Blue Highways

I've just finished a book Lani gave me to read. She said I should read it before our travels got much further underway.
It's by William Least Heat Moon and it's called Blue Highways, from the travel writing genre, but it's much more to me than that.
The author basically comes to the point in his life when he decides to not so much drop out but more to step ASIDE and travel in his converted van all the back road highways around America, the ones that have been superseded by the newer , bigger, straighter ones, thus enabling him to see small town America.
Those of you that know me well, know of my long standing love affair with old America, the one I've imagined from authors like Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Conroy and McCarthy etc. Also it's history and the music.
This book was written in the 70's and I ponder on how much more has disappeared  in the last 30 years or so of this place that I have imagined so vividly through what I have read. I would like to go one day  and see for myself, I'd imagine I would find a little of what I had read and still soak it up with absolute reverence an satisfaction.
The author William Least Heat Moon writes beautifully, full of gentle humour and clarity. I love his powers of observation and the way he was able to engage the characters he met along the way.