I don't know if Ernie had seen snow before. He was 11 months old when we got him, and as far as I know this stop along interstate 80 in the Sierras was the first time he stepped in the cold stuff. He was tentative and curious, but once I galloped off into the woods, he was up for crunching through the top crust and racing along happily with me. A good thing, too, as this wouldn't be his last opportunity to experience snow on the trip.

We drove highway 50 through Austin, Nevada, up the mountain and stopped outside of the town in this picture.

"Alas, poor Yorick coyote, I know the scent well." Driving out of Ely, Nevada, headed for Utah. Ever interested in smelly stuff, Ernie checks out roadkill for the first time. The scent must be familiarly canine, yet provided little life for Shakespearean drama. Whether to be or not, we figured it was nobler to hit the road, and saw few other signs of prior or present life on US 50. We had the highway to ourselves for mile after pleasant mile; there were no slings of outrageous traffic.

Utah always amazes me with the diversity of its terrain. Not just the astonishing warm sandstone sculptures of Arches, Bryce, and Zion, but the distant mountains, some light, some dark, some blue in the distance.

We drove for miles through the glorious scenery, until I stopped at a trailer park to air the dog out, and we had a rousing round of fetch. Ernie is mesmerized by the raised arm, trembling in anticipation: Throw the ball, throw the ball!

As much as I enjoy the ever-same, ever-changing road in front of me, Ernie enjoys each tossed tennis ball: ever the same, ever anew. Here he returns the accursed escapee, the captured tennis ball seized during its ignoble flight.

We left Gunnison early in the morning, climbing higher and higher as we drove highway 50 up into the Rockies, more and more whiteness around us until thin snow coated the roads and we followed tiretracks. I pulled over at the crest and let the boy out to pose for this shot: Ernie at Monarch Pass.

The forecast had a blizzard coming down from Canada and aimed at the Upper Midwest. I was due to pick up Roberta and her Mom, Virginia, at MSP airport on Wednesday, for Thanksgiving. I decided to drive due east and then head north into the storm.

US highway 50 followed the Arkansas river mile after gorgeous mile through canyons in the Rockies then out into the high plains of Colorado, driving gradually down into Kansas. It was the late afternoon of a cold, cloudy day, and we'd spent the whole day driving, heading for the Missouri Ozarks. We were tired and ready to end our drive, find a place to stay, stretch our legs, and get some grub. But first we had to get a little farther across Kansas.

I stopped by the sign on the edge of town and our boy sat at the back window, silently watching me, ready to hit the road again because it was time

(oh, yes)

to get out of Dodge.

Heading for Joplin, Missouri, I looked for routes among the sideroads, and it was right there, on the map. Say, I thought, route 166 hooks up with I 44: the very NE corner of Oklahoma is within an easy drive. I can take a quick jog south to get a shot of Ernie. I figured I could snap the shot and be in Missouri for breakfast. Route 166 connected to a turnpike, but I didn't mind paying a little toll.

One of the worst decisions of the trip. When we approached the turnpike I was on the ramp before it really dawned on me that I had to enter the toll road westbound, not eastbound, and once on there was no getting off until the next paybooth. Okay, a minor annoyance, but I'll just turn around at the next opportunity.

Ha. Fat chance. No exit, no interchange, no stopping. The next exit was 20 miles on… so we drove and drove, westward, into Oklahoma. Plus, they restrict access, so I had no place to stop and take a picture, and 10, 15 minutes and too many miles of Oklahoma rolled by without any place to turn around and stop the mistake. Finally at our first chance a kindly toll collector charged me the minimum toll to U-turn back toward Missouri. So we were headed east again, and not supposed to stop either, but to hell with it, I'd spent this much time and effort, I was getting my picture.

I pulled off on a frontage road and stopped at a small construction turnoff. I got the boy out, keeping an eye peeled for Johnny Law.

Here it is, the most expensive of the trip: Ernie in Oklahoma.

We took a walk that morning in downtown Joplin, walking past old, pretty boarded-up buildings. I enjoyed Joplin, One had the sense of a colorful and prosperous past, and that some in town were old enough to remember it. I was a little sad over the deserted and shuttered present.

Heading for Springfield, I enjoyed the signage in southwestern Missouri. "Ozarks" describes many businesses (such as Ozarks antiques or fireworks ) and terms like "home-cooking" are as freely used as "cutting edge" or "latest trend” are in California.

"Country” is a common business adjective, selling everything from real estate to firearms to pancakes. Really: it's the home of Country Kitchen franchise restaurants, common mid-country, and in Minnesota a sort of poor cousin to Perkins Cake & Steak. Mom and Dad might take you out to Perkins, but the teenagers out on the town were more apt to go to Country Kitchen. Several places also used "calico" to attract business.

The day had an odd, late-autumn, early-winter tranquillity. Before Springfield I saw these trees which still had some color. I liked the bright foliage, as counterpoint to the snow and bare limbs we would soon see. Ernie and I played fetch a bit, before I posed this shot. I was disappointed with the color quality of the photo; perhaps it's the gray day (precursor to the storm blowing down from Canada) but I remember the color as much more vivid.

