Route 66 Day One: In Search of Bob Ross

March 11, 2012 Ryan Grayson

Me trying to get both of us and the paintings in one picture.
Also, Cookie Monster was there for some reason.

Route 66 starts in Chicago, but we wanted to start the trip as soon as we left Kentucky. To give us a Route 66 feel, we stayed off the Interstate and used two-lane highways. We also decided to use only paper maps rather than GPS. Not a hard decision though, since Route 66 isn't really on maps anymore.

As we neared Muncie, Indiana, I remembered their were some Bob Ross paintings somewhere on the Ball State University campus. We were both fans of the afro'd nature painter's show on PBS, so we made it our first quest.

We talked to a couple random people roaming around campus to narrow down our search. They didn't lead us to the paintings, but we confirmed that they were in the David Letterman Communication and Media building. We gave up our search, but then just happened to walk right by them. They were in a locked office, but our first mission was a success.

This probably isn't all that interesting to most people. And to be honest, we really didn't care all that much about seeing Boss Ross's paintings (that was a typo, but I like "Boss Ross" better, so I'm leaving it). Anyway, actually seeing the paintings didn't matter. The planned destination or goal is besides the point. We had a blast searching for them, and that was the point. We want to go into a diner every morning on our trip with maps and guide books and plan our day at the spur of the moment always wondering what will happen next.

A Backpacker's Life List by Ryan Grayson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.