Go West (Of), Young Man!

Horace Greeley was pretty succinct and direct when, in 1865, he issued his now-famous admonition, “Go west, young man!”
The famous editor and author thought young men about to commence their adult lives should leave the nation’s dusty and morally deplorable capital, and “Go West and grow up with the country.”
Nearly 150 years later, the West Ashley father-and-son duo of Gary and Craig Crossley took Greeley’s advice a bit further.
In August, Craig, 23, was slated to take a job working in Seattle, Wash., helping coordinate a nonprofit’s efforts to repair portions of needy homes. The University of South Carolina graduate had taken over his mother’s car, and was looking for a driving partner.
Craig found one primed for adventure and good times in his silver-haired retired father, Gary, who these days volunteers in local adult education programs, among other endeavors.
The two men combined to drive — a packed-to-the-gills 2008 Saturn Vue  —roughly 3,200 miles over seven days, passing through 13 different states.
Along the way, they visited three national parks, two national monuments, a rash of state parks, and pitted at unusual stops, like the infamous Wall Drug store in South Dakota.
All the way, they carried with them in the side storage compartment of the front door a July 29 edition of West Of, with the front-page story about the next phase of construction of the West Ashley Traffic Circle.
The idea was to spend time together and, whenever something weird popped up on the horizon, like the Iowa Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., hop out and snap a shot with the copy of West Of in hand.
Gary said his daughter, now a senior at College of Charleston, had been obsessed for years with finding where editors of the publication hide the paper’s mascot cow in the text every week.
Since there was always a copy of West Of around their West Ashley home, Gary would open them and said he found himself obsessed with photos readers sent in of themselves posing with editions in weird places for the “Where is West Of?” section.
But, before they hit the road together for their version of the Grand Tour, an obstacle rose in their path: a golf tournament.
Gary had volunteered to work at a PGA event in Louisville. So Craig had to drive up alone, with much of his earthly possessions crammed in the back. When he arrived, his dad had but one question: “Where am I going to put my stuff?”
They soon figured it out and hit the road.
The road led to another obstacle: food. Craig had been a vegan for the past four years, and Gary was born in a simpler time, before the invention of cholesterol.
But just like Bing and Bob, the two figured out how to get around that hurdle, with dad hitting a burger joint while the son struck out in search of a veggie pasta dish down the street.
Gary knew that his son, much like his wife, wasn’t built for long haul driving, but said his son soldiered on when it counted.
Craig said the low point was the 600-plus miles they clocked in one day going through Iowa and South Dakota. “Imagine: 600 consecutive miles of corn and soybean fields — it’s just flat and there is nothing out there,” he said.
Craig tapped into a science and music laden NPR podcast, “Stereolab,” to keep his mind occupied while behind the wheel.
For Gary, much of the trip was old hat — and not the one they stole from his daughter for the trip. He’d hit many of the spots on their weeklong itinerary before, having worked as a federal labor official attending conferences all over the country.
Wall Drug in South Dakota was a revelation for Gary, though, with its dragons and jackalopes. “It was their South of the Border,” he said.
For Craig, seeing the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone and the Badlands, was the highlight of the trip, worth the backtracking they had to execute to fit it all in. “I was just in utter shock and awe, I was so pumped about it.”
Craig said another highlight was getting to spend 16 uninterrupted hours a day with his dad, and found out how Gary had invested long term for his and his sister’s college expenses. “That’s not the kind of thing that comes up in normal daily conversation, but in a 16-hour driving day, everything comes up.”
Gary regaled his son with salacious stories from when he was a student at USC, which Craig loved hearing.
“He’s much more open and funny now that I’m grown up,” said Craig. “He does not have to be as strict, and he can just be himself, and we can appreciate each other as separate human beings exclusive of just the father-son relationship.
“I learned that he is really funny and better at Facebook than I am, tagging and sharing with our friends during our trip better than I ever could. And it’s great just how supportive he is of everything I do,” said Craig.
So to paraphrase Horace Greeley: “Go West, on a classic cross-country trip with your dad, where you two can meet each other as men, grow closer, and pose in front of Devil’s Tower and inside a ‘corn palace,’ whatever that is, eat vegan, and carry a copy of your hometown paper … young man.”