In Springfield, while playing fetch with Ernie in a public park, I met an interesting retired Army Sergeant who agreed the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Onward, we drove up to Lake of the Ozarks toward dusk, before continuing north through Kansas City.

I knew that I was driving into a blizzard, if I was to get to MSP airport in time to meet my wife and mother-in-law. I was ready to drive due north now, and all night, to get through the weather and arrive on time.

Because of the weather, I kept to the interstate. Near Kansas City I got past the Sunday night Chiefs/Raiders post-game traffic snarls without too much delay, and as I drove into Iowa the wind picked up. The wind gusted so heavily I could feel it move the car; the snow blew crosswise in front of me. I fell in behind semis so they would block the wind, and I kept it to their steady, safe pace. We drove after midnight, hour after hour, through John Wayne's home town, deeper and deeper into Iowa and into the early morning. In the headlights the snow whipped across the road in patterns that became almost psychedelic as the night wore on.

I stopped twice at truck-stops to rest and try to nap. But the wind blew not only around but under the car, cooling it down enough that in half an hour or so I'd turn on the engine to warm up again. We didn't stop for long. We entered and left Iowa at night, and I knew this would be my only chance to take his picture. I turned on the dome light, so the flash wouldn't be too hard on the boy, and here he is: Ernie in Iowa, before driving onward into the horizontal snow again.

I could give you a white image and try and tell you that was him in a blizzard. I could give you a different picture and pretend, but it wouldn't be the truth.

We met my wife and mother-in-law just fine at MSP. In fact, in the airport parking ramp Ernie was so focused on me coming back to the car that he didn't realize the overcoated figure with me was Mom-Dog until she got into the car, and he erupted into frenzied furball explosion, bouncing off all walls and windows, yelping in sheer incredulous joy that we could have driven so very, very far away from home and still somehow, miraculously meet her.

We spent a night in Minneapolis where he was too freaked out to stay in our hotel room, so at his insistence he spent a cold hour or two in the car on the West Bank while we had dinner with old friends of mine.

The truth is we got so busy with family I forgot to take any pictures of Ernie in Minnesota. so here are some pictures of my brother Peter, nieces Sara and Lily, and Dad, Roberta, and Peter at dinner. But none of the boy himself!

Still, we had a grand time, playing ball in the backyard with our nieces, and visiting Minnehaha Falls, and he never once seemed phased in the least by the weather.

Thanksgiving was a splendid feast, then back to airports and on the road very early Saturday AM, eastward, without realizing I had not once taken a picture of him in Minnesota, where we spent most of our time. Where I grew up. The trip home for Thanksgiving, the whole reason for our tour. The only state, in fact, where I forgot.

A reason to go back?

We left Minnesota early in the morning, and we crossed the Mississippi sometime around dawn. I pulled over for gas outside of La Crosse, Wisconsin, then stopped by a little side road and let Ernie out to sniff around. The blizzard had passed through a couple days earlier, and several days of sun had melted much of the snow, but some clung to the ground.

"Badgers, Ernie,” I said. "We could find badgers here.”

He looked at me then sniffed the ground, hopeful of quarry. But it was too early or too cold, and the badgers weren't showing.

Or perhaps it was because Minnesota beat the Badgers 38 to 34 the weekend before, to take home Paul Bunyan's Axe?

We visited my college roommate, Carmen Polvere in Illinois. He's moved out of Chicago now, and lives out beyond the western suburbs of his hometown, the Windy City. Our first evening with Carmen we went for a drive, cruising and seeing the local sights. Carmen is a fifties fan, and we had the old music on the radio (some sixties and seventies too, for that avant garde edge) as we caught up with each others' lives.

He and his wife Holly were building a new house in Sycamore, so we stopped by to see the progress they had made. Since then, Carmen and Holly have moved in, so I'll bet it looks a bit different now. Here it is: Ernie in Illinois.

I got confused leaving Illinois, turned around on the freeways, intending to drive through the City and instead getting caught in traffic somewhere west of town, making no progress on a not-so-freeway.

Dipping down into Indiana we got off the interstate, taking route 4, one of those glorious, serendipitous decisions, driving for miles with the road to ourselves, and not minding on the rare occasions when we met a little traffic, slowing to drive through quiet, prim little Indiana towns, white clapboard houses, fences, trim hedges and tall, restful trees.

I stopped outside of one town to give Ernie a break, to stretch his legs by the side of the road and took a picture of him in this field, in the early winter afternoon light.

Later that night, entering Ohio, we got back on the freeway to make better time to Pennsylvania. The peaceful drive was over, and it was back to crowded barreling along at 70 miles an hour and more, all too often bumper to bumper in the impatient, begrudging, end-of-the-weekend traffic.

We had a fine time in Pennsylvania, with my old coworker Gary. He took us into Pittsburgh, gorgeously set among the three rivers, framed by the surrounding mountains. Most of the architecture is beautifully pre-modern, with lots of Victorian trim and Art Moderne flourish. We toured his alma mater, Pitt (easternmost point of our trip) and visited the new ballparks.

