For nearly twenty years, television studios have approached my parents about filming a Duffy family reality tv show. Despite actually meeting on a reality show themselves, my parents always refused. Until now.
The Great American Road Trip is a mini-series my family filmed (for no salary or royalties) in short stints over the course of several months with one simple goal: to encourage other American families to get out on the open road and see the country for themselves. The series is now available for free on YouTube.
When my dad was first approached by The Great America Road Trip Inc., the nonprofit behind the project, he told them he couldn’t do it unless the rest of our family agreed. So he sat down with me, my mom, my husband, and my eight younger siblings and asked if we were in. Everyone had their own reasons for saying yes. Here’s mine.
Like a lot of people my age, I grew up in an America that feels spiritually at war with itself. I was taught that America’s history was a story of oppression and shame — that Christopher Columbus was history’s greatest villain and that patriotism was, at best, naïve.
The summer of 2020 took that sentiment and turned it into something even darker. Cities burned. Statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were torn down. Even our National Archives decided the Constitution and Declaration of Independence needed “trigger warnings.” At the same time, Americans watched politicians trample over our constitutional rights with sweeping and unlawful Covid lockdowns and mandates.
Six years later, the anger and division haven’t really gone away. Which is why, if you asked me what the biggest issue facing America is — especially as we celebrate our 250th anniversary — I’d say it’s an identity crisis.
Americans everywhere, especially young Americans like myself, are asking: What kind of country is this? And maybe more importantly: Is it still worth loving?
Enter the Great American Road Trip.
As my dad likes to say, to know America is to see America.
America isn’t something you can understand through a phone screen or from a cable news panel featuring six people yelling at each other from Manhattan. It has to be experienced — on the highways, in small towns, at roadside diners, in truck stops, national parks, county fairs, and all the strange little places in between.
A road trip is a civic experience. Americans have understood this for generations.
In 1960, John Steinbeck set out across the country with his dog Charley because, despite spending his career writing about America, he realized he needed to rediscover it firsthand.
“I had not heard the speech of America,” he wrote, “smelled the grass and trees … seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light.”
Over 10,000 miles, Steinbeck encountered farmers, drifters, suburbanites, segregationists, lonely people, kind people, and difficult people. What emerged became his book Travels With Charley, one of the great portraits of American life.
That spirit is what inspired more than one Duffy family road trip.
When I was seven, my parents loaded our family into a minivan and drove from northern Wisconsin to Phoenix, Arizona, to visit my grandparents. My mom persuaded my dad to take the longer, more scenic route. Along the way, we stopped at country gas stations, ate pie at roadside diners, and bought turquoise jewelry from a Navajo woman’s stand beneath the southwestern sun.
My siblings and I argued constantly. I got tired of looking at desert rock formations somewhere around New Mexico. I even remember getting dry eyes from staring out the window for so long.
But I also remember the simple joy of being together. We had hours in the car with nothing to do except talk, listen to music, and experience the country alongside one another. That cross-country road trip has become one of the happiest memories of my childhood and only more meaningful with time.
My brother and me on our Wisconsin-to-Arizona road trip to visit our grandparents
I’m now 26 and just had my first baby (whose gender is actually revealed on the Great American Road Trip!) As my siblings and I grow older, time together becomes harder to hold onto. The Great American Road Trip gave me a chance to be present with my eight younger siblings while they are still young and to experience America with them before my life inevitably grows busier and more complicated.
At a time when so many Americans feel deeply disconnected from their country, many are also disconnected from their own families. A road trip has a way of slowing people down long enough to rediscover both. That’s what I hope other Americans take away from this project, too.
The road trip is about celebrating this country, promoting the transportation systems that hold it together, and reminding Americans that our nation is still something worth experiencing and loving. Because the most important question facing America right now is still the simplest one: Who are we? And the best place to start answering that question is out on the open road.
The Duffy family at the Rocky Steps in Philadelphia
The Duffy Family at the Grand Canyon
The Duffy Family at Yellowstone National Park
The Duffy Family in West Texas
