This project is supposed to be an imaginary road trip. What better group than the poets of the Beat Generation would there be to exemplify this spirit of travel. Though the "Beatniks" were mostly primarily poets and authors, traveling had plenty to do with their lives. Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road, is an obvious reference to this hunger for traveling . In On the Road, Kerouac basically retells of his travels with other Beatniks on the open road, except that he changes the names of his friends to fictional characters and stretches a number of situations. Travel on the open road was not only a thrill but also the subject of the poets' works.
Though the American frontier was officially "closed" over half a century earlier, the excitement of travel and exploration did not disappear. This may sound corny, but the Beat poets were the pioneers, the explorers of the 1950's. Though it may seem bizarre to be linking, perhaps, Kerouac and Cassady to Lewis and Clark, but these poets had their own extra-special intentions as did their unsimilar predecessors. Both had a hope and goal of finding and experiencing something new. Then if the Beats felt this way, if perhaps the motives of the Lewis and Clark expedition contained this, then perhaps all great movements in the history of America have possibly felt this also. So as the Beat poets did, let's load up our cars and get ready for a road trip because I feel that feeling pumping through my veins as well...
Let's start at our first destination...
