High holes and “holler” bunches are what my brother-in-law’s mother called country roads with lots of ups and downs. It seems a fitting title for a trip my brother-in-law, sister and I just did cross country from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

We traveled back roads rather than highways in a fifth-wheel camper, being dragged by a diesel Ford truck. This led my Oregon-based brother to say that the title of this column should be “a third wheel in a fifth wheel!”

We left Maine on Sept. 6, the day after Labor Day. Hurricane Katrina had just decimated Louisiana and Mississippi and gas prices were skyrocketing. We debated whether or not to go.

It somehow seemed selfish to indulge ourselves in a three-week vacation when others were experiencing so much suffering. Should we contribute the cost of the trip to relief efforts instead? Is it time to really start conserving fuel? We asked ourselves several times.

Ultimately we decided to go. The trip had been long-planned and was to culminate in our niece’s wedding in Seaside, Oregon on Sept. 24. It would have disappointed my brother’s family as well as us. And at our age-my brother-in-law celebrated his 65th birthday on the trip-you never know how much longer you’ll feel like doing this kind of trip.

Our first destination was the Adirondacks. We spent a couple days driving along Lake Champlain and through the mountains. Log cabins, fishing lakes and streams, golf courses and golf carts were everywhere-in this place of outdoor recreation, no one seemed to walk.

We stopped at the Adirondacks Museum, a beautiful place, with two-story high columns made from local red pine, absolutely as spectacular as any marble columns anywhere. One thought I had here was that the Adirondacks Park might serve as a model for the Maine north woods, mainly privately owned but publicly controlled and managed.

We spent the next two days driving across New York state on Route 20, just south of the throughway. This route took us through older, decaying mill cities, much like some here in Maine, interspersed with huge fields of feed corn.

This surprised me as I’d never thought of New York as being part of the corn belt. Further west, still in New York, the corn fields were exchanged for vineyards. When we talked with folks back home the third evening out, they didn’t think we’d accomplished much, as we were still east of Buffalo!

Our next destination was the Great Lakes. On Sept. 10, we were touring Put-in-Bay, an island community on Lake Erie, where Admiral Perry fought the decisive battle of the Great Lakes during the War of 1812. Coincidentally, we were there on the anniversary of the battle. The town was a-buzz with events, including bands, parade and re-enactment activities.

The following two days we drove along Lake Huron, the north shore of Lake Michigan and the south shore of Lake Superior. We took a ferry out to Mackinac Island in Lake Huron, a place where no motorized vehicles are allowed.

The taxis, carriages and drays, for carrying goods, are all horse-drawn. Most folks use bicycles to get from place to place. Except for dress, we might have been there 100 years ago. It’s pricey, too. It costs $3,000 a night for the fanciest quarters at the Grand Hotel

On Michigan’s upper peninsular we picked up Route 2 and followed it all the way west almost into Oregon. This was all new territory to me. While I had been all the way across the country before through the middle and south, I had never taken the northern route.

Entering Minnesota, I remembered that my paternal grandmother was from there but neither my sister nor I could recall from which part. One night we camped in Bemidji State Park in Minnesota, my favorite campground of the whole trip. We arrived in time to hike one of the trails along the lake and at night had a fire and toasted marshmallows.

I loved the high prairie, especially in North Dakota, with its endless space; “pot holes”, natural depressions filled with water-important breeding grounds for ducks; and huge fields of wheat.

We were now following the Missouri River and paying attention to the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Each day the local papers would include a report about where the explorers had been on that particular day. It was very interesting country along the river, and we had numerous discussions about how to distinguish bluffs, buttes and mesas. We were also gradually rising in elevation, although not yet in the mountains.

It was one morning in Montana that I saw my first antelope-I had always thought they were deer, but discovered they are actually in the goat family. The route took us through a number of Indian reservations with casinos in most towns. Maybe that’s the solution for Maine, not one big one but lots of little ones. You can see that, as the third wheel, I had lots of time to think about “stuff!”

Finally, we were at Glacier National Park, the highlight of the trip.

We’d had beautiful weather the entire time but now it was cloudy and drizzling. It was disappointing at first, but we were patient and waited out the rain. Still with off and on clouds, we had a spectacular day touring the “Going to the Sun” road that crosses the continental divide in Glacier.

At one place on the divide, the water flows in three directions-west to the Pacific, east to the Atlantic and north to the Arctic. We also saw mule deer, which I insisted come down to the road every morning just to give tourists a photo op.

These amazing peaks were made from “fire and ice.” They were first pushed up by volcanic action, so that the newer rocks are on top, and then eroded by the ice of the glaciers.

The fall colors of aspen and other vegetation just added to the beauty. We were right at the end of the season. There were already patches of new snow beside the road on the higher elevations.

Now we were really west. We left Route 2 and drove south in Idaho to Lewiston and the Snake River- a stunning view from the high bluffs overlooking the city and river.

That was also the day that a coyote crossed the road in front of us and we saw many free range cattle right along the busy roadway. Also, we were surprised to see huge areas where the wheat fields were being burned to prepare for the next planting.

After spending the night in Walla Walla, Wash., a weird name that I remembered reading about as a child, we were finally in Oregon. I had heard that eastern Oregon is mostly desert and indeed it is, with the Columbia River flowing through it. The gorge on the river is just spectacular-another time it would be fun to take a boat trip-but now we needed to get on to the coast and the wedding.

With a real sense of regret, and gratitude for being taken along, I said good-by to my sister and brother-in-law and flew home. They were continuing the trip, slowly meandering east through the canyon country of Utah, attending minor league baseball games in Arizona, going through the Ozarks and Daniel Boone country, while always heading back east.

Just a couple of final thoughts from the back seat. We tend to talk about the diversity of the country in terms of race and culture; but traveling this route, one is struck most by its geographical diversity; and by the stunning beauty of its different regions.

You miss a lot when you travel only super highways from one crowded destination spot to another. At my age, I’ll take the back roads.

Mary Collins is a Gorham resident and frequent contributing columnist.

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