Yes, I admit to feeling a certain inadequacy in some of my travels as far as properly interacting with the land and people I'm seeing. And it's not in terms of some perceived expectation of the "right" way to travel: when I read something like Blue Highways, I do genuinely wish that I could bring myself to have that kind of intimate and comprehensive experience in my journeys. But sometimes, even when I'm on the back roads, I selfishly find myself racking up more miles, more towns, more different routes at the expense of the landscape they contain. Still, practical realities often preclude spending enough time for a real Blue Highways experience; maybe at another age I'll find a way to slow my pace to that level!
I have been fortunate to travel extensively in my work, spending days, a week, even a month or two, in places all over the U.S. In so doing, I have relished the experience of living within the fabric of these places as a visitor, but not a tourist. Some of the places are destinations in their own right, but a great many are much more mundane places, ones most people would never think to make a point of visiting, and that's given me a valuable appreciation for the wide range of communities that are found right in my own country. Since I'm not in charge of my own itinerary, my time is more focused on just living in the situation I find myself in, and that's been a thrill.
As for the idea of H.B. never caring to see NYC, which comes up every now and then when we evaluate our own interests in travel, I admit to having a predictable gut reaction to the idea. I can't personally conceive of having such a remarkable destination as NYC available to me without feeling a strong imperative to see it personally. And I feel the same about rural or natural sights like the Grand Canyon, Alaska, or the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as run-of-the-mill locales like Tulsa or Texarkana; I do genuinely feel that any place I haven't been is worth seeing.
But on further reflection I have come to accept a couple of things regarding this. One, of course, is that H.B. and I have pretty much opposite preferences on just about everything, beyond our shared interest in roads and all that. I mention that not to pick on him, but rather as an example of the way our travels bring us into contact with a wide range of people—types of folks who, if we limit our experience too much, can seem to inhabit only some far-away fiction that doesn't apply to our own life. But from our travels, we learn that people everywhere make up different dimensions of our society, and we gain a better understanding of what that society really is, instead of just what we perceive it to be.
The second realization is that I myself actually have a similar opinion about a number of places, mostly outside the U.S., as foreign travel in general has a lesser appeal to me than domestic. A great example is China, which I had the opportunity to visit and was grateful for the chance. But I'm also grateful that I got to see it the way I did: by ship, spending a day or an overnight in each of a few different ports, returning to the ship for meals and lodging, then moving on to the next stop without having to deal excessively with the daunting differences in language, culture and so forth. I saw the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Shanghai skyscrapers, and Hong Kong, rode the bullet train and ate at a Chinese McDonald's, but by no means did I deeply penetrate the experience of that country in any serious way. Still, I'm glad to have seen the place, and I feel more than fulfilled at having done so the way I did, with absolutely no personal need to see any more of it than I have.
So in summary, I do indeed take the point about "seeing beyond the road": I do feel that there are some who practice roadgeeking in a way that seems less than fulfilling by my own personal standards, but I also feel there is more I could gain from my own travels, in terms both of goals I'd like to achieve, and those that really hold no great calling for me. I guess that makes me a pretty average traveller along the great roadtrip of life.
