6 months ago, when Henry and I decided we were going to put his 2 Miatas into a U-haul and drive from Seattle to Boston in a week, we figured it wasn’t going to be a culture trip. We weren’t going to stop much. We weren’t going to drive through big cities like Chicago unless we had to. We weren’t going to sample any of the local culinary fare. It was a trip with a singular purpose and with few educational opportunities. What we would see, we would see in snapshots.

We saw copper mines, limestone quarries, triple-trailer trucks, burning fields, and huge gas plants. We learned that parts of Montana are flatter than parts of North Dakota, that the country as a whole is less flat than we imagined, but that parts of Illinois are flatter than we thought possible. And we learned that everything west of Chicago was designed for trucks and truckers. Everything east of Chicago…not so much.

We slept in Erie, Pennsylvania at the end of our second-to-last day . Our Holiday Inn express was attached to Splash Lagoon, evidently one of the top 10 water parks in the US. This tells you just how nice water parks are and in exactly what regard people hold them in general. It was a little unusual to see families in bathing suits walking around. Erie is on the edge of Lake Erie. It recieves an unusual amount of lake-effect snow, and it had snowed the day we arrived. The general splash lagoon area, moreover, is nothing more than a strip with a number of hotels, gas stations, and cheap restaurants. There is also the laser tag building, which is part of the Splash Lagoon resort.

In November the area of Minnesota just past Fargo has a bluish-purple harshness, as if Fargo itself is some sort of border outpost. A factory near Downer, Minnesota, spews thick purple fire and smoke.

While we were coming down a mountain pass near Coeur d-Alene in Idaho a tractor trailer passed us and proceeded to take a flawless line down. Outside-inside-outside, with perfect technique. And when we got to Massachusetts, other drivers suddenly went from making a point to stay out of our way to making a point of staying in our way. From Seattle to Albany no one wanted to drive next to us. They stayed back, sped up, and moved out of the way when we put on the truck’s directionals. In Massachusetts cars constantly drove in our blind spots. If we tried to pass, they would speed up to match us. Twice I nearly blasted the same car off the road because the driver was more concerned with staying ahead of us than we was with doing the speed limit or blending in with the flow of traffic.

Montana and North Dakota had the biggest effect on us. Before we drove through them, we thought we understood remote areas and small towns. We had seen Index, Forks, and Queets in Washington. Henry grew up in Illinois cornfields. I spent a day in rural West Virginia. But the stretch from Missoula to Bozeman, as well as the entirety of North Dakota, made us Boston boys wonder how a person is able to forge an existence in such emptiness. Going by at 75, the city of Butte looks as if it hasn’t changed since 1910. It is small and built into a hill next to a massive copper mine. On either side of the city civilization ends immediately. The land is an unbroken strip of highway dotted occasionally with billboards, gas stations, and motels. To live there is to understand the world differently.

Cities like Butte, Bozeman, and Bismarck appear, paradoxically, out of nowhere. There are fields, or perhaps some mountains, or a farm–and then you’re in the city. There’s no gradual buildup, no transition from open farmland to suburb to semi-urban to city. This likely strikes some of you as normal, but to me and Henry, who think of Boston when asked to imagine the so-called normal world, Butte and Bismarck seem out of context. The openness, the ability to drive 20 minutes and be in wild territory, intimidated us a little. It intimidated me for sure.

We were disheartened (thought not entirely surprised) to learn that there are few opportunities to have a career in central Montana. Sure, there are some offices and some companies, but not many. Most of the time, we were told, it’s hard to crack 10 dollars an hour. And with no legitimately large cities within easy driving distance, you need to make a significant commitment and change in order to have what we Bostonians see as regular existences.

Perhaps this amazement reflects poorly on our worldliness and our skewed perception of reality. And it’s true: When we first saw Missoula, we laughed. We laughed when we saw Bozeman, when we saw the outer neighborhoods of Bismarck. But when we stopped in Fargo to eat cheap pizza and found ourselves a bit unnerved by Fargo’s relative hugeness, I realized I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. The idea of North Dakota was beyond our concept of the US–a concept that we learned was narrow-minded and ridiculous. I know I couldn’t live year-round in Missoula. I have neither the patience, nor the discipline, nor the spirit. In a way, those that do interact with the world on a much larger scale. They must, as not everything is at their proverbial fingertips.

So, in the end, I suppose the trip was far more educational than we expected. We can’t wait to get back to Montana and stand in awe once again.

Pictures and videos will be released throughout the week.