“In June 2019, my son, older brother and I took a 17-state, 15-day, 6,200-mile road trip from Kentucky to the Pacific Ocean and back in my wife’s 2012 Forester.
“Nick, my son, needed a break from work; Bob, my older brother, had just retired; and I wanted to see Nevada, North Dakota and Oregon to complete my goal to visit all 48 contiguous states.
“My wife, Donna, took a pass on the long trip, happy to stay behind as long as we returned the Subaru in good shape.”
“For the past 30 years, I’ve made a habit of attending minor league baseball games when I travel. That was a big part of the planning – you have to wait until the teams put out their schedules. I wanted to do a Quad Cities River Bandits game in Davenport, Iowa, because their ballpark is on the Mississippi River.
“We did that the first day and a game in Sioux City, Iowa, the second day. A week later, we were in Sacramento, California, seeing another minor league game. We stayed on the Delta King riverboat.
“We visited five national parks and monuments. I think Crater Lake in Oregon surprised us the most when we hit snow. We had started out near the ocean that morning, so we were leaving beaches and driving south. All of a sudden, within the last mile or so to the top, it was not just snow – it was snow that had been plowed to the side of the road, in some places taller than the car.”
“My son was 33 at the time. It was a way to get far away from our routine and see parts of the country we hadn’t seen before. There’s so much out there, so much diversity of the landscape.
“Two years later, the Forester is still the workhorse of our family fleet. If we ever want to replace it, it will be with another Subaru because they are so much fun and so dependable. The Forester made the trip.”
– J.R. Wilhite, Winchester, KY, 2012 Forester
What are the moments that drive you? Submit with the story title “My Drive.”
