Playing Favorites

By: C.L. Miller

The teenage son of a Driver friend asked us what is our favorite place to drive. I told him I don’t have just one, but I can count off a dozen I really enjoy.

This is my list, in no particular order:

1. The Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, particularly that stretch between The Dalles and Portland where I can almost reach out and high-five the wind surfers.
2. Interstate 40 through New Mexico on a cloudless summer night during a full moon.
3. The delightfully spooky Achafalaya Basin on Interstate 10 in Louisiana, especially at night when it gives me the shivers.
4. Any highway that contains the word “Parkway” in Kentucky.
5. Interstate 81 north in Upstate New York from Syracuse to the Canadian border in the early Fall.
6. Interstate 5 in California, north of Sacramento.
7. Elk Mountain in Wyoming when the road is clear but the snow is blowing around in mesmerizing circles on the black pavement.
8. Interstate 16 from Macon to Savannah in Georgia.
9. West Virginia when the weather is good and I can see the sunrise over the eastern mountains, while the lights on the homes are still twinkling.
10. Highway 58 in Virginia until it gets too close to Newport News.
11. Interstate 15 through Montana with those huge flat-topped mountains and that Big Sky overhead.
12. That flat, almost straight ribbon of Interstate 70 from Salina, Kansas to Denver, Colorado.

And then I realized my list is much longer….