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Valley resident Greg Zeigler and his dog, Max, sit in the Airstream Bambi they stayed in while retracing the route taken by John Steinbeck and his dog, Charlie, during his research for the 1961 book “Travels with Charlie: In Search of America.”

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“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.”

That is the Cannery Row John Steinbeck knew when he wrote the book, published in 1945.

Greg Zeigler arrived in Monterey in October. There he found a tourist strip with an aquarium. He saw none of the vivid description Steinbeck wrote.

“It doesn’t even stink,” he said.

In 1960, Steinbeck too returned to Monterey as part of a cross-country journey he would document in his book Travels with Charley: In Search of America, only to find it drastically different, reportedly so much that he didn’t want to get out of his truck.

Zeigler thought about Steinbeck’s original description and his reaction. He looked out and thought how in almost 50 years since the writer’s famous cross-country journey, some things had changed, and some things hadn’t.

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Zeigler was rereading Travels with Charley in the Salt Lake City Airport in 2007.

The date stopped him. The 50th anniversary was only a few years away. He was ready for an adventure.

Zeigler, who taught English at an East Coast prep school before moving to Jackson in 1985 to be director of the Teton Science Schools, taught Travels with Charley. The book, and Steinbeck’s vagabond nature, appealed to Zeigler.

“I want to see what’s beyond the next hill and beyond that and beyond that,” he said.

Zeigler planned his trip for 49 years after Steinbeck’s, hoping to write a book to come out at the 50th anniversary of Steinbeck’s.

Steinbeck set out to answer a question: What are Americans like?

Zeigler looked around and began to wonder the same thing: What are Americans like today?

Steinbeck loaded his dog, Charley, in a GMC pickup and took off on a cross-country adventure.

Forty-nine years later, Zeigler loaded his dog, Max, a Maltese, into his Toyota 4-Runner. Behind he attached his Airstream Bambi, complete with a small stove, bathroom and sleeping area.

He packed hats and Wyoming flags to offer as gifts and set out to retrace most of Steinbeck’s route.

Before leaving, Zeigler read Steinbeck’s published letters and biographies.

He researched the route, using his 1959 Rand McNally Road Atlas, cross-referencing places mentioned in Steinbeck’s letters to create a nearly identical trip.

He practiced approaching strangers.

At Merry Piglets one day, Zeigler saw two men take each other’s hands and close their eyes before touching their food. Zeigler went up to them. They were a father-son duo from Jackson, Miss. Riding Harleys to Jackson Hole. The father was in his 70s.

“I love these conversations,” Zeigler said. “I love these stories. Those stories are what it’s about.”

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The people he met were optimistic, even if struggling. They came from a variety of backgrounds and held different political views.

No matter their opinions, people were upbeat and still dreaming that through hard work they could help their children have a better life.

“It seems obvious, but I had to experience to remember it: Television does not reflect America,” Zeigler said.
In 15,000 miles, he never heard an angry word.

“It was getting to around Arizona where I thought, ‘I hope someone flips me off,’” Zeigler said. He ran into a single grumpy lady at a visitors center.

A man in New Orleans who lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, said he still believes his city will one day have a full recovery.

In an RV park in eastern Kansas, a man pulled up next to him.

What’s for dinner? he asked.

He pointed at Zeigler’s hummus. What is that?

That evening he came out to go cat fishing. Zeigler went along. He watched as the man stepped into a harness he attached to his dog, worried the current might take the animal away.

The fog rolled in. The moon was like a lemon wedge in the sky. In the dark water the man stood, his dog nearby with ears floating on the surface of the water.

“This is just a slice of America,” Zeigler thought.

He met a recovering drug addict in Colorado. She told him how hard it was to get her life together. With a felony for distributing, finding work was hard.

But the mother of three had turned her life around and was employed as a counselor. Zeigler thought how Steinbeck explored race. He asked the woman, who was black, if she still experienced racism. She nodded.

I ain’t got time for that BS. I just look at ’em and walk away, she said.

At a LensCrafters in Connecticut, a man suggested Zeigler Google his ancestor Joshua Tefft.

Tefft was the last person to be drawn and quartered for treason in America.

“People just love to share their stories,” Zeigler said.

In Maine, Zeigler hoped to interview migrant potato pickers, like those Steinbeck described. At a farm, a man explained Maine’s current potato business.

There are no migrant potato pickers in northern Maine any more, he said. High school kids needing part-time work supplement the machines that have taken over the industry.

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Twice, Zeigler drove seven days in a row, and there were a few 500-mile days, but mostly he tried to stick to 300 miles a day with regular time off.

Along the way, he added 10 stops at schools, where he talked to kids about his journey and Steinbeck.

A few red lines connected portions of Zeigler’s route on the map he carried with him. There, Zeigler deviated from Steinbeck’s plan, perhaps to visit friends and family along the way, or because Steinbeck’s route wasn’t clearly defined. Zeigler took time and detours for things like having lunch with Steinbeck’s son, Thomas Steinbeck, who told him that his dad had never camped before his cross-country adventure. He asked to meet Max and gave his approval.

By the end of the trip, Zeigler would be several weeks ahead of John Steinbeck’s time line. The writer stayed in Texas for Thanksgiving. Zeigler was back in Jackson on Nov. 13, after 68 days on the road. He was ready to come home. He still wakes up unsure of where he is, if he is still on the road.

His wife joined him three times along the way, but most of the time he was alone. He talked to Max, listened to National Public Radio and baseball games. He reread the Steinbeck books he brought along. He talked with strangers, recording their conversations in three big notebooks and fought with Betty – his GPS.

He thought about how he wanted to be a better spouse when he came home. He thought about Jackson.

“This place we live is just incredibly gorgeous, but really intense,” he said.

With the trip still fresh in his mind, he is beginning to write. Along the way he met a book agent and is supposed to have a proposal written for his book, with about 17,000 words, by March.

But the journey was about more than just his book. He caught up with relatives and even brought home a picture he’d never seen of his father as a boy with his six brothers.

“It was rich and textured and just more than I imagined,” Zeigler said of his journey.

Like Steinbeck, he started his trip by taking three ferries at Sag Harbor in New York. On Sept. 23, Zeigler realized it was 49 years to the day that Steinbeck took the same three ferries.

A 91-year-old barber cut Zeigler’s hair at the harbor. He used to cut Steinbeck’s. Zeigler asked the man if he knew anything about the author.

Talk to Johnny Ward, the man said.

Zeigler found Steinbeck’s drinking and fishing buddy. Steinbeck loved to fish. He wanted to be left alone with his friends, Ward said.

Steinbeck chatted up a soldier in uniform on one of the ferries. That same day, 49 years later, Zeigler found himself talking to a volunteer fireman who helped during the Sept. 11, 2001,  attacks on the World Trade Center.

Those ferry rides were the most powerful connections as Zeigler thought of Steinbeck in the same place at the same time.

Maybe some things don’t change.