After a childhood of summers spent in the back seat of a car, and four months before the turn of the millenium, M.M. Justus decided to follow in the footsteps of her heroes John Steinbeck and William Least-Heat Moon, not to mention Bill Bryson, and drive alone across America's backroads for three months. Like the bear going over the mountain, she wanted to see what she could see. The places she explored ranged from the homely to the exotic, from the Little Town on the Prairie to Scotty's Castle, from New York's Twin Towers to an alien landing site in Wyoming. From snow in Vermont to the tropical heat of New Orleans. After over 14,000 miles, history both public and personal, and a life-changing event, she finally arrived back where she'd started from, only to discover it wasn't the same place she'd left behind at all.