New Adventures on the Old Oregon Trail

Many people dream of leaving the hustle and bustle of everyday life, moving off the grid and traveling in a style and pace not seen along American highways for well over a century. Yet, New England author Rinker Buck did just that when he turned his back on his life in the northeast for four months to drive a restored 19th century wagon across the country along the old Oregon Trail. Buck did it with his brother Nick, his Jack Russell terrier Olive Oyl, and three Percheron draft mules. The result of the trip is Buck’s new Simon & Schuster book, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. I highly recommend it as one of the best “on-the-road” books since William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, and will be considered worthy of sharing shelf space with John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in Search of America and Ian Frazier’s Great Plains.