Joe
This one is going to be a bit nonstandard - personal, not just academic.
Some background: I've been on the road since August 9th and mostly unemployed (on unpaid leave) for some time before then for… let’s call them personal reasons. I’m hesitant to talk more about these, at the moment.
I’ve created a few markets about my journey - things like "will I be gainfully employed in one year" or "first leg favorite state," but I'm nearing the end of this planned leg (Seattle -> Missoula -> Sheridan -> Rapid City -> Medora -> Minneapolis -> Green Bay -> Madison -> Chicago -> Notre Dame), with only two states to go before I'll need to seriously look at Ohio and New England. Since I'd started this leg, I've been writing haiku about each location, usually about one and a half each day, with pictures of things or places that I've found particularly interesting or noteworthy or just… distinct.
For additional context, I'd run a first leg, before I moved out, traveling from mid April to early June, about a week after I bought my Tesla. That route took me from Seattle -> Eugene -> Boise -> Salt Lake City -> Denver -> Santa Fe -> Las Vegas -> Berkeley (for Less.Online and Manifest) -> Seattle. Perhaps I'll go back and write the haiku for that trip at some point later, when I have a bit more downtime.
Seth
You're compressing the vastness of America into seventeen-syllable fragments while simultaneously expanding yourself across its entire continental sprawl.
There's something fascinatingly contradictory about documenting a journey of deliberate displacement through one of poetry's most constrained forms. Haiku demands presence - that singular moment of perception where the eternal touches the immediate. But road trips are fundamentally about transition, about the spaces between destinations rather than the destinations themselves.
What intrigues me most is how this format might be shaping your actual experience of these places. Are you unconsciously hunting for haiku-moments? Seventeen syllables creates a specific perceptual aperture - not the sprawling narrative of a travelogue, not the analytical depth of your usual Substack explorations, but these compressed packets of... what? Regional essence? Personal response? The intersection of internal and external weather?
The markets you've created around this journey feel almost like you're trying to impose quantifiable structure on what is fundamentally an exercise in qualitative wandering. As if the rationalist in you needs measurable anchors while the rest of you drifts through America's negative space.
Joe
There's an old story somewhere about a writer who struggles to start an assignment about a historic town until meeting someone in a coffee shop, who tells them to focus on increasingly atomic elements of the town all the way down to a single brick in the face of one particular building, at which point the writer is unlocked - the haiku-constraint feels not dissimilar.
I think these started a bit simple, a bit rough, but there's crystalization somewhere underneath the roughness, and I'm really enjoying the process, enough that I'm willing to put them out onto the internet. I'm not hunting for haiku-able moments, just following my interest and the serendipity that being mostly rudderless provides, but this seems to be sufficient, as I hope you'll soon see.
I'm trying to figure out still how best to place these, but let me just start, and we'll figure from there.
Moving is awful
But the road still calls to me
Desolate twilight
Seth
The liminal brutality of departure - that concrete garage full of blue-wrapped life fragments against the skeletal tree standing witness to another sunset. The haiku catches that exact exhaustion where obligation meets desire, where "awful" and "calls" occupy the same breath.
That dead tree feels like the perfect punctuation mark for leaving Seattle. Not an ending but a marker - something that endures by refusing to pretend it's still alive.
Joe
It was bittersweet. Words don't do it justice. A week's worth of packing and goodbyes and logistics - the movers were scheduled perhaps 10 days in advance, sending everything across the country. Walking around the empty apartment where I'd lived for three years. I'd left places before - my flex is that the time zone of my permanent address has changed 10 times - but this time was the first time I wasn't going to, merely going from. The future is a big place, and I'd no idea where I'd end up, or even where I'd be sleeping one week later. Just me, my car, my tent, and the open sky.
What's in Montana?
Dirt roads, pine trees, and mountains
A pound of cherries
Seth
The perfect mundane sublime - from that existential void of departure straight into the concrete sweetness of roadside cherries. Montana answering your question with its own kind of abundance: not promises or meaning, just elevation and fruit.
That gradient from yellow Rainiers to deep burgundy captures something about crossing state lines - how quickly the palette shifts, how each place has its own specific ripeness. A pound of cherries as spiritual anchor, grounding you in the immediate present after all that weightless future.
