By Glenn Griffith ggriffith@digitalfirstmedia.com @CNWeekly on Twitter
Jul 31, 2018
CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. >> A local man has done what many long to do: hit the road without a schedule and see what’s around the next bend. Now he has written a book about his trip.
In the summer of 2014, Clifton Park resident Mark Marchand fulfilled a long held desire to travel the entire length of the East Coast using one road, U.S. Route 1. The 2,440 mile-long highway is the same distance as the more famous Route 66, but unlike its western counterpart Route 1 is still being used. Both highways were built in 1926.
With its four lanes, stop lights, cross streets and commercial businesses, U.S. Route 1 looks a lot like Route 9. But this road took travelers through cities, towns and villages as they traveled from Maine to Florida and back.
Marchand’s goal was to simply see the sights, meet the people, and experience the culture along the route. Taken together he hoped to get a vision of the East Coast of the U.S. in the 21st century.
His book, “U.S. Route 1: Rediscovering the New World” is based on notes and Facebook posts made during the trip and mixed with insights into the author’s psyche and his research on the road itself.
Marchand admits he did very little planning for the trip. He looked at Google Maps and several hardcopy Rand McNally road maps and made sure the GPS was working in the new Acura he purchased just before the trip.
“Part of this was a wanderlust imbedded in me as a kid,” he said. “I come from a military family and that meant we moved a lot. I remember one move in particular that we made in 1963 or 1964 from Cheyenne, Wyo. back to Springfield, Mass. A small part of me said, ‘I wonder if I could ever make this trip again but this time as an adult?’”
Marriage, full-time employment, and a family pushed aside his dream for more than a quarter century. However, upon retiring after 35 years from a corporate communications position with Verizon and a summer break from an adjunct professor’s position at a local college, Marchand was ready to hit the road.
“This was a solo trip,” he said last week. “It was something I chose to do myself. The East Coast was the New World when the U.S. was discovered and I wanted to see what had happened in all those years. The trip became a lens to view what it looks like in the 21st century. It was an eye opener.”
The book is written in the first person and filled with descriptions of sights, sounds, human interactions, and the private thoughts of a man living his dream of unfettered freedom on the open road.
After leaving home on June 26, 2014, driving through parts of Canada, and getting a motel room in Fort Kent, Maine 500 miles later, Marchand took his first selfie near the marker for the start of U.S. Route 1.
“I’ve been a careful planner all my life,” he writes in his book, “and had never ever embarked upon such a venture. A few days later I realize how much the trip means to me when Elisa (his wife) relays how a friend saw the photo on Facebook and remarked how happy I looked.”
From Fort Kent he traveled through Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and all the way out to Key West.
Along the way he visited the most eastern point in the U.S., met his two sons in Boston, braved the Cross Bronx Expressway, made stops at the Vietnam Memorial and Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., took in a major league baseball game at Camden Yards in Baltimore, spent time with a Baptist preacher in Aiken County, South Carolina, saw a minor league ball game in Augusta, Georgia and chilled out with the locals in Key West. All of it done via U.S. Route 1.
“I’d been to Washington, D.C. many times but by traveling Route 1 I saw it in a way I’d never seen it before,” Marchand said. “I was amazed at how much of a melting pot the Lincoln memorial was. There were throngs of people there speaking all kinds of languages. You hear Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, all for this memorial to our 16th president.”
Farther south, in Waycross, GA, Marchand experienced a vivid example of proper Southern etiquette when he pulled over for a funeral procession.
“What I don’t expect is the reaction from other drivers and it is heartwarming,” he writes in the book. “The cars behind me stop much earlier than I do. Even more surprising, all the cars moving in the opposite direction – even though they wouldn’t in any way interfere with the procession – also pull over and stop. The line of 40 or so cars moves slowly down the road as drivers on both sides sit silently observing.”
There were temporary friendships made like the one with Richard, the man who sold Marchand one of his own tickets to an Orioles game in Camden Yards. And there was information exchanged as was done with Rev. Troy Nipper, the pastor of Valley Fair Baptist Church in Graniteville, S.C.
The disappointments were few. Bumper to bumper traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway in New York City was a low point as was Hurricane Arthur blowing in as he traveled through the Carolinas. And there was one night where a gentleman in the next room of a motel took his anger out on Marchand’s connecting door.
Trips like the one Marchand took, where there is extended travel, can change one’s reference point in life. It hinges on whether one opens up to the wider world.
“Your frame of mind, the total way of looking at life changes when you’re on the open road,” he said. “You get this form of detachment. You’re so open to whatever the road reveals to you. It was something I didn’t anticipate but was welcomed.”
“U.S. Route 1: Rediscovering the New World” by Mark Marchand is available in paperback from Amazon for $9.50. An e-book for Kindle is $1.99.
Link to story on newspaper website.