Colby and I are on a mission to see dozens of American towns and cities that boomed when America was experiencing its industrial age, and that have since hit bad times. We are touring the rust belt, the coal belt, the Bible belt… we want to see places that have fallen apart.

Don’t go getting all goofy about road trips and freedom and following your bliss and all that; when you travel you need to have a mission. You can digress, you can detour, you can show up late to appointments you’ve made with yourself, but if you set out with no idea where you’re going or why, you’ll regret it.

I can’t say I learned this the hard way because there was really nothing very difficult about it. I’ve just wasted a lot of time wandering aimlessly over the years and by now, I know better. Wandering is a travel style, not a travel purpose. You need to move with purpose. You need to have a destination or a series of destinations, and if you fall off track then that’s part of the adventure, as in, “I was heading for Des Moines but then Peoria was so awesome that I stayed there for a week.” Had there not been a plan for Des Moines in this example, Peoria would lose its status of fantastic sidetrack and become merely some place in Illinois where you got stuck, and that’s sort of pathetic. There are other reasons why you need to have a solid purpose in your travels, but that’s one and it’s enough to make the argument: Have a plan.

In fact, Colby and I have a number of “purposes” for this trip. The cities are simply giving us a framework. We are, for one thing, going to spend about 10 weeks together, just about all day every day, and that is something that means a lot to me. My dog is 14 years old. He is one of the great loves of my life; I can’t imagine life without him. When my friend Katherine, who was his breeder, handed Colby to me, I remember her saying “I am so happy for you. You’re about to discover one of the best kinds of love.” She was right. The time I can spend with him now might make up for all the days when I had to stay late at work, or was too busy to really care for him, when I took him for the most uninspired walks or fed him late without apology. He’s a spry 14, and handsome as hell, and good company. I’m lucky to have this time with the guy.

I have a selfish purpose for taking this trip, too. I want to feel lonely. It’s working already; as I write this, I am experiencing loneliness even with Colby laying at my feet. I am in a crummy motel room in a crummy city, about to attend a conference in the morning–not even spending tonight in the Scamp, which is fun. I was driving for hours today and it is not summer; when it is summer and I drive in the Midwest, as I do every summer and as I was doing, actually, when I got the idea for this road trip, I am always happy, anticipating days on a lake or with friends and family. But it is late September now, not summer but a plain, dull Thursday plucked from the tail end of the calendar, and the highways are only half as full as I remember them, and the cashiers at the rest area gift shops are mopey and bored, and I am alone for weeks already, and just about now, just now, I am beginning to face myself, alone. It’s what I have been wanting to do, and I can try to explain it in a future post if this is something that needs explaining. But it is certainly one purpose I have for this long trip.

The main reason, though–the official, structural, organizing principle of these travels with Colby–is  to accomplish what I was given a sabbatical to do: To look at these places I’m calling “ghost cities,” and to write about them. And take pictures. And find ways to put this material online. So we are out here visiting depressed American cities–cities with vacant storefronts and empty factories and abandoned, foreclosed, condemned homes; cities with unemployment rates through the roof and fellow Americans experiencing a life that I don’t think many of us can really conceive of. I want to see them. I want to learn about what is going on, out there. I want to know and understand. God, I know how to have fun. Don’t I? I have mapped out two months’ worth of ghost cities to see.

I met a couple in a campground outside Pittsburgh who told me they had been traveling all summer long, going to baseball games. It is the very tail end of the season now, about to slip into playoffs time, and they said they would soon be heading home to Guilderland, NY. But first: They stopped to watch the Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates. A friend of mine likes to go to churches; he’s traveled throughout Europe and gone into every church he saw. I’m partial to the coffee shop tour of Europe, myself–the cafe circuit. But be it churches, cafes, baseball, or burned-out refineries, so long as your journey has a general reason behind it, you’ll never have to explain yourself to anyone, and you can wander all you like.

And when you get too lost–too lonely–just pull out that plan, get back on track, and keep going.