Afterward, Gary decided to test the limits of my gas tank, and we surprisingly made it farther than I would have expected with the empty light on. ("I'm on vacation,” I said to myself, "and I have triple A. I don't have to be anywhere, so whatever happens is just another part of the adventure.”)

We took this picture in front of their house the evening before we left: Gary, Michelle, Rita and Ernie in Pennsylvania.

We grew up with names like Ernie Nevers and Bronko Nagurski in my household. Leo "The Lion” Nomellini, Fran Tarkenton, and Alan Page who, as a young man, worked as a laborer on this site, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Here our Ernie poses by the sign, and in the second picture looks back over his shoulder, wondering at what might have been.

My friend Keith has built a fine new home east of Louisville. Keith and I went to the same grade school, junior high, and high school, where we got to know each other well in summer art classes and wrote album reviews together for the school paper. Coincidentally, we even stayed in the same dormitory our freshman year at what Minnesotans know as "the U.”

We had fun touring Louisville; he showed be the big baseball bat outside the bat factory, we saw the AAA team's nice new park, and walked Ernie along the banks of the Ohio. Here is Keith and his wife Tomoko, outside their home.

I had never been to Kentucky before, and greatly enjoyed my visit. I drove state highways south through Kentucky, avoiding the interstates. We happened upon Abe Lincoln's childhood home, not his birthplace, but where he lived as an infant and where he formed his earliest memories. They've built a replica of his homestead, and here ‘Honest Ernie' and I got out to play a little catch.

They were born almost two centuries apart, but I have the sense they'd have liked each other just fine.

We spent a night in Jackson, TN, where I stayed up too late watching Band of Brothers reruns on cable, then made it to Graceland in Memphis the next morning. They want you to buy tickets and get on tour buses across the street from the mansion, but I wasn't sure the German Shepherd would make the cut, no matter how good his manners. Besides, I didn't want a tour, I wanted a picture, so we crossed the street and walked up the drive, as I hummed "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog” to myself.

A guard came out of his little guard house and told me I couldn't go there—but when I explained my goal he was polite as pie. He even took a picture of us, perhaps just to get us to go away.

Ernie was as gracious as ever, and gave him a look as if to say, "thangkyou. thank-you-verimuch.”

The border is a short drive south of Graceland, so we continued on to Ole Miss and set up this shot with the "top of Mississippi” sign on the water tower in the background.

After this we drove back up to Memphis where I was impressed by the Pink Palace museum, buying several books that were helpful to me in writing the story Honey Voice. I lunched on Beale Street, which I enjoyed, even though it was cold and windy. I took the pup for a short walk to stretch his legs, and got ready to hit the road, looking to drive straight through to Arizona. Around three o'clock we headed out of town, across the Mississippi.

Signs on the waterfront proclaimed Memphis to be home of the blues and birthplace of rock and roll. It's a large boast, but they can back it up.

Dusk fell quickly as we headed west. It would be a long night, so I wanted to give Ernie some exercise. We stopped at a truck stop and I tossed the ball a few times to run him, then we got back in the Corolla and drove.

Traffic was heavy again, and the four-lane freeway was a playground for southern truckers. Several times the rigs pulled out and cut us off, even doubling up and allowing no one to pass for miles. Maybe it was the California license plates, I don't know. Driving for hundreds of miles, we drove on through the night, Ernie curled in the back, only rarely rising to stretch then lie down again, and on we drove and drove, straight across Oklahoma.

It was after midnight in Texas, and we pressed on as the moon rose in the sky. We stopped to stretch and shake the road trance, I think outside of Amarillo, the city lights in the distance of this picture. I got one decent shot of Ernie, and in the other he looks to be channeling some weird chainsaw massacre funk. I got him back in the car and settled down, keeping him away from all power tools, and we roared off to New Mexico.

Dawn in the Southwest, here's Ernie shortly before sunrise. We drove all day across New Mexico, as bone-bleached beautiful and gorgeously desolate as all the travel brochures claim. I didn't buy any turquoise but I did stop in Gallup and had a nice meal in a Mexican restaurant run by Asians. Then we got onto route 66 and continued west.

We made Flagstaff by late afternoon, about a day after we left Memphis. The next morning we visited the Grand Canyon, which Ernie really wanted no part of. Seriously. He knew it was a steep cliff, he could see the drop off, and he saw no reason to take chances, so I had to coax him into these shots.

There is good evidence sometimes, that dogs are more savvy than humans.

As the tour progressed Ernie became accustomed to the road, so much that he seemed to like it, and not to mind even the long hours driving across the west.

Solitude is hard on dogs, they like to keep the pack together, and the close cabin of the Corolla, our mobile den, gave him that. Even now "ride" is one of the most potent and magical words in his vocabulary, the promise of a journey together.

So this was Ernie's grand ride. I'd bet that he's most likely to remember the scents from his journey; perhaps also whom he met and what he ate (like trips where parents take the kids to Yellowstone, and the kids forever after fondly recall an ice cream stand) and that's fine. Lucky for you, I didn't bring and am not sharing all that Ernie sniffed, just these pictures.