The long way home
86
Travel
The long way home

Coast to coast in a wagon with no radio.

Three thousand miles, one map and a cooler that never stayed cold.

“We counted license plates until Nebraska.”
Sam Okoro9 min
87

Written by

Sam Okoro

Section

Travel

Reading time

9 min

Three thousand miles, one map and a cooler that never stayed cold.

How it started

Every travel story in this magazine starts the same way: somebody says “you have to see this”, and we go. This one began on a hot evening in July, with a full tank and no plan.

By the second day we had a notebook full of names, three rolls of film and the strong feeling that the real story was a little further down the road.

What we found

The people we met were generous with their time and suspicious of our questions, in that order. They told us where to stand, when to look and which coffee to avoid.

“The long way home” is what we brought back. Read it slowly. It was written that way.

We counted license plates until Nebraska.

HALCYON

Letters to the editor

Stories worth looking up, since 1971. Seventy-five cents, or free online.

© 2026 HALCYON. A demo magazine; stories and people are fictional.

HALCYON

Letters to the editor

Stories worth looking up, since 1971. Seventy-five cents, or free online.

© 2026 HALCYON. A demo magazine; stories and people are fictional.

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