Can you believe it started with a parking space?

Despite not owning a car, when I moved into my apartment back in 2004, I put my name on the waiting list for one of the garage spots in my building. I had forgotten about it by the time my girlfriend (now wife) moved in with me in 2005. Three months later, the spot was ours, and there would be an additional charge on our rent each month. If we were gonna get charged for it, might as well have a car, right?

My wife had left her car at her parent's place in Louisville, so a plan was made to fly to Kentucky and drive it the whole way back to San Francisco (where we live). I had never driven through any part of the Southwest, and my roadtrip experience was confined to trips from Seattle to San Diego and NYC to Old Orchard, Maine. This would be new and exciting for the both of us. It got even better when we decided to take the remains of Route 66 (now I-40).

I had three priorities for the trip:
1. There would be as much barbecue as we could eat (and I can eat a lot of barbecue) of as many styles as we could find.
2. I wanted to see whatever odd roadside attractions were available (I had just finished "American Gods").
3. We were visiting Graceland.

The fact that my wife enthusiastically embraced all of these priorities should not come as a surprise. The fact that she did so and it still took me another two years to propose to her should.

Highlights from 1200 something miles: Louisville to Memphis covered three bourbon distilleries, a trip to Beale Street, and dinner at Rendezvous BBQ. Then Graceland, and a sprint to Little Rock to see the Clinton Library before it closed for the day. Crossing Oklahoma at night, waking up outside of Oklahoma City and eating grilled onion burgers for breakfast. The Oklahoma-Texas border is quite possibly the emptiest, freakiest part of America I've ever seen, but Sayer, OK is almost beautiful in its collapsing infrastructure. More barbecue in the Texas panhandle. A side trip to Santa Fe for art, tequila, and ridiculous green chile breakfast burritos. The Grand Canyon. And then a mad dash for the coast, and the long familiar stretch of PCH in front of us.

I took a bunch of pictures. It was, all of it, amazing. This country is bigger and stranger and more beautiful than you can really grasp flying from one coast to the other all the time.