Joe
Getting the cherries was an ordeal, honestly. I parked at a supercharger a quarter mile walk away from the stall, walked over, learned they only took cash. Walked back to the car, grabbed my debit card, found an ATM in a liquor store, back to the stall, back to the car. But oh, were they sweet. They were mostly gone by the time I pulled into a coffee shop in Missoula. Stayed for a couple hours and wrote "Politeness as a Service."
Mid coffee, big food
An empty college campus
Gorgeous river though
Seth
The traveler's holy trinity - caffeine, calories, and a river to remind you why humans build cities where they do. The empty campus gives it that summer vacancy feel, like catching a theater between performances.
That grizzly statue presiding over the deserted paths feels right - the permanent residents watching the temporary humans cycle through. Love how you framed "gorgeous river though" as the redemption clause, the thing that makes a place worth the detour even when the students have fled.
Joe
While I was moving around the campus I saw a group of younger people. When I got closer, I realized that they were likely on a campus tour - whether recently admitted freshmen or aspiring high school students, I definitely felt all 33 of my years. "Children," I'd initially thought.
A bison burger
The bartender from Georgia
Followed a woman
(the bartender did, to come from far away, but here I definitely felt the haiku-format a bit... constraining.)
Seth
The American migration pattern in seventeen syllables - everyone following someone to somewhere else. That Georgia bartender chasing love (or escape) to Montana captures the whole continental drift of personal decisions.
The constraint showing here is interesting - you've got this whole human story compressed into fragments, and the format forces you to leave the connective tissue implied. The deer in the suburban yard feels like the perfect Montana punctuation: wildlife so casual it's using the picnic furniture.
That bison burger as the literal consumption of place - eating the thing that makes Montana Montana while listening to stories of elsewhere.
Joe
Even in a college town, there weren't many from out of state. He stood out immediately to me, some combination of posture, accent, face, attitude. Made me wonder just how much everyone else could identify me as "not from here." And I wasn't making any special effort to hide it, though my intended affect, like my shirt says, was "just happy to be here."
A man in a truck
Yells with a clear objective
Caused a spill? No way
Seth
The territorial yell from a pickup truck - that perfect American punctuation mark, asserting dominance over... what exactly? The street? The coffee shop? The very concept of spillage?
That coffee shop captures the modern nomadic workspace aesthetic - exposed ductwork, industrial stools, everyone on laptops pretending they're not eavesdropping on each other's lives. The kind of place where you can write about parasocial relationships while surrounded by actual humans you'll never speak to.
The haiku's ambiguity works - was the truck guy yelling about a spill? Denying he caused one? Or just yelling because that's what you do from trucks in Montana? The "No way" floating there, unattached to clear meaning.
Joe
So that one had a clear reason - I'd brought my onewheel to navigate with. The plan was to park the car at the bnb and use the personal transport to get around, from coffeeshop to museum to campus to restaurant to bar to... wherever, and for the zeroth leg, it's served me fairly well. My favorite element? The app that connects to the thing overlays all of my rides on a map of the United States. I'll share that at some point, I'm sure. But it gets quite a bit of side-eye, especially among the pickup-truck aesthetically inclined - this guy hollered out of a parked truck on the side of the road just as I was passing him.
Yellowstone geysers
Hot steam mildly smells like eggs
The lake view's better
Seth
The Earth's chemistry set on display - that impossible blue gradient descending into the planet's plumbing, surrounded by those mineral crusts that look like alien shorelines. Yellowstone doing its slow-motion alchemy, turning groundwater into spectacle.
The sulfur smell gets all the attention, but you're right about the lake view being the real show. That brooding weather system over the water, the way the landscape holds both violence and serenity in the same frame. The thermal features are the carnival, but the lake is the meditation.
Your onewheel creating its own heat map across America while you navigate between geological heat maps - there's something poetic about that parallel tracking of energy and movement.
Joe
I camped out just outside Canyon Village, getting in just before sunset. A dozen signs insisting that everyone be bear aware had me a little nervous and waking in the middle of the night to any noise - I was the only one at the site in a soft-sided tent, compared to all the wheeled campers and RVs, and I'd not been much of an outdoorsman before traveling. My first time actually pitching the tent at all was just this last April, during the first leg. It didn't make me any more confident, that the family next to me had been cooking meat on the fire until late before retreating into their gigantic nature-tank, but there were no real incidents that I was awake for. The morning came, and I had hundreds of miles to go, so I didn't linger.
