I am very lucky to have been able to travel all over this country. As of this writing, I have been to 35 states (airport stops do not count), and I am currently trying to figure out ways to hit the rest. I live in New York, and with this goal in mind, I often plan mini-road trips. I'll fly out to Memphis for a few days before driving a rental car up to St. Louis (two states!), or will fly to Portland, OR, before driving up to Seattle (two more states!). It is always nice to see the character of a U.S. city, not to mention the characters who might reside in it. It is equally interesting to see the places in between, the ones that don't normally cater to tourists. It is these places that can help us more fully appreciate the diversity of this country.

In Sikesville, MO, there is Lambert's Caf, which prides itself as the "home of the throwed rolls." While it obviously doesn't pride itself on proper grammar, it does attract quite a crowd. I happened by at 3:30pm on a Sunday afternoon and asked for a table for one. The wait, I was told, would be at least 45 minutes. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to wait and so could not be on the receiving end of one of those rolls. They must really throw good rolls there to attract that kind of a crowd at an off-hour like that.

In Wheeling, West Virginia, I walked down to the waterfront to see the country's first suspension bridge. I could not help but notice that some of its wires and supports were attached to an abandoned building nearby. They literally could not knock down this absurdly decomposing building because the bridge was partially attached to it. Was I missing something?

My buddy Rob and I had driven down there from Pittsburgh, and he graciously indulged my need to go to West Virginia just because it had not yet been checked off my list. The problem was getting there from Pittsburgh. If you have never driven in Pittsburgh, you are missing quite a treat, with five-lane curved intersections and highways that seem to run both north and south simultaneously. Rob brought a GPS system with him, and in at least two instances, it said to TURN LEFT NOW. That's all well and good, but when you have four options to choose from plus another that's a [very tempting] one-way street in the other direction, then you've got a different story.

How many of you have been to Union, KY? Well, I have. About a forty-five minute drive from Cincinnati, it's the home of Big Bone Lick State Park. The name is meant to describe salt marshes where dinosaurs died while licking up the salt, but I know your minds are somewhere deep in the gutter. Anyway, while looking for this place, I accidentally drove well into the Kentucky countryside and decided to call them for help with directions. My cell phone not only had no signal, but might as well have had an "are you kidding me" message. So that was out, and I drove back to where I had begun when I got hungry. It was then that I spotted a place to eat: Trixie's Marina, which was quite literally a combination diner, convenience store, and live bait shop. As I plowed into my burger and deep-fried jalapenos, the man at the next table lit up an after-lunch cigarette, and I remembered that I was, after all, in tobacco country. I only spent that one afternoon in Kentucky, but it was enough to know just how far removed from New York it was, another example of how diverse this country can be.

Little things like these are great reminders of how big and diverse this country is, whether it be people, geography, or philosophy. I am thirty-five states into seeing this up close, and hope to continue this quest to see every one of them.

Learn more about this author, Eric Kabakoff.
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