Traveling has been on my mind of late. I just finished the third in a series of travel articles I’m writing for the local alternative newsweekly, and in about six weeks I will fly to Washington, D.C. for a weekend of patriotism and mayhem before Brian, two of our great friends and I take off for a week in Ireland. To say I’m excited wouldn’t quite be fair; I’m having throes, people. Throes.

I’ve been to all of these places before, of course. But the gist of the travel series (which is based on last year’s Road Trip), is that even within my own state there is so much to see that often goes unseen, and so to that end I’ve been thinking about how much of America I have yet to see for myself. Brian and I were talking about this the other day. I was telling him about how when I was a kid we used to take these crazy-complicated road trips all over America – from Oklahoma to Los Angeles to Northern California to Colorado and back, or from Oklahoma to Cincinnati to New Orleans and back to Oklahoma. But if you drew a horizontal line through a map of the U.S., there is a great deal of stuff north of that line that I’ve never seen.

So, to that end I’ve been thinking about how to cover the 14 of the contiguous United States I’ve never visited; I figure Alaska and Hawai’i, while more than worthy of visits, are trips unto themselves. I used to dream that I’d take all 14 at once, in a Kerouac-esque hitchhike-a-thon across the northern half of our country. But now, encumbered and enhanced both by the wise caution that comes with growing older and a sense of perspective, I came up with three potential road trips to cover all 14 states and as much ground as possible.

Trip #1: Middle America

This trip begins and ends in Des Moines, IA, mostly because I have been fascinated by Iowa ever since I read On The Road, wherein Kerouac states that “the prettiest girls live in Iowa.” I’d like to wind through northern Nebraska and the Black Hills of South Dakota (with a stop at Mt. Rushmore) before traveling north to visit North Dakota’s Audubon National Wildlife Refuge and Audubon Lake. From there it’s into Fargo, then to Minnesota, hopefully catching a live show of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul. This followed by a jaunt through Wisconsin – Eau Claire, Green Bay, Milwaukee and Madison, before winding back through Iowa. Middle America writ large.

Trip #2: Northern New England

I lived in New England for a time, squatting in a New Haven walkup and trying to be a Yale student. We all know that it didn’t go great. Since my time in the northeast was cut short, I missed out on exploring as much of that area of the country as I’d liked. So this trip starts in Boston (I’ve already been to Massachusetts, but) and winds up through New Hampshire and Vermont – the town of Rutland is of special interest to me because of Time Chasers – before rounding out the inner portion of Maine and then returning to Boston. I consider the part of the country that I’m originally from – Oklahoma – to be basically the exact opposite of New England, and so the idea for this trip really thrills me.

Trip #3: The Northwest

But this idea here is, to me, the most exciting. Starting in Seattle we’d drive up to Port Angeles, Washington, then down the Pacific Coast before turning inland to visit Portland and Bend, Oregon, then traipsing across Oregon, through the southern part of Idaho, to Casper, Wyoming. From there it’s north to Billings, Great Falls, and Kalispell, Montana, then across the panhandle of Idaho to Coeur d’Alene, up to the Grand Coulee Dam, then back to Seattle. Everything about the idea for this trip – except for the cost, really – excites me, and I hope to get to do it someday soon.

So, those are the three trips I’ve conceived to cover the 14 contiguous states I haven’t visited. Who’s in, and for what part? Also – if any struggling car companies want to reach out to me to, say, creatively market a  new car, especially an SUV hybrid, by sponsoring me to take one or more of these trips and blog about it, well, THAT WOULD BE FINE. JUST FINE.