"We've all come to look for America . . ."

That's our little red Prius out on the road...

Three years ago my husband, Ray, and I embarked on a 9,000 mile road trip across America and back. We set off with a plan, a sense of adventure and the sound of Simon and Garfunkle echoing in my head --- "we've all come to look for America..." Over our long married life, we have seen a lot of our country, but usually we fly into a city, spend some time, then fly home. This time we wanted to see what happens out there between the cities --- the highways and roads that are the continuous connections, the mountains and rivers and the transitions from desert to farmland, from rural to urban. We wanted to experience something of the experience of our pioneer ancestors and a sense of how the land changes over the vastness of the continent. I joked that we were off to find the biggest ball of string in America and what I really meant was that we were ready to be engaged by whatever we found, whether it was the food, or the scenery or the weird and unusual or the grand and awe-inspiring. We were prepared to head off down a side road if something of interest lay at the end of that road. One day we happened, by chance, to be in the vicinity of the graveyard where Sacajawea is buried on the Wind River Indian Reservation. We turned off the main road and found our way there and were rewarded with a beautiful day and images that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The road took us all the way to the Atlantic ocean, then south to the Gulf of Mexico, through the south and southwest, up through the Rockies and closed the circle in Oregon where we had begun a month earlier. We saw history and grandeur and art and people. We crossed and recrossed the mighty Mississippi River. We walked in Thomas Jefferson's footsteps and we stood on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma Alabama. We saw friends along the way and made some new ones. We saw our country in a whole new way.

I took many photos on the road and I have used some to make quilts, but the piece I made for our challenge is not a real place, just an amalgam of memories of that trip, so much winding through farmland in the heartland of the country. I never imagined so much corn could be growing out there! I pictured, in my mind, a threadwork of roads we traveled. The end of one's driveway is the beginning of a road that can take you anywhere you want to go and back again, on the adventure of a lifetime. The thread is endless.