1 minute read
Coast-to-Coast
Members Dennis and Mary Lou Corrigan have seen this country as few people have – from behind the wheel of an automobile from New York to California, on the two-lane backroads that connect a forgotten, but very real America. They’ve been to the Illinois courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law, the cottage in Georgia where Franklin Roosevelt died, and the Louisiana backroad where Bonnie and Clyde met their fate.
If Dennis and Mary Lou Corrigan ask you to go for a drive, be sure to take them up on it. But be advised to bring a toothbrush. Oh, and enough spare clothes for several weeks. Tell the family you won’t be home for supper that evening.
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That’s because the Corrigans have made something of a hobby of cross-country travel by automobile.
And we do mean cross-country. Since they retired – he as a Wall Street municipal bond trader and she as an elementary school teacher – they’ve driven three of America’s historic east-west highways from start to finish. That’s a round-trip total of more than 20,000 miles – and their motoring mission is far from over. They’ve driven Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles (made famous by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath, and of course the TV series, Route 66). Next, they drove Route 80, which runs from Savannah, Georgia, to San Diego. And most recently, they tackled America’s first trans-continental road, the Lincoln Highway (U.S. 30), which runs from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. When did they go? What did they drive? What happened? If you’d like more, let’s let Dennis and Mary Lou fill you in ...
Q: How did your fascination with these long drives start?
A: We both like automobiles and we like to travel, but it really started in Europe where we lived for 12 years. We did a lot of automotive travel around the continent, and we learned that the way to really see things is to slow down, meet the people in the small little villages, have dinner in the small little restaurants – you know, get away from the touristy stuff. We took our first big trip here in 2019 on Route 66. It took us about 17 or 18 days.
