles to California just to say we did? My cousin, God bless him, was totally game. Much like In-N-Out, I had thoroughly mapped this out back home. We wouldn’t cross the border on 80, where there wasn’t an area to pull over, but would get off in Verdi, NV and take a local street to the California town of the same name. There were a couple of wrong turns, but we eventually found the road I had seen on Google Street View featuring the exact “Welcome to California” sign I ached to stand next to. I have had a photo framed for years of my brother and I standing in front of the “Welcome to California” sign on Route 15. To say this moment was surreal is a colossal understatement. I was finally back, albeit briefly, in the Golden State! Making the experience even richer was encountering a woman in her early seventies named Vicki whose house was right on the border. Her house was in Nevada while her property extended into California. She was out walking and quite taken with us, saying she had never seen anyone using her street as a border crossing before. Vicki was an absolute delight, and we talked with her for about twenty minutes. She graciously agreed to my group photo request, as well, before we began our nearly 2,700-mile journey back east. The Pacific Ocean would have to wait for another time, but August 22, 2023 will always be the day I got back to California. 

There was no rush to get back. We got out to walk on the salt flats this time, had dinner at a brewery in Salt Lake City, then stayed the night again in Evanston, WY. Another highlight was the mere two hours or so that I got off 80 and onto Route 30, the Lincoln Highway, and just ambled through small western Nebraska towns. I also hatched a plot to briefly invade Colorado. My brilliant map skills really paid off here. There were so many photo opportunities in these towns. Movie theaters, crumbling buildings, deserted gas stations, wide main streets. Scenes from another America. I could have driven this road all across the country. My cousin’s special request was to stop at the American Pickers store in Le Claire, IA, which also happened to be along the mighty Mississippi. From there we made a last minute stop at our cousins’ outside Chicago. They were kind enough to give us a full dinner along with sparkling conversation. Three hours or so later, we found our way to our final hotel of the trip in Ohio.

I was a bit bummed to be getting home that final Friday, but we still had one more treat in store. We got off in Lorain, OH to see Lake Erie, which we had both never seen before. It was a blustery day in the 60s, so no swimming would be taking place, but I managed to carefully baptize myself anyway. We also had a fine lunch at the 4th Street Diner, which had a sitcom-worthy cast of characters, one of whom gave me her number so I could text photos I had taken of the diner. And then we were really on our way home. This absolutely classic road trip concluded around 11PM on August 25. Route 80 almost the entire way. I am still processing all of it five months later. If you gave me the choice between going abroad or to the tropics or a cross-country road trip, I’m choosing the road trip every time. Driving is a far more rewarding experience than flying. I am surely a rarity, but visiting states I haven’t been to yet is a travel priority. The United States has its fair share of problems, but this country’s diversity of landscape and people and culture is spectacular. I don’t see myself ever moving from New Jersey, but every state has something to offer. I don’t believe in boycotting a state because of their terrible politics. 

I am immensely grateful to have had the opportunity to go on this nutty trip. It renewed my soul. I went twelve days without having a moment of stress. Well, except for when I got our group hustled out of the North Dakota hospitality suite because I was taking pictures, but we won’t dwell on that. I had such a vivid memory of seeing the Reno arch sign from the train when I was thirteen. To be standing in front of it on North Virginia Street all these years later was truly meaningful. The next time you’re cursing 280’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, just remember how much more of America awaits you at the other end of that same road. All roads lead in and out of Newark. Go west for the adventure of a lifetime!

Gary Sprengel is a Harrison native who fled to Amish Country, PA to obtain his BA in communications from Elizabethtown College. He enjoys photography, craft beer, wandering urban landscapes, and country music. He wrote dating blogs under a pseudonym for about a year, and was once pulled onstage by Don Rickles in Atlantic City. He goes by the cryptic @garysprengel on Instagram and Twitter.