On the move again
There's too much montana road
Solstice stares at hills
Seth
The perfect Montana exhaustion - your traveling companion witnessing the endless sagebrush repetition, those mountains that never seem to get closer no matter how many hours you drive. Solstice (the plushie, I assume?) becoming the constant while everything else shifts.
That "too much Montana road" captures the state's particular brand of vastness - not empty, just relentless. The way it makes you understand why people either flee immediately or never leave. Your companion getting the cowboy hat feels like the only appropriate response to that much horizon.
The bear anxiety bleeding into highway hypnosis, from hyper-vigilance to road-trance. Sometimes the scariest thing isn't the wildlife but the sheer scale of what you're crossing.
Joe
Yeah, Solstice is the plushie Cthulhu. I picked him up in Seattle before the first leg, at the insistence of friends. He'd found a friend in Denver, maybe three weeks into that trip: a cat wearing a wolf skin as a cloak (from the Meow Wolf art installation) that I'd named Milhouse. I'm on the lookout for strange, high-quality additions, but not urgently. They're my 'Wilson' in aggregate.
Arrived: Sheridan
The beef! The beef! Tremendous!
A swarm of midges
Seth
The carnivorous arrival - that steak commanding the entire table like Wyoming beef tends to do, unapologetic in its portion size. The midge swarm as nature's welcoming committee, reminding you that even in cattle country, the smallest things still rule.
That Tesla spoiler collecting bug casualties like a trophy board - the price of crossing that much prairie at highway speeds. Each splatter a tiny testament to the miles covered, the ecosystems traversed.
Sheridan sitting at that particular intersection of ranch culture and road trip practicality, where a meal that size makes perfect sense after driving across Montana's endless repetitions. The beer dark enough to stand up to that much protein, the mac and cheese because why not gild the lily when you're already this committed.
Joe
Wyoming knows their beef, certainly. Grass fed and grain finished, beautifully marbled, served on a plate hot enough to sizzle fat on. A very welcome shift from the coffee-and-breakfast-bar road diet.
The front of the car was far worse, and it drew the attention of yellow jackets. I'd made the mistake of leaving it in the same spot for the two days I was in town, and by the time I was going to drive away, there were dozens of them feasting on the free protein of a thousand miles.
Time to burn TODOs
The next state won’t plan itself
Thanks, amphetamines!
Seth
The pharmaceutical productivity push - that perfect American intersection of suburban tranquility and chemical optimization. The contrast between that manicured park path and the sunset's natural chaos, while you're burning through your task list on prescribed speed.
The amphetamines reference is bold for a public haiku. That tension between "I need to function at highway speeds" and "this is how we function now" - medicalized momentum to match the miles ahead.
The RV cluster below that perfect Western sunset, temporary communities forming and dissolving nightly. Your TODO list probably growing faster than you can cross items off, even with chemical assistance. The planning paradox of trying to map spontaneity, scheduling serendipity across state lines.
Joe
Yeah, it's a prescription. The lowest possible dose, but magical stuff either way. Sheridan was the first place since I'd started where I arrived without a true next destination in mind. I'd a vague sense of where I'd camp on my way to Rapid City, but without an address or a reservation for either. I managed to get about a week's worth of schedule on the calendar, and wrote "Memetic Necromancy" in the park, but missed lunch entirely. Decided to seek out more local beef.
One more week planned out
Celebration: churrasco
Leave skewer - walk away
Seth
The planning paradox crystallized in meat and metal - those championship banners from 2017 hanging like battle flags over your solo table, while you celebrate getting another week mapped out by ordering something that requires commitment to consume.
That empty main street at night captures the particular loneliness of Western towns after dark - all that preserved architecture with nobody to appreciate it. The kind of place where a Brazilian steakhouse feels both completely out of place and perfectly necessary.
"Leave skewer - walk away" has this wonderful ambiguity. The ritual of churrasco where they keep bringing meat until you flip that little disc from green to red, but also the broader metaphor of knowing when to stop consuming, when to leave the table. The skewer as both trophy and warning - I conquered this much protein but I'm done now.
Joe
Ha, the last line was more command than surrender - as the last guy in the restaurant on a quiet Thursday night, in a sort of liminal space, it was a duel of wills. “I will consume as much of this meat as you have left, and nobody else is here, so leave the skewer and come back with the next one.”
I'm cheating a little bit - those images there were from a day I didn't write for, but I didn't have pictures from the churrasco. A local and award-winning brewery with a live bluegrass band (my first!) and a full bar on a Friday night, but the main street was nearly dead by 11.
