ABCDE Travel sunday, november 14, 2010 BEDCHECK
Peace prize winner If you’re looking for a hotel that offers serenity in Manhattan, you don’t need to look Tutu far beyond this one. F2
Coming and Going The busiest airports, germ-free travel and more. F2 What’s the Deal? Best travel bargains of the week. F2
Going OurWay Taking teens to the Canadian Rockies. F3 CHAT We take your questions Monday at noon at
washingtonpost.com/travel
IMPULSIVE TRAVELER
Carved in stone You can read the history of this Lake Champlain island in the rocks. F6
F K EZ
Heart warming
A road trip to North Dakota in the tracks of John Steinbeck can leave you feeling centered
I BY RACHEL DRY
t’s a perfect day at the geographic center of North America. The mid-October sky is just the right shade of blue to make the giant white clouds look their suspended- cotton-ball best. It’s the kind of weather that should
make a traveler relax, breathe in and think: Right, this is where I’msupposed to be, enjoyingunexpected sunandsweeping prairie views. I can’t do that, though. Because I’m staring at a room full of roads not taken.
Once you get to the geographic center of North America, in Rugby, N.D., they take some pains to remind you where else you could have gone. The visitors’ center here is full of maps and guide books to the rest of the continent: information on the volcanoes of Hawaii, the dunes of Cape Cod. Here, it says, now that you’ve made it to the heart of everything, look at how far you have to go to get anywhere else. I don’t need those maps, though. I have a prescribed
route already: the one John Steinbeck took. In 1960, the writer drove a pickup truck fitted with a
custom camper, which he defiantly dubbed Rocinante — his friends and family thought the endeavor was Cervantes-level quixotic — across the Lower 48 on a trip that became his 1962 travelogue, “Travels With Charley.” (Charley was his dog, “an old French gentle- man poodle.”) Steinbeck went because, as he wrote his longtime
literary agent in 1954, he felt “cut off” and wanted to take a drive to “listen towhat the country is aboutnow.” He wasn’t confident that he knew what the real story was anymore. Pretty much exactly 50 years later, I picked up his
path in my home state of Vermont and followed it as loyally as I could through to Fargo,N.D. I went because I love cross-country road trips (I’d made the cross- country trek once before) and Steinbeck. I’d latched onto theNobel Prize winner in college and had studied his work in depth, becoming slowly obsessed with the idea of duplicating his journey.
fargo continued on F4
Top, trees form windbreaks beside a road between Rugby and Grand Forks,N.D. Right, the Fargo Theatre boasts a restored marquee. John Steinbeck, above, wrote that he had heard of the place all his life and simply had to go. Having arrived, he left disappointed.
TOP: RACHEL DRY/THE WASHINGTON POST; ABOVE: ALAMY Kansas City on a dime
With the help of coupons, the bargains kept
coming at a steady clip BY NANCY TREJOS
I didn’t want dessert. But I’d already
paid for it—sort of. I’d bought a $20 Groupon to Antho-
ny’s Restaurant and Lounge in down- town Kansas City, Mo., that entitled me to $40 worth of food and drink. My
eggplant parmesan and the vegetable lasagna that my friend Rebecca had ordered left us almost $10 short of taking full advantage of our deal. The waitress pointed out that we weren’t required to order $40 worth of food. But I just couldn’t bringmyself to passupanything free. “Let’s just order dessert later and only
take a few bites,” Rebecca suggested. It seemed like a reasonable idea.Never
mind that our bargain-hunting had turned us into gluttons. After leaving half of our entrees untouched, we ordered cannoli.Then the waitress handed us our
check: We had gone $2.29 over the $40, and we still had to leave a tip. I grudging- ly pulled a $10 bill frommy wallet. I had miscalculated. How had this happened? Well, maybe
because I’m a sucker for a great deal. I carry grocery store coupons inmy wallet. I never buy a dress or a pair of shoes unless they’re on sale. A friend once joked that my life is an ongoing episode of “The Price Is Right.” When Groupon, the group coupon-
buying Web site, launched a couple of kansas city continued on F5
With a manila envelope full of coupons, I was ready to have fun.
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