Everyone harbors a secret ambition, and here’s mine: I’ve always wanted to be a travel writer. It sounds like glamorous work. What’s not to like about flying first class, visiting exotic locales, staying in five-star hotels, eating at the finest restaurants, and hobnobbing with fellow jet-setters who crave my approval far more than I need theirs?

However, making this particular fantasy a reality would mean overcoming several obstacles. The most significant one: I haven’t left the northeastern United States since my wife and I first became parents 11 1/2 years ago. In fact, I haven’t even been on an airplane since early April 2001. Heeding travel advice from a writer who hasn’t flown in over a decade is like having open-heart surgery done by a doctor who didn’t bother attending medical school.

But last week I began acquiring the qualification(s) necessary to send my resume to National Geographic. While driving to Fort Collins, Colo. with companions ages 11, 9 and 6 does not by itself qualify me as an expert on America’s highways and byways, it does allow me to make a few observations based on recent experience. My first pronouncement is this: Twenty-five hundred miles is quite a distance, with or without three children along for the ride.

America’s 47,182-mile Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways is a remarkable feat of engineering; noted transportation historian Richard Weingroff has called its construction “the largest public works program since the Pyramids,” and it’s hard to disagree. Never mind the price tag ($425 billion, in 2006 dollars); building and maintaining a series of roads that crosses and re-crosses all of our nation’s major rivers and mountain ranges is a feat that’s probably unmatched in human history.

According to my three youthful co-obsevers, the most beautiful of America’s interstates is the section of I-79 that runs through northern West Virginia. Driving it is like taking a roller coaster ride through the never-ending Appalachian forest. The post-thunderstorm steam rising out of the valleys is an image we’ll all remember for a long time. Northwestern Maryland’s I-68 is a beautiful road, too, and the portion of I-70 that passes through the high plains of western Nebraska is also memorable, particularly for those of us who rarely get off the East Coast.

But crossing the USA driving only on interstate highways is like visiting any shopping mall in the country; they all look the same. That’s why we took the time to travel significant distances on some of the nation’s less-traveled roads. Had we limited ourselves to the Interstate, we’d have never visited Santa Claus, Ind., seen the Wizard of Oz museum in Wamego, Kan., or had our picture taken in front of the world’s largest ball of sisal twine, which is conveniently located in Cawker City, Kan. (population 469) on U.S. Route 36.

Veering away from the Interstate has drawbacks, though. The biggest: One cannot always count on finding eateries, places to stay, or gasoline when driving on back roads. We found that out the hard way when we arrived in McCook, Neb. on a Monday night after driving 600 miles through triple-digit heat only to find out every hotel room in town was booked. That meant pressing on another 70 miles to I-80 in North Platte, where we found the standard fast food joints, familiar chain hotels and fuel.

The best place we stayed on our way out to Colorado was undoubtedly Schnecksville, Pa.’s Hillside Inn. Good luck trying to get a reservation there, though; were it not actually my cousin’s house, I doubt they’d have taken us in for the night.

Two other random observations: There are more deer carcasses lining Kentucky’s byways than there are along roadsides in all the other states combined, and who knew that in addition to being 630 feet high, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis is also 630 feet across? Going to its top and seeing the shadow it casts over the Mississippi River was certainly memorable.

Anyone thinking Maine ought to allow outdoor advertising should check out I-70 through Illinois, Missouri and Kansas, where the landscape is dominated by them. Several prominent billboards tout “The Lion’s Den,” a chain of midwestern “adult superstores.”

While travel is no doubt broadening, perhaps its greatest value is this: Seeing other places helps one appreciate all that is good in his or her own hometown. Neither my children nor I have seen a license plate from Maine, Vermont or New Hampshire since we left Massachusetts, which is as good an indication as any that when it comes to summer vacations, there’s no place like home for northern New Englanders.

— Andy Young and his family are currently taking their first summer vacation ever. Next stop: Mount Rushmore and the Badlands of South Dakota.