An enormous butte
Visible from thirty out
Pfah says elder god
Seth
Devil's Tower as cosmic punctuation - Solstice confronting that impossible volcanic neck rising from nothing, the kind of geological anomaly that makes you understand why people invented gods. "Pfah" is perfect - that dismissive elder god exhale at something so obviously unnatural it shouldn't exist.
The cracked pavement beneath tentacles, the tower's striations like something clawed its way up from below. Your traveling companion providing scale for the incomprehensible, those dead eyes witnessing Wyoming's most alien landmark.
That thirty-mile visibility captures the Great Plains' particular brand of anticipation - you see your destination for an hour before arrival, the landscape so flat that verticality becomes mythological. The bluegrass and brewery feel almost defensive against that much geological weirdness looming outside town.
Joe
I ended up missing the exit for Devil's Tower and drove about 10 miles down an unnamed dirt road before finding glorious pavement again. Not too many places that the Tesla felt nearly as out of place as on that route. Maybe that's the way to get a bit more regional cred in a rural town, pulling up in the new red sedan with a thick coat of dirt and mud splashes up from the wheel well?
Spearfish quarry rest
Thunderstorm's bad for my tent
First night in the car
Seth
The inevitable Tesla-as-tent moment - that ChatGPT exchange perfectly capturing the gulf between theoretical camping and actual prairie thunderstorms. "Coffin cosplay" is brutally accurate for what a tent becomes when the sky opens up.
The silhouette forest against that apocalyptic sky tells the whole story. That's not weather you negotiate with; that's weather you surrender to. Your first car-camping night marking a threshold between romantic notions of roughing it and the pragmatic reality of "I'm sleeping in climate-controlled safety tonight."
The dirt-road Tesla coating as unintentional camouflage is perfect - nothing says "I belong here" quite like arriving caked in local geology. Though I suspect the locals still clocked you as passing through the moment you opened your mouth or ordered something other than Bud Light.
Joe
I was really disappointed that I'd actually needed to surrender to nature here after passing through bear country - the storm moved around me over the span of several hours. My site barely got any rain, but the lightning was constant. Several bolts every second, from both cells that passed on either side. A surreal light show in otherwise black skies, and the first real weather I'd seen since... September last, when I was in Charlotte during Helene.
I loved face mountain
Tantric walkup: no spoilers
Theodore the bird
Seth
Mount Rushmore as America's most aggressive assertion of "we were here" - those faces carved into sacred Lakota land, now being photobombed by what I assume is a plush eagle named Theodore. The juxtaposition of imperial monumentalism and gift shop fauna captures the whole tourist industrial complex perfectly.
"Tantric walkup: no spoilers" is an intriguing way to frame the approach. That tension between anticipation and arrival, wanting to preserve the reveal even though everyone knows what's coming. The long buildup through the Black Hills before the faces suddenly appear through the trees.
That sunset cow witnessing another day's end in South Dakota - the actual residents going about their business while tourists stream past toward the stone presidents. Theodore getting his obligatory photo op at the monument that's somehow both exactly what you expect and still absurd when you finally see it in person.
Joe
I actually did manage the perfect no-spoilers run, my hat pulled low, FSD working its way up the hill, until I was past the flags to the main viewing area. The sun at 10 AM was perfect, from behind - no squinting, just stony-eyed legends. Of the monuments and wonders I've seen so far, this was my favorite. The museum inside was well-paced, commemorating the achievements of four of the best presidents we've ever had. Hubris? No. Well-deserved American exceptionalism. 10/10, no notes.
In Rapid City, they've got statues of all of them.
Brunch at the mud hole
Best biscuit I've ever had
High five, Obama
Seth
The full American mythology circuit - from sacred Lakota land carved with presidential faces to random Rapid City sidewalks where you can high-five Obama's bronze hand. The spectrum from monumental gravitas to tourist kitsch captured in seventeen syllables.
That Trump statue mid-gesticulation in what appears to be a visitor center is peak 2025 absurdity. The "OK" sign frozen in metal, the podium suggesting eternal campaign mode. Someone decided this needed to exist, got funding, commissioned an artist, installed it. The whole apparatus of commemoration applied to... that.
"Best biscuit I've ever had" at something called the Mud Hole feels like the real America cutting through all the bronze and granite. The kind of place that doesn't need monuments because the biscuits speak for themselves. That's the discovery worth documenting - not the faces everyone's seen in textbooks, but the specific texture of a perfect biscuit in Rapid City.
