Six Days on the Road
Throw out your rules.  These are Ryder rules.

text by Mike Appelstein, photos by Callie and Mike
an appelstein.com feature

In the fall of 1999, my lovely wife Callie got a job in Seattle, and she and I moved cross-country. Neither of us had ever driven across the U.S. before. Not that we were strangers to marathon drives. Callie had once driven from Olympia to St. Louis in a manic day-and-a-half stretch, and I’d made several marathon excursions up and down the East and West coasts. But traversing the whole country by auto – let alone in a 15-foot Ryder truck with two finicky cats – was an entirely new experience to both of us.

Callie had to report to work on a specific date, so we were on a tight time frame. Our primary objective was to haul our stuff across the country, and we had one week to do it. We were truckers, not tourists.  We managed to see at least a little of this vast land beyond the interstates, but not nearly as much as we'd have liked.  (I was always envious of those cross-country travel zines.  I still am.)

I meant to keep a copious tour diary, but ended up being too lazy and/or catatonic to take more than intermittent notes.  Here’s a more-or-less complete record of our journey, though, and some lovely photos.  Click on the truck below, or use the links to your left, to begin the trip out West!

hit the road