Chasing Steinbeck's Ghost: The timeline for John Steinbeck's 1960 'Travels With Charley' road trip from the author of 'Dogging Steinbeck'

by Bill Steigerwald, Virtual Voice (Narrator)

In the fall of 1960 John Steinbeck and his standard poodle Charley set out on a 10,000 mile road trip around the USA that would become his iconic best-selling nonfiction travel book, 'Travels With Charley.' In 2010, exactly 50 years later, journalist Bill Steigerwald left Steinbeck's former home in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and faithfully retraced the great author's route from Maine to Seattle to Monterey to New Orleans to New York City. Steigerwald's original goal was to produce an American road book comparing the different Americas he and Steinbeck saw through their windshields on 'The Steinbeck Highway' in 1960 and 2010. But as he tells us in his spirited nonfiction road book 'Dogging Steinbeck,' Steigerwald quickly learned through his research in libraries and his dogged drive-by journalism that 'Travels With Charley' was not a true or honest account of how Steinbeck traveled, whom he met or what he really thought about America and its people. This timeline contains the most accurate information Steigerwald was able to find about Steinbeck's real trip and where he was on any given date in the historic fall of 1960. It includes photos and video that Steigerwald shot on his solo 11,276-mile journey. For the complete story of Steigerwald's own 'discovery of America' and how his journalism changed the way 'Travels With Charley' will be read forever, see 'Dogging Steinbeck.' It's available at

Audible Audio

Published April 12, 2025

About the author

Bill Steigerwald has written five books since retiring from his newspaper career, his journalism/civil rights history book "30 Days a Black Man" (2017), and "Dogging Steinbeck" (2013), his expose of the fictions and lies John Steinbeck and his publisher put into "Travels With Charley." He wrote and edited "Undercover in the Land of Jim Crow," which reprints the 1948 series written by Ray Sprigle (the subject of "30 Days a Black Man." And in 2022 he wrote 'Grandpa Bear Goes to Washington," an illustrated "adult kids book" about a polar bear who goes to Washington to tell the politicians there that his species is not endangered by climate change. He is a veteran journalist from Pittsburgh who worked as an editor and writer/reporter/columnist for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s, the Post-Gazette in the 1990s and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in the 2000s. His interviews and libertarian op-ed columns were nationally syndicated for about five years at CagleCartoons.com, and he worked briefly for CBS-TV in Hollywood in the late 1970s. Steigerwald's freelance articles, interviews and commentaries have appeared in many of the major newspapers in the USA and in magazines like Reason, Penthouse and Family Circle. He retired from the daily newspaper business in March 2009. He and his wife Trudi live south of Pittsburgh in the woods.