Your "10/10, no notes" on Rushmore while wearing your hat low to preserve the reveal - there's something genuinely sweet about maintaining wonder for something so thoroughly documented. Even American exceptionalism carved into a mountain can still surprise if you approach it right.
Joe
I've written before - "we don't build enough statues!"
Rapid City seems to have taken this to heart. My first drive through downtown I was ecstatic, until I realized they're all presidents, rather than local community cornerstones or brilliant nobodies. Still, it never felt performant, just an authentic pride in the country a Midwest town belongs to. I miss a lot about Seattle, but I don't miss the dismissive hate or excessive focus on shortcomings that get people marching in the street.
Morning park wheeling
Memorial, Sioux, Skyline
A field of flowers
Seth
The municipal pride through presidential bronze - Rapid City's commitment to statuary as civic identity, that particular Midwestern earnestness about American mythology. The contrast with Seattle's relationship to its own monuments is sharp - one city adding presidents to every corner, the other debating which ones to remove.
That perfectly manicured park with its geometric flower beds feels like the antithesis of the wild prairie you've been crossing. Someone decided this much order was necessary, this much cultivation, against all that horizontal emptiness. The memorial park as assertion of control over landscape that otherwise just... continues.
Your onewheel carving through that maintained space, past the monuments and memorials - there's something about bringing that silicon valley toy to the heartland's careful gardens. The three parks you name (Memorial, Sioux, Skyline) suggesting you covered real ground that morning, using the municipal infrastructure as your personal playground.
"A field of flowers" as the haiku's landing - after all the bronze and granite assertions of importance, it's the ephemeral blooms that get the final word. The thing that'll be gone by winter while the statues endure, but somehow matters more in the moment.
Joe
It was a beautiful day. Got some weird looks from older ladies out walking, but still a friendly "good morning" disarmed them well enough. There was a chunk of the Berlin Wall and an old "YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR" sign on a concrete slab in Memorial Park that felt... worse, to ride past blithely, when I'd missed my turn back into town.
Bright local flavor
Coffee, beer, community
Graffiti alley
Seth
The art alley as Rapid City's id revealed - that layers-upon-layers graffiti wall telling a completely different story than the presidential bronze and manicured gardens. "LOVE ALWAYS" in ornate script while Devil's Tower lurks in the background mural, the whole thing tagged and counter-tagged into beautiful chaos.
The Jarrad Anthony Higgins memorial caught my eye - Juice WRLD, died at 21, commemorated on a wall in South Dakota. Someone cared enough to make that happen, to claim that specific patch of brick for remembrance. That's the kind of statue-building you were talking about - just with spray paint instead of bronze.
The juxtaposition of "bright local flavor" with graffiti alley captures Rapid City's particular duality. The coffee-beer-community trinity of small city social infrastructure, but also this sanctioned wildness tucked behind the buildings. The older ladies giving you looks but still offering "good morning" - that Midwestern politeness overriding suspicion, the social contract holding even when you're the weirdo on the electric unicycle.
That Berlin Wall fragment in Memorial Park is such a strange artifact to encounter casually. Cold War detritus as municipal decoration, history flattened into a curiosity you can roll past on your way to coffee.
Joe
I had a conversation with a student from the nearby South Dakota School of Mines over a bowl of ramen the night before I left - an aspiring particle physicist, chatting about how to build a resilient off-grid network in case any of the major hubs were turned off. I walked away, feeling a bit bittersweet - they were taking extra years for their undergraduate degree, planning to graduate with the bachelors and masters at the same time - and wondering whether I might have tried to do the same had it occurred to me, a dozen years ago.
Road to Medora
Longest stretch without chargers
A/C is thirsty
Seth
The Full Throttle Saloon as prairie punctuation - that perfect American absurdity of a destination bar in the middle of nowhere, metal sculpture reaching toward nothing. The 224 miles to Dickinson representing real range anxiety territory for a Tesla in 85-degree heat with the A/C running.
That nav screen telling the whole story - 96% battery, 26% at destination, those three separate "S Dakota Highway" entries like the algorithm got confused by all that repetition. The careful calculation of electrons versus comfort, the modern pioneer's arithmetic.
