Go On Your Next Adventure with This Map of American Non-Fiction Road Trips
Kreitner and Melendez’s map of epic road trips from American non-fiction is a great way to plan your next road trip
Photo: Atlas Obscura
Road trips are quickly becoming the epic of the modern age. Characters in contemporary non-fiction novels are joining the ranks of Odysseus and Aeneas as they journey from one edge of the country to the other, searching for themselves—and for adventure.
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For many people, following the journey of these literary characters is the perfect way to spend a summer. To help make it easier to follow the adventures of your favorite characters, Steven Melendez and Richard Kreitner have teamed up to plot the course of some of America’s finest road trips.
Ranging from Mark Twain’s Roughing It, which was published in 1872, to Cheryl Strayed’s more recent novel Wild, this map maps every step the characters take. It includes every reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, allowing you to even read the author’s description of the landscape as they traveled across it.
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The map, created by Melendez—with a whole lot of hard work on part of both men—includes the routes of characters from the following novels:
- Wild, Cheryl Strayed (2012)
- The Cruise of the Rolling Junk, Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
- Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails With America’s Hoboes, Ted Conover (1984)
- A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins (1979)
- Cross Country: Fifteen Years and 90,000 Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America with Lewis and Clark, Robert Sullivan (2006)
- The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson (1989)
- Blue Highways: A Journey into America, William Least Heat Moon (1982)
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
- Roughing It, Mark Twain (1872)
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig (1974)
- Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck (1962)
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe (1968)
Make sure you check out the awesomely interactive map and plan your next road trip accordingly!
News Source: Atlas Obscura
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