Down John’s Road: Recreating John Steinbeck’s 1960 American Road Trip

Two men. Two trucks. Two Americas. Follow journalist John Olson in fall 2009 as he recreated John Steinbeck's iconic 1960 "Travels With Charley" journey in a GMC truck camper: * Ride shotgun with Olson for 80 days, 12,673 miles, through 34 states. * Meet the zany characters at the midnight parking lots of Walmart. * Feel the tension as Olson comes within a second of dying on a lonesome Louisiana road. * Pick up a hitchhiker in Arizona thumbing his way to Egypt. * Joke with convicts, eat with the homeless, and chase a moose in backwoods Maine. * Go berserk in the boroughs of New York City searching for Yankee Stadium. * Find what Alice Cooper, Carl Bernstein, Mae West and Willie Nelson have in common. In September 1960, writer John Steinbeck, left Sag Harbor, Long Island, in a GMC truck camper, and later wrote "Travels With Charley: In Search of America." He wanted to save his sanity and prove his manhood. In September 2009, writer John Olson, stared into his mortality as well, and started driving down Steinbeck's long road - also in a GMC truck camper. Both men took 11 weeks on the trek obsessed with circling the United States. Comparing and contrasting Steinbeck's 1960 Great American Road Trip with America five decades later, Olson ponders the question Steinbeck faced: What are Joe Average Americans like today? Find out for yourself - Down John's Road.

John R. Olson is a retired newspaper editor and radio news journalist living on Puget Sound. He has worked for Voice of America in Europe and for Mission Network News on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Down John’s Road is his first book.