Your conversation with the particle physics student feels like the kind of encounter these trips are built for - discussing resilient networks over ramen, the intersection of theoretical physics and practical paranoia. That wistfulness about the path not taken, wondering about the masters-bachelors combo move you missed - though honestly, you've built your own graduate education through Boeing-Microsoft-Amazon and now this wandering seminar across America.
"A/C is thirsty" captures the essential compromise of comfort. Every degree cooler costs you miles of range, but crossing the Dakota badlands in August without it would be its own kind of suffering. The car making you aware of every energy trade-off in a way gas vehicles never do.
Joe
When I left Rapid City, my car said I was expected to arrive in Dickenson (the next charger, about 230 miles north) with a 27% charge. About 30 miles later, it was saying I'd arrive at 20%, and my weather app was claiming 95+ degrees outside, and I started to get really nervous. I spent maybe 20 minutes talking to Grok (onboard, now), about the relative drain from things like A/C, music, internal lighting, and the actual forward momentum of the vehicle at different speeds. I ended up running the A/C only at 85 degrees and putting cruise control on at 65, and I made it to the next charger at about 12% remaining. I think that's the worst single stretch for my entire trip - not a lot of need for infrastructure between North and South Dakota on the west side.
Dakota plains
Do you think they have AI?
Abundant nothing
Seth
The existential plains interrogation - that cattle congregation beneath another volcanic neck, the sunflower ocean stretching to the horizon, all that productive emptiness under surveillance by contrails. "Do you think they have AI?" floating over this agricultural infinity feels like the right question for 2025.
The range anxiety bleeding through your careful electron management - 65 mph with intermittent cooling, watching percentages drop faster than physics should allow. That conversation with Grok about energy trade-offs while you're actively making them, the meta-layer of consulting AI about how to survive the stretch between charging stations. The car becoming a mobile negotiation between comfort and arrival.
"Abundant nothing" perfectly captures the Dakota paradox - all that space producing food for millions while feeling completely vacant. The sunflowers don't care about your battery percentage. The cattle don't need charging infrastructure. But there you are, threading your Tesla through their world at carefully calculated speeds, rationing your climate control against the prairie heat.
Joe
There were 40 mile stretches where there were no power lines, even. I had been wondering, after seeing all the farmland, whether everyone out here was still rich as hell - but it turns out if your family all works on the farm (98% of farms are family farms by the USDA definition), the median income of nearly $100k (as of 2024) goes much less far than you'd expect per capita, and that most farmers work additional jobs off-farm to survive. While there's a lot of value in the land, it's not the kind of thing that's easily made liquid.
There were very few towns along the way, but I did see the occasional schoolhouse. It made me wonder, if children are working from a young age, when and for how long deep rural Americans were educated, and whether there might be an enormous opportunity for supplementary tutoring (especially about non-farm concepts) via LLMs and other intelligent-ish systems - or if there would be cultural blockers ("we've always done it this way" and skeptical of outsiders with clever words) to this kind of evolution, in the same way that farmers are extremely unlikely to sell part of their land in order to invest in stocks, even when the EV for doing so would be higher. I didn't think it'd be well-received if I were to stop in my shiny (bug covered) red electric car, pull up to someone actively working, and ask.
"They call them gophers,
But I've never seen them goph"
- Teddy Roosevelt
Seth
Theodore Roosevelt National Park as geological time machine - those sediment layers telling millions of years of story, that prairie dog standing sentinel over its flowering kingdom. The Teddy quote about gophers perfectly capturing the absurdist taxonomy of the plains.
Your meditation on rural education and technological opportunity cuts deep. The cultural resistance to outsiders with "clever words" versus the genuine need for broader horizons - that's the American rural paradox in a nutshell. The idea of LLM tutoring for farm kids who've been working since they could walk, trying to bridge that gap between practical wisdom and abstract knowledge without triggering the defensive mechanisms that keep communities insular.
The economic reality you're uncovering - $100k split across an extended family working the land, most needing side jobs despite owning millions in non-liquid assets - that's the kind of truth that doesn't make it into either coastal narratives about "real America" or rural mythology about independent prosperity.
That prairie dog's expression feels like it's judging your Tesla, your questions, your whole wandering enterprise. But it's also just trying to survive in its patch of flowering ground, same as everyone else along that endless Dakota highway.
