Travels with Charley: Around America in 1960

Steinbeck had lived in Sag Harbor, on the eastern end of Long Island, since 1955, and his 1960 trip begins here. He bought a GMC pickup, named it Rocinante after Don Quixote's horse and had a custom camper shell fitted. At the last minute he decided to take his wife's ten-year-old French poodle, Charley, along. Hurricane Donna hit Long Island head-on and delayed the start by about two weeks; Steinbeck wrote of saving his boat in the middle of the storm. Then came the 11-week trip that became the book.

Location precision: The book names the village, not an address; the pin marks Sag Harbor itself.

Steinbeck's literary agent kept insisting that he visit a cottage at Dunham's Point on Deer Isle, so he did. The house came with a terse female cat named George and the best lobster he had ever tasted, fresh from the local waters. Steinbeck wrote that one doesn't have to be sensitive to feel the strangeness of Deer Isle.

Location precision: The book places the stay at a cottage on Dunham's Point; the pin marks the town of Deer Isle.

Visitor guidance: The island is reached by car over a narrow 1939 suspension bridge.

At Niagara Falls Steinbeck planned to cut across southern Ontario to reach Detroit faster. The Canadian border ended that plan: Charley did not have the inoculations needed to get back into the USA. The meeting with the border officials left Steinbeck reflecting on how government makes a person feel small. The falls themselves are three waterfalls spanning the border between Ontario and New York, and have the highest flow rate of any waterfall in North America.

Location precision: The book names the border at Niagara Falls but no particular crossing; the pin marks the falls.

Visitor guidance: The falls can be seen from both the New York and the Ontario side.

Crossing Wisconsin and Minnesota toward North Dakota, Steinbeck went to Sauk Centre, birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, the novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In a restaurant he found locals who had no understanding of who Lewis was, and it disheartened him. The town inspired Gopher Prairie, the setting of Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street, and Lewis lived in the boyhood home here from 1889 until 1902. The house is now a National Historic Landmark and a museum.

Location precision: The book names the town and a restaurant, not an address; the pin marks the Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home.

Visitor guidance: The house museum offers tours regularly in summer and by appointment during the rest of the year.

Crossing into Montana, Steinbeck declared: "I am in love with Montana." He went to the battlefield of Little Big Horn, where the 7th Cavalry under Custer and a combined Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho force fought on 25 and 26 June 1876. The site was called Custer Battlefield National Monument from 1946 until 1991, when it was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. On Last Stand Hill the granite memorial built in July 1881 still stands.

Visitor guidance: The monument is near Crow Agency, Montana, and includes Last Stand Hill and Custer National Cemetery.

Steinbeck and Charley then drove into Yellowstone, a place packed with natural wonders that Steinbeck judged no more representative of America than Disneyland. Here gentle, non-confrontational Charley showed a side of himself Steinbeck had never seen: spotting bears by the side of the road, he barked like crazy. Yellowstone, signed into law by President Grant on 1 March 1872, was the first national park in the US, and it is home to black and grizzly bears.

Location precision: The book doesn't say where in the park the bears appeared; the pin marks the middle of the park.

Visitor guidance: Feeding and close contact with bears is not permitted.

Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley and describes in detail revisiting it after a 20-year absence. In a bar from his youth he met his old friend Johnny Garcia and learned that many regulars and childhood chums had died. He then climbed Fremont Peak, the highest point in what would someday be called "Steinbeck Country", to say goodbye to the place he had made famous, alluding to Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. The 3,173-foot summit is now a state park with views of Monterey Bay and the Pacific.

Visitor guidance: Fremont Peak State Park has hiking trails, picnic facilities and 22 campsites.

In New Orleans Steinbeck witnessed angry, racist protests by white mothers outside the recently integrated William Frantz Elementary School in the Ninth Ward. The encounter depressed him. Ruby Bridges had become the first African-American student to attend the school, and the court-ordered first day of integrated schools in New Orleans was 14 November 1960. The school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, and Bridges's first-grade classroom has been restored.