Road trips are like sunsets.

No two are the same.

I was blessed to have just one rainy day during the three weeks I was on the initial run in my Blue Bird Ford Transit Van. I drove 6,194 miles to gather nearly 20 stories for the book that is tentatively titled “The Camper Book,” although my small straw poll preferred “Man v.s. Van.” That ringside name became clear after I navigated foggy switchbacks and mountains in the middle of a Saturday night to settle at 8,000 feet in the Heart Bar state campground in the San Bernardino (Ca.) National Forest.

I nicked up my van for the first time trying to back in a boomerang gravel driveway in the dense, dark woods. One thing I learned about  Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park campgrounds: I love their pull throughs. I’ve rented large RV’s with friends, but trying to back in a 9 x 20′ camper van alone at night is a daunting experience.

I did not see the sun set in the San Bernardino mountains, where gold was discovered in 1855.

But I was swept up in summer sunsets at Albuquerque, N.M., Pismo Beach, Ca., Grand Forks, B.C. Canada,  Coeur, d’ Alene, Id., Missoula Mt., and at a Clear Lake, Ia. truck stop on the way home. Iowa sunsets are often my favorite. The green linear landscape creates a stage where the promise of tomorrow is certain.

My trip was remarkable and it will take me the rest of the summer for it to settle in. A wealth of new ideas are floating around my head like snowflakes in a dime store globe.

I moved in and out of Route 66,  and talked to a young couple restoring an RV park along the Mother Road in Carhage, Mo. I took a Cadillac limousine from my Amarillo Ranch RV Park to the Big Texan Steak Ranch. I saw Gregg Arnold’s Easter Island tiki outside of Kingman, Az., drove the van on Pismo Beach and made a personal San Joquain Valley connection between between John Steinbeck (“Travels With Charley”) and Merle Haggard  (“Big City.”)

Calling an audible, I drove the silent but majestic Trans Canada Highway through British Columbia, visited Montana for the first time where I got a charge of the school teacher and her retired sheriff husband who shared a teardrop trailer in Missoula. I loved hearing a sanctioned David Letterman look alike play old timey folk music at a KOA Kampground in Great Falls. I saw a rainbow cross the highway outside of Tacoma, Wash.

I made a wish on a shooting star.

Once the trip found its rhythm I also witnessed the ribbon that is attractive to foreign travelers. It is the independent ribbon that wraps us up as a diverse and welcoming country. I saw lots of bridges. I did not see walls.

It takes time and consideration to make this ribbon, I tried to be nice to people and to be honest it took a while to drop my cynical Chicago filter.  I didn’t see many people on cell phones or even with the younger people among the camper and food trucks of Portland, Ore. Upon my return to Chicago, there they were, glowing pings in the lost night.

My photographer Jon Sall was a great tonic for the project. He made some tremendous photographs. His patience is important in the camping world. He’s more of a tent camper, but even within the warmth of a camper van I had to make a mental checklist of everything I needed to carry along before wandering off to the community bathroom. You just don’t ask a stranger if you could borrow their towel.

Jon was invaluable in technical support, especially in our first night out at a KOA outside of St. Louis where we lost power, regained power and then couldn’t turn off the van’s ceiling lights. I was illuminated by buyer’s remorse.

I have camped before and I knew that campgrounds are about flexibility, unplugging and the fluidity of community. Neighbors are here today and gone tomorrow. People were good and honest, especially when I blew fuses while running the air conditioning.

I asked new friends to describe kindness and how to pay it forward. I requested they share their thoughts on a slip of paper and drop it in a clear plastic jar. I won’t read many of their gestures until later in the project for an eventual sidebar in the book.

Dozens of people across the country smiled at my friend Tony Fitzpatrick’s birds on the exterior of the van. I saw people smile in campgrounds, in parking lots, along blacktop cracks. Smiling faces made me feel good and Tony will like that because he is the happiest White Sox fan I know this side of Charley Krebs.

Last Sunday I walked around the Iowa truck stop towards the end of the trip. All I heard was the sound of grinding brakes.

I leaned back on the blue hood of my dusty van and watched the sun fade away.

I had nowhere to go. Really. Does routine define place?

I thought about ex- girl friends and considered traveling with the spirit of my parents and their antique Mr. & Mrs. Blue Birds perched at the desk of my van. Birds get closer as you get older.

Moments like this are why I need to be alone. I felt my parents sacrifices in not being able to take long vacations while raising two sons. Perhaps I am still shaded by their back to back passings last year. I did the best I could. Suddenly a metaphor flew across the orange sun as it inched closer to the pure earth.

Broken wings can heal.