Sarah Black's Top 5 American Road Trips

I’m always ready for a road trip, especially the scenic byways and trips around the National Parks. Here are my Top Five. 

1. The Enchanted Circle: Taos to Questa, Red River, Angel Fire:  This scenic drive is on my all-time favorites list. The scenery in Northern New Mexico is all Rocky Mountain High with a cowboy drawl. Weavers and fiber artists are out tending the sheep; small farmers are working on Spanish land grants that have been in their families since the 1600s. A place out of time.

2. Skyline Drive: The Blue Ridge and eastern mountains look ancient and worn compared to the western mountains, like an old patchwork quilt on the porch. Great trip with lots of pull-overs for views, and little towns with the best potters in America. When my earliest ancestor came to America as an indentured servant for the Virginia Company, he earned a land grant after the seven years was up somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley. Stop for fresh pressed apple cider.

3. The Al-Can: You can drive from Denali to Glacier through some of the most remote and wild country left in North America. Break-your-heart beautiful and still Yukon-wild. Parts of the Alaska-Canadian Highway are still gravel. All the bears and eagles are in Canada! Who knew? 

4. The Pacific Coast Highway, Northern California: The redwoods and the ocean are both RIGHT THERE! This piece of the coast smells like nothing else in America, salty with pine bark and a strange yearning mist coming off the ocean. If you’ve ever wanted to hug a tree, these trees hug back. 

5. Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park:  This heart-in-the-mouth road is a twisty, treacherous narrow barely-paved path pretending to be a road that follows the Northern Rockies through Glacier National Park in Montana. Watch out for falling rocks, hairpin turns, and those mountain goats with the twisty horns. Crosses the Continental Divide. Terrifying. Good preparation for parenthood. What are some of your favorite road trips?