Beginning at the Canadian border near Glacier National Park, writer Peter Fish takes Alta Journal readers on a 1,400-mile journey south along U.S. Highway 89. This ultimate Western road trip includes stops in Livingston, Montana; Yellowstone National Park; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Manti, Utah; Arizona’s Grand Canyon; and many more places. Fish joins Alta Live to relive his extraordinary adventure; detail some of the trip’s most spectacular, personal, and problematic moments; and answer your questions about what’s got to be a bucket-list road trip for many an Alta reader. Sit shotgun for what’s sure to be a very inspiring interview.

About the guest:

Peter Fish has been traveling and writing about California and the American West for decades. As travel editor at Sunset magazine, he earned a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award and a Henry R. Luce Award. His article on novelist Harold Bell Wright and the Imperial Valley was published in Alta Journal’s Issue 23. His fiction has appeared most recently in the Sewanee Review. He has taught travel and nature writing as the Rachel Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University and for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program.

Here are some notable quotes from the event:

  • On the importance of road trips: “We are such a big, giant, geographically and culturally diverse country. The only way you get a handle on all of that is by taking a long road trip, because otherwise you’re kind of in your own little cocoon.… At one time, you’re seeing the diversity of the country and the people, but also it allows you to reflect on your own life in a way that maybe is harder to happen at home.”
  • On Highway 89’s length: “Highway 89 is 1,400 miles long. It starts at Babb, Montana, right on the Montana-Alberta border, goes to Montana, Wyoming, a tiny corner of Idaho, then Utah, and down through Flagstaff, Arizona. At one point, it went all the way to Nogales, Arizona, but it no longer does that. And again, it goes to national parks.”
  • On Highway 89’s name: “In the ’30s, the federal government started standardizing highways and the numbering system. All major north-south highways are odd numbers. And all major east-west highways are even numbers. The north-south ones start on the East Coast with Highway 1 and on the West Coast with Highway 101, and they sort of march east to west, increasing in number. This is why Highway 89 is Highway 89.”

Check out these links to some of the topics brought up this week.