Jean Keffeler

Hi, I'm Jean Keffeler. Lots of people have spelled my name wrong on this trip.

I am a fifty year old female Minnesotan. A wife, a mother, a management consultant, a civic activist, an adventurer. This is my sixth trip across (or up or down) this country of ours: Maine to Florida, El Paso to Calgary, Seattle to Williamsburg, San Diego to Charleston, Vancouver to Tiajuana. And I'm still a lousy hill climber....

This is my first time on Route 66. Unlike other families that traveled this road after the war, my own family only made it as far as Minneapolis to the Black Hills and back. Just as well, because a family auto trip surely is its own kind of purgatory.

It feels like this is mid-America. Guess it is. Everything is ordinary. No striking mountains, no striking forests, no sparkling lakes. Ordinary places, ordinary people - wholesome and easy in its ordinariness. Quiet.

Dinner calls.