Sights on the Shunpikes

Modern man may have mapped the unknown, ridden higher than the wind and lower than the seas, had a look through the heavens at earth and caught the moon's underbelly on film. But the average American is most apt to boast not of what he saw or where he went but of how quickly he made the trip. More people more on the move, in more cars and on more roads, have made pleasure driving seem a thing of the past, a foolish endeavor for old ladies on Sundays or strangers to the land who have not yet learned that the shortest distance between two points is a turnpike.

But for strangers, or even Americans who want to see America first, the turnpike has its limitations. Many superhighways are hermetically sealed off from the countryside by artful landscaping, so that a traveler can scarcely tell whether he is in New Hampshire or Alabama. When all the projected super-roads are built, a foreigner driving coast to coast might return home with his chief memory of the U.S. as one endlessly unwinding ribbon of concrete, punctuated by three hurried meals a day at nearly identical roadside restaurants, and a late night stop at a motel. And at superhighway speed, what scenery there is has to be the kind you can see without turning your head.

Slow Beauty. This need not be. For those who would savor the texture of the land and recover their sense of place, there are the shunpike and the minor road, a network of Indian trails and reconstructed canal routes: tortuous drives that skirt oceans below and wind around mountains, cross plains and valleys, run after rivers through national parks and state museums, ghost towns, rain forests and whaling ports. Some end with a vista at a canyon, a watering hole or a battlefield. Some lead nowhere at all, trail off in a thicket or stop short at the sea. Some, like Virginia's Route 5 (see color), put the past in perspective with a slow panorama, a relic here and there, and beauty all around. Every one is worth the trip.

In the West, would-be gamblers can hustle up U.S. 99 from Los Angeles to Sacramento, cut across to U.S. 40 and get to Reno's gaming tables before the bets go down. More esthetic types will take U.S. 395. A route for all seasons, all climates and tastes, it passes through a complex of environments--marine desert, coastal mountains, pine forest, rain forest and prairie--as varied as a trip from Tangier to Andalusia to Sinkiang to the Alps to the Iranian plateau to the Australian Outback to Finland.

Rimmed with mountains, caves, craters, lakes and lava beds, the road swings past Mt. Whitney, edges past Sequoia National Park and Yosemite, where the huge granitic upthrust of the Sierra bursts from the desert floor.

Perilous Loneliness. Even in the bustling San Francisco Bay Area, the pristine, almost deserted Richmond-Oakland hills are only a few minutes away from the roar of U.S. 40. Motorists driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco can turn off U.S. 101 and, at the price of a few extra hours, follow California Route 1 along the coast from San Luis Obispo to Monterey. Most spectacular is the 102-mile stretch from William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon estate through the Big Sur country to Carmel: with bare, steep cliffs on one side and a dizzying drop to the sea on the other, the narrow ribbon loops and spirals like a drunk. Subject to landslides and often shrouded in fog, it is closed at the first hint of rain, infrequently traveled, perilous and lonely, yet exhilarating as a first trip to Chartres.

U.S. 85 takes travelers most briskly from Denver to Albuquerque, but at Raton, U.S. 64 offers a detour into Taos for a look at the Pueblo cliff homes, which were America's first apartment houses, then jogs on down the Rio Grande Canyon to Santa Fe. Colorado's Million-Dollar Highway, a 23-mile stretch along U.S. 550, skirts Mt. Wilson past plunging canyons, leaping waterfalls, and the reproachful nostalgia of abandoned mining camps.

Minnesota's U.S. 61 clings close to the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans, spanning swamps and lowlands to hug the shore. Illinois' U.S. 20 crosses the bridge when it comes to it, rolls on past Ulysses Grant's home and Savanna's white pines. Motorists in northern Wisconsin can bid farewell to U.S. 51 near Woodruff and meander along State Highway 70 through country so studded with lakes that the road seems a bridge, and so rich in woods that they spill right up to the road's edge until the turnoff at Eagle River onto U.S. 45. U.S. 460 in Indiana meanders over hills only a spit away from Kentucky to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, which includes the site of the log cabin where the young Lincoln studied by candlelight, and the grave of his mother, Nancy Hanks. Farther along is the New Harmony settlement, a 19th century Utopian experiment that has been memorialized by a garden shrine designed by Architect Philip Johnson.

Steeple & Post. With more than 420 "shunpike" routes plotted across the state, Massachusetts is the pleasure cruiser's best friend and the country's finest driving range. There are roads to pick flowers by and roads to watch the leaves turn from, roads to maple syrup territory, seafood, flower and jazz festivals, a road for the Thanksgiving dash straight to Plymouth Rock. There is the original Mohawk Trail from Boston to the Berkshire Hills, brought up to date and dubbed Mass. Route 2. An alternate, Route 2A, links Revolutionary landmarks from Battle Green at Lexington to Concord's Minutemen monument. Route 20 shadows the Massachusetts Turnpike, navigates the Berkshires to the Tanglewood Music Festival at Lenox. Sturbridge Village, a few miles off the highway, is an early 19th century town beautifully re-created from steeple to hitching post, complete with craftsmen who duplicate antique pewter spoons and horse-drawn wagons for kids to ride in.

The northern end of the New York turnpike can be abandoned at any point from Albany to Buffalo for U.S. 20, which wanders through the Finger Lakes region, or at Weedsport, N.Y., for Route 31, which follows the Erie Canal.

Pennsylvania's "Granddaddy" Turnpike affords a turnoff at U.S. 23 to Valley Forge and on through rambling fields and decent towns with indecent names like Bareville and Intercourse in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, whose Amish farmers scorn electricity, never cut their beards, and travel when they must by horse and buggy. For them, perhaps, the beaten path holds adventure. Even the turnpikes might prove a treat.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.