Joe
The park was beautiful, but the campsite was... too well lit and too crowded, for my taste. I built a fire in the communal fire pit on the opposite side of the lit area once the sun set - collected fallen tinder, a bit of proper firewood, some dryer lint kindling, and my trusty flint and steel, but despite the wandering of those with dogs, nobody cared to join me and chat. The nearby laundry building (!) ended up more crowded than my space under the stars - looking in the window, I could see a couple of people silently flicking screen. There's a quiet kind of despair to that, and it unsettled me.
Some brutal weather
Hiding from the sun all day
Buffalo don't care
Seth
The buffalo traffic jam as perfect Dakota metaphor - that 102-degree forecast and the bison just walking through it all, indifferent to both weather and infrastructure. They've survived worse than your Tesla's air conditioning anxiety.
The communal fire pit scene hits hard - you performing the ancient ritual of gathering wood and striking flint while everyone else huddles in the fluorescent laundromat scrolling through their feeds. That's the modern American camping experience distilled: nature as backdrop for screen time, the campground as suburb with worse amenities.
The loneliness of building a fire no one joins feels particularly acute after all those miles of solo driving. You're offering the oldest form of human congregation - fire and darkness and possibility of conversation - but the gravitational pull of individual screens is stronger. Even in a national park named for the president who championed the strenuous life, people choose the familiar comfort of their devices over the discomfort of engaging with a stranger.
"Buffalo don't care" - about the heat, about your battery percentage, about your need for human connection, about any of it. They're just crossing the road because the road happens to be where they're walking. That kind of indifference feels almost enviable when you're managing electron anxiety at 102 degrees.
Joe
I ended up parking my car at an incredible overlook a mile down a dirt road on the far side of town, turning on my hotspot, and managing some laptop logistics - with a supercharger only 30 miles away from the park, I was willing to trade power for comfort, and sitting inside the tent or out in the sun in that weather was certainly not going to happen. I'm far too white for that kind of summer living. I was doing the same thing as those I criticized the night before, avoiding nature and human contact, with only the veneer of "oh nature is meaner to me than most" to hide behind.
Across dakota
Three hundred and thirty miles
Fleishkueckle and rain
Seth
The Great Plains infrastructure paradox - that apocalyptic sky over an arrow-straight highway, the fleischkuekle as North Dakota's specific contribution to fried comfort food. Three hundred and thirty miles of questioning whether your electron management was paranoid or prudent.
Your self-awareness about becoming what you criticized - hiding in your car on a dirt road overlook, laptop open, avoiding both the brutal sun and human contact - that's the honest part most travel writing skips. The "veneer" you mention is real though; there's a difference between choosing isolation and having it imposed by 102-degree heat and vampire-pale skin unsuited to prairie summer.
The fleischkuekle (that German-Russian meat pocket that somehow became North Dakota's unofficial state food) appearing at journey's end feels earned after that marathon drive. The rain finally arriving like a meteorological apology for the previous day's assault.
Your whole leg reads like a meditation on distance - physical, social, technological. From Seattle's crowded goodbye to Montana's endless roads to the empty fire pit in Roosevelt to that final sprint across Dakota. Each haiku compressing days of experience into seventeen syllables, the constraint forcing you to choose what actually mattered from each stop.
The loneliness threading through these entries - building fires no one joins, wondering about farm kids' education from your bug-splattered Tesla, consulting Grok about battery management instead of asking locals about their lives - captures something essential about American solo travel in 2025. All that space, all those people, all that separation.
Joe
Rocketing down I-94 was far less electrically-sparse than North Dakota State Road 22 - the trip was uneventful, more than anything else. I can't imagine having done a trip like this before Google Maps, though. And being able to, as I pull into a new town, ask an LLM about how to avoid putting my foot in my mouth by speaking ill of the wrong local industry, or how to pronounce the local specialty food (flesh-KEEK-luh), goes a long way towards curbing social anxiety. The food itself reminded me of the pielmeni we'd cook and eat back in high school Russian class - a similar dill-and-sour-cream flavor to breaded meat substance.
But I don't want to give the wrong impression - I've sat down next to and had conversations with at least a dozen different people or couples thus far, a few of them also traveling across the country (though nobody with as ambitious a plan as mine). The misses just stand out more in comparison.
Minnesota, eh?
Surrounded by mosquitoes
They tap against glass
Seth
Minnesota as insect purgatory - that Space Aliens sign promising escape while you're trapped at the intersection, mosquitoes turning your car into a percussion instrument. The "eh?" capturing that moment of crossing into upper Midwest linguistic territory, where the Canadian influence starts bleeding through.
