And the Oh, Welcome to another episode of 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories, and Mysteries, this one titled The First

American Road Trip.

And this is a great story about a true American adventure in the days before paved roads and gas stations.

When I was a boy, my dad really enjoyed taking us on car trips.

I grew up literally in three states, California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. And we ended up seeing

just about everything in between, visiting friends, uncles, or attractions.

Dad was fond of telling the story about driving from Sacramento to Albany, New York in 1937

to take a new job with GE at their turbine plant in Schenectady, where he eventually met mom.

He said he would drive for a while on paved roads

and then the paved road would just disappear,

turning into a dirt road or trail.

If it had rained, sometimes there was no trail,

he would just head east. Route 66 was pretty much

the trail you followed back then if you wanted to get from west to east.

Sometimes you crossed creeks, hoping your tires wouldn't get mired in the soft bottom.

Roadmaps weren't all that reliable.

Dad was lucky in that he got to see all of America before all those thousands of miles of roads connected us and brought us screaming

into a concrete future. In 1903 America was full of optimism after all it was

the beginning of a new century. The first Rose Bowl game was played in Pasadena, California.

The first movie theater had opened in Los Angeles.

Ragtime music was the rage, and Scott Joplin's, the Entertainer, had become a hit that would keep him in the money for the remainder of his career.

Also in 1903, the first cars were seen by many chugging down dirt roads and putting through towns

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