Driving east from Minnesota is a lot of the same, but that sameness is plenty of forested beauty.
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Though my opinions may change after more of these journeys, I found it striking that there seemed to be so little difference as we crossed state lines. Parts of Pennsylvania had more hills as we went over a nominal mountain range, and the speed limits could vary wildly (along with the respective tolls) with each new border, but nothing distinguished Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, or New York from each other en route to Connecticut. They all shared gentle curves and slopes, tree-lined interstates with hefty medians, a calming aesthetic for a journey from where, to me, feels like a cultural halfway point between the East and West coasts when, in reality, I’m starting nearly two-thirds of the way across the country.
Contrast this with driving from San Francisco to Minneapolis. You leave the Bay Area and hit freeways with speed limits of 70 miles per hour that pour you into a hot valley. You see agriculture, you see nothing, then you hit the Tahoe area and suddenly there are huge hills and trees to give you one final bit of hope and beauty before Nevada.
There’s nothing but impossibly straight rows narrowing to the horizon, interminable and dizzying in their length. Suddenly, you pass into Utah, where salt flats bank the roads and great rocky outcroppings loom in the distance. You work through the interchanges of Salt Lake City and notice the rigid structure of the street exits marking your distance from the temple, then you’re back into wonderfully steep dips and climbs through rocks that hint of the red that is so well-known in the southern part of the state.
Eventually, you reach Wyoming, full of prairie and hills and thick winds and single-laned highways and barred interstates that could be closed without notice due to weather, forcing you to turn back to the town from which you came. If you brave that, you make it to South Dakota which is much of the same but with billboards attempting to bring you to monuments, stores, and corn palaces.
Finally, after a final long stretch, the speed limit eases as you pass into Minnesota and everything appears somehow lusher and calmer, kinder and cooler. There are suddenly lakes and rivers to drive across, small towns dotting the western expanse of the state where farmers and factories share the load of supporting their communities. Eventually, this becomes suburban and then urban as you approach the Twin Cities, but still rooted in a Midwest interstate system.
I’m used to that trip and its distinct views. As I drove east, I was waiting for the change in each state, something to really drive home that I was somewhere else beyond an adjustment in license plates and who was monitoring the toll roads. Instead, I received a range of speed limits from 50 to 65 miles per hour for no apparent reason and a sharp increase in speed traps in western New York.
When I hit Connecticut, everything condensed, speed limits dropped, and I was on local highways where I rarely exceeded 45 miles per hour. Those roads were covered in trees and most of the houses were set back a bit, providing what I assume is a good compromise between accessibility and noise for the homeowners.
It’s amusing driving around here compared to the Midwest. We are ten or twenty minutes away from most large stores we’d care to shop at, but only because there’s a bit of traffic and the speed limits are uniformly at or below 40 miles per hour. It feels like a scale-model version of where I grew up, yet there’s a glaring lack of cycling infrastructure that could fit so perfectly in a place with rigid driving speeds.
I’m excited to drive back and forth across the eastern part of the United States in the next couple of years. It’s a distinct vibe from driving in California, and the change of pace is refreshing.