I thought I'd share a few resources I have found helpful in my early stages of preparation. If you're thinking about getting out there and seeing America, take a few moments to look into these. Each is tremendously helpful, and will serve a different purpose.
Send out status updates, ask around, and find any friends or friends of friends who have taken on the road. If they've done it, the probably enjoyed it and will be anxious to give advice, recommendations, and a whole slew of do's and don'ts.
This is a rather in depth site that covers everything from routing to road-recipes and planning to packing. There are also all sorts of calculators for figuring out your gas mileage and other expenditures. It's a good start.
If you're interested in the southwest (if you're not, maybe reconsider the trip) check out this site. It is the mecca of educating yourself on one of the most (seemingly) beautiful parts of the country. They have information on hotels, maps, and specific guides for each individual state. (The thought of returning from a 3 month trip and realizing I've missed something monumental in my travels haunts me regularly during my planning.)
At the age of 58, Steinbeck found himself itching to go out and see America. For someone looking to travel alone, this brief sub-300 page book provides a considerable amount of mental solace. A million thanks to my cousin John for recommending this fine piece of American literature. He begins,
"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assure by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked."
I find myself in a place where, just like Steinbeck, I have not "heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. I knew the changes only from books and newspapers." And Google.
Littered with introspective thoughts and observations about all the people and places he sees, Steinbeck comforts any soul preparing for an adventure like this.
He too just wants to go. And knows that the feeling won't go away. Regardless, he hopes for something to delay his trip the sooner departure date gets. From the onset, he recognizes that everyone he talks to about it wants to go, regardless of where he's going. Perhaps most heroic - and literarily romantic in the American sense - he refuses to take fall into the "sweet trap" that is the comfort and safety of everyday modern American living. One of my favorite passages is as follows:
"Who doesn't like to be a center for concern? A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase in life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage."
Other autobiographical travelogues that have been strongly recommended, but remain mostly unread and on my bookshelf:
