RV Articles & Opinion
RVers will enjoy these classic road books

By Gerry Bruder

Thousands of people have written about their travel experiences on the road, and RVers who enjoy road literature now have a wide selection of books to curl up with. These five are among the best. They were written before the evolution of modern RVing, but the authors all shared a passion for the things that lure us onto the road today: Our country’s beauty, history, culture and people.

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY: "I discovered that I did not know my own country," John Steinbeck writes early on in this 1962 book to explain his decision to make an exploratory drive around America. Already a famous writer at the time, he resolves to "leave my name and my identity at home" so that fame would not distort his reception by regular folk. With his French poodle, Charley, he sets off in a custom-built truck camper on a grand around-the-country adventure.

BLUE HIGHWAYS: Author William Least Heat-Moon made a similar journey in the early 1980s in a Ford van, following mostly back roads--the ones colored blue on old highway maps. "I was heading toward those little towns that get on the map--if they get on at all--only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill," he writes. "Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi. Igo, California (just down the road from Ono), here I come."

ERNIE'S AMERICA: Although Ernie Pyle is remembered mostly as a World War II correspondent (he was killed near Okinawa in 1945), he was also a roving reporter who traveled many thousands of miles around small-town America in the 1930s. In this collection of dispatches, he writes about cowboys, an ex-slave, oddball signs, Death Valley heat, trappers in Alaska, hoboes, a whaleback steamer, firemen, bartenders, and dozens of other subjects. With his eye for detail and the oddball ("Nimrod killed a bear, took the bear's teeth...then ate the bear with its own teeth."), Pyle would have made a great modern blogger.

ON THE ROAD WITH CHARLES KURALT and A LIFE ON THE ROAD: No wonder CBS News correspondent Charles Kuralt wrote the foreword for Ernie Pyle's "Ernie's America"; the two were kindred spirits in their love of reporting on quirky, small-town America. But while Pyle used many modes of transportation (even piggyback) to get around, Kuralt and his support crew relied mostly on a motorhome for their TV reports. Kuralt writes that when they started in 1967, "Motorhomes were still a novelty. I had never seen one. Many times in the next twenty years, I was to wish I still had never seen one. Of all the mixed blessings and curses of my life, I put motorhomes at the top of the list."


Why isn't Jack Kerouac's book "On the Road" included here? Although it's the best-known road book, it's a work of fiction rife with stealing, drunkeness and lewd activities that most RVers would find offensive.