Jim Kershner; Let me be first to give Highway 2 its due

If there were any justice in the world, U.S. Highway 2 would be every bit as famous as Route 66.

Hit it, Nat King Cole:

“If you ever plan to motor east or west,

Travel my way, the highway that’s the best,

See the moose, out on U.S. Highway Deuce.

Well, it winds its way from Everett to Maine,

Past glaciers, forests and lots of guys named Dwayne,

Sniff some spruce, out on U.S. Highway Deuce.

Now, it rolls through Snohomish, on to Skykomish,

Downtown Coulee City, oh, it looks so pretty,

You’ll see Davenport and Libby, beautiful Bemidji,

Cut Bank, Williston and don’t forget Skowhegan,

Grand Forks, Burlington and on to Greater Bangor.

If you get hip, to this kindly tip,

Take that Montana Hi-Line trip,

Get your caboose, out to U.S. Highway Deuce.”

What?

Nat King Cole’s dead?

Then we’ll get Prince or somebody to sing it.

The point is, here in Spokane (and Sandpoint and Wilbur) we don’t fully realize what we’re straddling. We’re straddling the northernmost U.S. highway route in the country; one that will take us all the way to Houlton, Maine, after a few Canadian detours.

U.S. 2 gets no respect for the very good reason that hardly anybody drives it anymore, except locals. Once the interstate highway system was built, there was no longer any reason to take a (mostly) two-lane highway that sends you directly through beautiful downtown Chinook, Mont., and Minot, N.D.

That very remoteness is exactly what appeals to me.

I was thinking about this while driving U.S. 2 last week. Usually, I’m in a hurry to get to Seattle or Missoula, so I take boring Interstate 90. But on this day, we were taking a leisurely drive to spend a wild weekend in Wilbur, Wash.

You heard me. Dinner at Billy Burgers and a round of golf in Wilbur – now that’s a fine way to spend a summer weekend.

As I drove through Reardan, Davenport and Creston, I started thinking about how much I enjoyed seeing the main streets, the grain elevators, the espresso stands (yeah, most of these small towns have ‘em) and the high school baseball fields.

I thought about how boring it is to roll monotonously down Interstate 90, where the milestones come in the form of exits, not villages.

And then I had my brainstorm.

I’m going to drive the entire extent of U.S. Highway 2. I’m going to start in Everett, where the highway begins and roll all the way across the northern tier of the country, through Idaho, along the border of Glacier National Park, on through Montana’s Hi-Line, through North Dakota, through Minnesota, through Wisconsin, all the way to tiny St. Ignace, Mich.

That’s where the western portion of U.S. 2 ends on the shores of Lake Michigan. Then I’ll wander through Ontario and Quebec on what amounts to the rough Canadian equivalent of Highway 2, since the U.S. route disappears from Michigan to Vermont.

Then I’ll pick up the eastern portion of U.S. 2 at Lake Champlain in Vermont, moving on through New Hampshire, and finally moseying alongside the bogs and ponds of Northern Maine to the terminus at Houlton, Maine, where it smacks into the border of New Brunswick. Heck, maybe I’ll keep going, all the way to Nova Scotia and the Atlantic beaches, on Canada 2.

Possibly you’re saying, “But Jim, won’t you get lonely on such a long, arduous driving trip?”

No, of course not. My wife will come with me. She just doesn’t know it yet.

I’m trying to figure out how to broach the proposal. I think she’ll be more than happy to go along. After all, she enjoyed the heck out of Wilbur.