After two terms as governor of Maine (1995 to 2003), Angus King decided he needed a fresh challenge.
So in January 2003, he packed his wife and two youngest children into a Newmar Dutch Star RV — with a car in tow — and set off on a nearly six-month trip across America.
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Along the way, he blogged about the journey, sharing his family’s experiences and what they had learned about the country and themselves.
King used the blog as a basis for his new book, “Governor’s Travels: How I Left Politics, Learned to Back Up a Bus, and Found America” (Down East Books, $16.95).
King, 67, teaches at Bowdoin College and is involved in wind power projects, among other things. He lives in Brunswick.
Q: Why did you decide to take an RV across country?
A: We had thought about doing it for four or five years. I wish I could say it was a carefully calibrated transition strategy, but it was more instinctive than that. I had a realization that doing something so different was a great way to transition away from the intensity of being governor.
As governor, time with family was tough to get. Ben was 4 when I got elected, and Molly came to us my first month in office, so most of their lives prior to that (the cross-country trip), Dad was governor.
Q: But why drive across the country? Why not rent a nice beach house for a few months as a family?
A: My family didn’t travel much when I was a kid, but I had friends who took trips to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, and I always had an idea that would be a great thing to do with a family. It always sounded sort of neat.
As I’ve talked to people since the trip, I found that an amazing number of people have done trips like this, or always wanted to do it.
The idea for the trip took form during spring vacation in 1999, when we flew to Arizona and rented an RV. That was our practice. We fell in love with the lifestyle. After that, my recreation was searching the Web for RVs to buy. We’d visit dealers, and looked at a lot of used ones. It was about a three-year process.
Q: What were the highlights of the trip for you?
A: One of the best things we did was not have a plan. It liberated us from the tyranny of deadlines, and that was tremendously relaxing.
I don’t think most of us realize the extent to which we are slaves to the calendar and clock. We ended up seeing some wonderful places we would have missed if we were following a plan.
One was Big Bend National Park in west Texas. We did not intend to go there, but we were in San Antonio, and the forecast said it was cold and rainy in New Mexico, where we were headed. But it was sunny in west Texas. We fell in love with the place.
All of Utah was a highlight. I had never been in that kind of country — Monument Valley, Moab, the canyon areas. And Yellowstone, for the incredible variety of wildlife.
I got to meet George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch (in California). He has an educational foundation, and they were very interested in the Maine laptop project. They called me, while I was on the trip, to talk to me. I told them I’d be in California in two months, and they asked if I’d like to come to Skywalker Ranch.
After they interviewed me, they said, “George is here today, would you like to meet him?” So I said yes, of course. As I was waiting, my mind was racing, “What do you say to George Lucas?” I told him that while everyone talks about “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones,” I loved “American Graffiti.”
Come to find out, we both graduated high school the same year, and that movie is his homage to 1962. So we got talking about 1962 and cars and things like that.
Q: What is your hope for the book?
A: The idea was to make it more than a travelogue, to make it kind of a transition manual. So there are little essays among the travelogue entries, essays on how to choose an RV, on transitions and other things.
Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:
rrouthier@pressherald.com
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