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She Drove It Anyway and nobody in her life tried to talk her out of it. That part surprised her. She had braced for the pushback, the raised eyebrows, the quiet chorus of are you sure about this. Instead her teenage kids helped her pack. Her sister put a tracker on her car. Her best friend called every evening at seven. And on a Tuesday morning in early fall she flew to St. Louis.
She wanted to see the Arch first. Her dad had told that story her whole life, standing at the base of it in 1974 with nothing but a road map and two days off work. She stood there on a Wednesday afternoon with her phone in her pocket and fourteen days ahead of her and felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Like the next thing was entirely up to her.
She Drove It Anyway Because Her Father Told Her She Could
Rebecca was not running away. I want to be clear about that because the world has a habit of writing that story for women who need the road the way men have always needed it without anyone questioning their motives.
She had been through a divorce. She had lost a job she was good at. She had spent the better part of two years making sure everyone around her was okay and somewhere in the doing of all that she had misplaced herself. Not dramatically. Just quietly. The way you set something down for a minute and then can’t quite remember where you left it.
Her dad had driven Route 66 when he needed to think. Told her the miles had a way of sorting things out that nothing else could. She had carried that story for thirty years. This was just finally the right time to find out if he was right.
She Drove It Anyway and She Did It Her Way
She didn’t do it the tourist way. No checklist of landmarks. No racing from one famous stop to the next with a camera out the window. She did it the way I’ve always believed it should be done. A hundred miles a day. Maybe a hundred and twenty if something called her forward. Four or five hours behind the wheel and then a good diner and a bookstore if one appeared and a decent hotel by dark.
She was never out after dark. Somebody always knew where she was. She had done her research too. Read everything she could find about solo female road trip safety and packed her plan accordingly. The tracker, the check in calls, the texts when she pulled off for gas, good hotels booked before dark every single night. She even had a road trip safety checklist she worked through before she left the driveway. She was going to do this thing and she was going to do it safe and those two facts were going to coexist just fine.
I met her Needles, one her last leg of the journey… She slid onto the stool next to mine with the easy comfort of a woman who had been doing this long enough to feel at home anywhere along the road. Ordered coffee and eggs and pulled out a paperback she was halfway through. We talked the way counter people talk. Easy. No agenda. Just two people with nowhere to be for the next hour.
What Rebecca Found Between St. Louis and the California Line
She told me about the diners. How she had started ranking them not by the food but by whether she felt seen when she walked in. Whether the waitress refilled her coffee without being asked. Whether the other regulars made room for a stranger without making her feel like one.
She told me she had read four books. Had long phone calls with her kids that felt different than the ones at home, looser somehow, more honest. She had cried once outside of Amarillo for reasons she couldn’t fully explain and then felt better than she had in months.
By the time she hit Arizona she told me something had shifted. Not fixed. She wasn’t looking for fixed. Just shifted. Like furniture rearranged in a room you’ve lived in so long you stopped seeing it clearly. Same room. New light.
She finished her eggs and left a good tip and tucked the paperback under her arm. Said she it may be the last day on the road and she was going to take every one of them slowly. I told her the road between the Goffs Rd and Amboy was a mess and closed but grab the 40 west to Kelbaker and head back to National Trails to see Roys Motel and the Amboy Crater. She smiled like someone who already knew that.
She said I helped make her trip better and that she had met some real good people on her adventure. She took my business cards so she can check out both Arizona Podcast and Faith and Good Courage, asked for a hug and and made her way to the door.
✨ Roadside Reflection:
She Drove It Anyway is not a story about a woman in crisis. It’s a story about a woman who knew what she needed and had the courage to go get it. The road doesn’t belong to any one kind of traveler. It never did. Rebecca’s father knew that in 1974 and Rebecca knew it when she stood under the Arch with fourteen days ahead of her and felt the next thing shift into her own hands.
If you’re carrying something you can’t quite name right now, if you’ve been so busy making sure everyone else is okay that you’ve lost track of where you set yourself down, the road is still out there. It doesn’t ask for your reasons. It just asks if you’re coming. You can do this safe. You can do this smart. You can do this on your own terms. She did. So can you.
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Faith and Good Courage is a podcast and journal by Christopher Tuttle.