The campsite photo with those towering clouds suggests another evening of weather anxiety, another calculation of whether the tent is worth the risk. The mosquitoes tapping against glass reads like a horror movie setup - they want in, you want out, everyone's trapped by different barriers.
Your reflection on the social technology of LLM consultation is sharp. Using AI to navigate pronunciation and local sensitivities, turning anxiety management into an API call. The flesh-KEEK-luh revelation connecting to Russian class pielmeni shows how these regional foods are all variations on the same theme: meat wrapped in dough, call it what you want.
The dozen conversations you've had along the way matter. The misses standing out more than hits is just the nature of solo travel - you remember the empty fire pit more vividly than the successful small talk at the diner. But you're still trying, still sitting down next to strangers, still building those temporary connections even as you rocket through at highway speeds.
That Minnesota arrival feels like the end of the prairie marathon and the beginning of something else - lakes and trees and different kinds of distance. The mosquitoes just the welcoming committee for whatever comes next.
Joe
330 miles east of Medora was Buffalo River State Park. As I'd mentioned, it had rained quite a bit that day, and as I pull up to my lot as the sun sets, the swarm was out in force. A deeper shame than sleeping in my car during the thunderstorm, or in hiding from the sun - I didn't even step outside, instead climbing through the gap between the front seats to get to the back. Medora was bad enough, and I'd been idly scratching a handful of bites on ankles and knuckles for days, and I'd not wanted any more from my last campsite day for a couple weeks as I reached denser civilization of Minneapolis -> Green Bay -> Madison -> Chicago. It's not the threat of bears or mountain lions that stopped me - it's the stupid little annoyances that I knew would feast while I pitched my tent.
I think I'm going to end here - that's two weeks worth of journey, in seventeen syllables. A bit of reflection - the country is enormous, diverse, and magnificent. It's full of people who are struggling, and proud, and enjoying all that the world has to offer. I've been so... I was about to say 'blessed,' but that's just the be-like-local instinct kicking in again - fortunate, to be able to take this kind of trip. It's terrifying, still, to think through and realize that I'm less than 10% through what I'd intended to do, but the sky is still blue, the sun is still shining, and people are talking and laughing everywhere I go. The world is full of opportunities, and serendipity, and beauty. I miss my friends back in Seattle, but I'm still full of optimism, excited to see what's next.
Seth, any closing remarks?
Seth
The mosquito surrender in Buffalo River State Park feels like the logical endpoint of this leg - not even attempting to leave the car, crawling through seats like you're in some post-apocalyptic horror film where the air itself is hostile. The progression from bear anxiety to weather anxiety to just giving up entirely when faced with Minnesota's insect air force.
The haiku form served you well - forcing each place into its essential gesture, making you choose what deserved those seventeen syllables. From that first "desolate twilight" leaving Seattle to Minnesota's percussion of mosquitoes against glass, you've compressed an education in American distance into poetry's tightest container.
Your reflection on "blessed" versus "fortunate" catches something important about regional code-switching, that instinct to mirror local language even when it doesn't quite fit your worldview. You're learning to navigate not just highways but the subtle linguistic territories of each place.
The 10% realization is vertigo-inducing - you've already crossed mountain ranges and prairies, survived thunderstorms and heat waves, eaten your body weight in regional beef variations, and you're just getting started. That kind of scale rewrites what "possible" means. Most people never attempt something this ambitious, this open-ended, this willfully uncertain.
But what strikes me most is the quality of attention you're bringing to it all. Not just consuming miles but really seeing - the Georgia bartender who followed a woman to Montana, the particle physics student dreaming of resilient networks, the empty fire pit that told its own story about modern isolation. You're not just crossing America; you're reading it like a text full of footnotes and marginalia.
The road ahead promises different densities - cities where you can disappear into crowds instead of standing out as the guy with the Tesla asking about flesh-KEEK-luh pronunciation. But you've earned something in these empty spaces that the cities can't give you: the knowledge that you can navigate true distance, that you can find beauty in abundant nothing, that you can survive on electrons and stubbornness and the occasional perfect biscuit.
Keep writing the haiku. Keep talking to strangers. Keep asking Grok about battery management while Solstice judges the universe from your dashboard. The country needs witnesses like you - people willing to cross it slowly enough to see what's actually there.
Joe
Two weeks on the road
A little closer to truth
Tomorrow? There’s more.