Traveling on the Roads and Highways of America, with Trucker Mike 

* Geography facts about the United States.  * RoadMaps of the United States and Individual States.  * Challenging questions on each page.

Highway Map of the United States 

I drove many different kinds of vehicles over major highways and interstates and on two-lane country roads. I drove into and through congested big cities, through small towns and through stretches of country without a person or building in sight for many miles.  I saw ridge after ridge of tree-covered hills and bare rock mountains fading away into the distance.  I saw endless miles of tree-covered slopes with barely a sign of human occupation other than the road I drove on. I crossed many miles of flat farmland where the tallest things in sight were the occasional grain silos, power-line towers and the strips of trees between the fields. Lining stretches of highway between one town and the next were the commercial strips with their restaurants, diners, motels, strip malls, automobile dealerships and other businesses.  All these things are part of the Big Picture of the United States of America.  The people and their day-to-day activities make up the rest of the country.

Each photograph below represents one of the categories of pictures found inside this site. Click on the picture or on the name to go to that section of photographs. 

Birmingham, Alabama, skyline.	Office buildings in Hartford, Connecticut.	A billboard seen along Florida highways.	Normal winter scene in Maine.	Old Water Tower in Batavia, Ohio.
Electric Power Line Towers in Ohio.	Jack-knifed Truck Wreck on snowy road.	Sample of the Signs and Billboards section.	Road cut on I.68, western Maryland.	Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts.

I noticed the many ways in which people earned their livings. New automobile plants appeared in the middle of farm fields to produce Hondas, Mitsubishis, Volkswagens, BMW's, Toyotas, Mercedes,  and other brands once thought to be foreign, but now being Made in America.   Warehouses and distribution centers for major grocery and general merchandise chains sprouted up everywhere, especially near small towns and in rural areas, supplying Wal-Mart, Target, Family Dollar, Sav-a-Lot, Food Lion, Kroger, Kohl's and many other chains.

Snowy rocks along I.93 New Hampshire.	Chemical plant by I.95, New Jersey.	One of the Vehicles I drove or delivered	Arkansas railroad Bridge.	The aluminum Industry in Cressona, PA
Vineyards, western  New York State.	Downtown corner, Emporium, Pennsylvania.	Solid Rock Church, I.71, Ohio. A few years after this photo, the statue was destroyed in a storm.	Twin Towers from Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, New York City.	Sears Tower Building in Chicago, Illinois.

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 Many families  supplement their incomes with home-based businesses,  as is indicated by signs placed in the front yards by the road: hair dressers and beauty shops, day-care facilities, automobile repairing, well drilling, horse boarding, psychic readings and fortune telling,  used cars sales, breeding and selling a variety of different dogs, selling fish bait, tree trimming, home repairing and remodeling, etc.  The same spirit of commerce was visible in the large cities where every building and stretch of sidewalk  contained some kind of enterprise with the owners trying to catch their share of the American dream.  

		Capital of the United States =  Washington, D.C. Population of the U.S. =  311,396,118
One of the many Sunset and Sunrise pictures on display.	Weather and Seasons	50 states, 13 territories including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, etc.	A fine example of the murals I have photographed around the country. This particular one is in Watkins Glen, New York.  To see more, click MURALS.

If your knowledge of the United States comes from television shows, movies and magazines, you are only getting part of the picture.  This is a big, big country with almost every kind of land form, a wide range of climates, and people from every corner of the Earth.  And yet ....it is ONE country tied together by a shared appreciation of the freedoms we enjoy and by a multitude of national fast-food chains. 

About the questions: You will find questions on most pages of this site related to the subject of that page. You will find some of the answers on the page you are looking at, but for other answers, you will have to search in books, via Google or Bing or certain web sites. The questions are there to help make sure you understand what the pages are about.

Some of the vehicles I drove while taking the photographs on this site:

	Schneider was the first big-truck company I drove for. At that time, their whole fleet was International cab-overs and we were limited to 55 mph, everywhere.
	An Isuzu diesel cube van that I delivered while working for Morgan Drive-Away, a now-defunct company. Note my car behind.
	I drove for Butler Trucking, out of Woodland, PA, for two years. The bulk of that time was spent in Ohio,  western PA and NY, plus Ontario, Can. Shown here is a 1993 Freightliner tractor.
	Paschall Truck Lines, of Murray, KY, was a good outfit to work for. They, also, used all cab-overs at first, but have switched to conventional cabs. This is at a rest area in TN.
	Fueling a Southwind Motor home by Fleetwood with my Kia being towed behind. These big RV's were easy to drive, but only got 6 mpg on average.
	Watsontown Trucking. I had just backed into a tight dock in New Jersey. After this cab, I was given a brand new 2007 Volvo tractor with 420 miles on it. When I retired, March, 2009, the truck had about 250,000 miles on it.

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Note: You can also use any of the photos from this site simply by right-clicking on them and saving them to your own computer.  I can send you larger, printable photographs at your request and for a modest fee.  Simply write to me at the address below. 

New Note: In order to discourage spammers and to eliminate the thousands of junk e-mails I get every week via my web sites' e-mail links, I have removed the links. If you want to contact me, you will actually have to copy my address (see below) and paste it into an e-mail form. Sorry for the inconvenience.

truckermike@mikiemetric.net

 

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Copyright 2009 by Mikie Metric Productions, USA.