My husband and I took a road trip to California. Here are some excerpts from my travel journal:
July 2, 2025, Matfield Green, Kansas
Left Cincinnati at 8:30 a.m., a half an hour later than we’d intended, but not bad. I never rise to the standard my parents set, leaving at 6:30 a.m., six kids in car, luggage on top and getting to Dad’s folks at midnight. At least that’s how I remember it, though it doesn’t seem possible now
Drove over the Wabash, the Missouri, the Mississippi. A few of my ancestors went this way, some at least in covered wagons. I went this way to college. So much corn.
My childhood history of driving west is layered with every book or story, every myth ever told about this country’s history. Can’t help starting off with a “gone to look for America” vibe.
Picnic lunch somewhere in Missouri. Good fried dinner at Stroud’s in Kansas City, where they claim they “choke our own chicken.” Neil bought the T-shirt.
July 3
Spent the day with (my cousin) Diana and (her husband) Kelly, eating pancakes, talking, walking around their tiny town of Matfield Green in the Kansas Flint Hills. It was dying until people like artists and photographers and lovers of the tall grass moved in. It’s so beautiful here. We visited a friend of theirs who lives in a yurt; she came back with us and played music with Diana and Kelly and Neil.
We left before dinner, drove north through the rolling prairie. I think about the pioneers who moved here from the East, facing fires and drought and disease and death in childbirth. They were so brave and plucky. But the tall grass also seems to hide ghosts of the native people, just as brave and resourceful as those settlers but no match for their sheer relentless rapaciousness. I can’t think of one group without the other, but it’s hard to keep them in mind at the same time.
Fried chicken for dinner again in Abilene in a restaurant where everything shows up on the table family style, like Sunday dinner on the farm.
Staying in a depressingly generic hotel off the interstate. I miss the mom and pop motels of my childhood, along with soft serve stands and small town cafes.
July 4, Fort Collins, Colo.
Ate the free breakfast, listened to old folks tell corny jokes to strangers (I don’t smoke anymore. Of course, I don’t smoke any less. Hahaha) Drove north to visit Nicodemus. Weather beaten tiny town, barely holding on to its place on the prairie. It was founded by Black people in 1877. Just 14 years out of enslavement they left the South, and settled their own town. Built sod houses at first, then streets and two churches and a hotel. People who’d had little control of their lives now elected town leaders. The Homestead Act was open to Black people. But the railroads passed them by, and the town didn’t really have a chance after that. Some descendants still live there, some farm, others still own land.
If those Scandinavian and Irish and German settlers were brave, just think about how brave Black people had to be, even in a state that was founded as anti-slavery. Seems that railroad took a definite detour around Nicodemus and gave a different, white town the good luck.
They were the epitome of the ideals we admire in pioneers. They should be on the cover of the history books.
Lots of spacious skies and amber waves of grain between Nicodemus and where we stopped for lunch. It was a vision: the kind of stainless steel train-inspired diner from the mid-century that was revived around the ’80s in a spasm of nostalgia for the ’50s, as defined by poodle skirts and chocolate malts. There’s a Caddy up on a tall pole (also EV charging stations). The menu has hamburgers and fries … plus khachapuri and borscht. The place is owned and managed by a Georgian-America family who chat with customers in Georgian or Russian or English. It was so surprising and so well done. As all-American as the shiny diner it’s in.
July 5, Vernal, Utah
We made it to Mark and Brenda’s last night in time for dinner. Went to a Mexican restaurant, but a country band was playing too loudly for us to hear each other. Seems appropriate because what’s more iconically American than country music? Maybe chicken mole enchiladas. We watched small town fireworks from their front porch, oohed and aahed and reminisced.
Why do people think there’s only one story about American history? And who’s American? History books were already too simplistic, now they’re being rewritten as pure fiction and whitewashed legend.
It was a purple mountains majesty day as we drove along the beautiful Cache de Poudre river, full of kayaks, then across U.S. 41 as it got profoundly dark.
July 7, Echo Summit, California
Spent a day driving across Utah, looking constantly for a soft serve place, but Sunday in Utah means nothing’s open. Not even a Dairy Queen. Then across the breathtaking range and basin of Nevada on Highway 50. It’s still called the “loneliest highway in America.” It’s really not anymore, but will probably be called that forever whether it’s true or not.
Polly Campbell covered restaurants and food for the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1996 until 2020. She writes monthly on a variety of topics, and she welcomes your feedback and column suggestions at
editor@moversmakers.org.
Discover more from Movers & Makers
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.