From the beginning, I should come out and say that I have nothing against using the interstate highways. It's just that their virtue is also their downfall. Fast, efficient and predictable, they were built for a different kind of discovery. They can often provide spectacular views of a larger world and intimate portraits of sprawling cities. While possessed of wide vistas across seemingly empty landscapes, with their homogenized offerings of food and lodging, the interstates are sterilized corridors through the belly of America, seldom allowing the traveler contact with reality.

You will see things on the interstate that you rarely see anywhere else. The lifeblood of America now travels by tractor-trailer and almost anything built in this country is shipped over the road and can be spotted in vans, flatbeds, reefers and dumps. On my way to the Georgia line, truckloads of lumber, fruit, automobiles and paper goods pass by, as well as a gypsy caravan of stock car racers, on their way to Charlotte for the next event. In the babble of voices at the Georgia welcome station, I can pick out Spanish, Hindi and the tones of distinctly American accents born in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey.

From Kingsland, Georgia it is only twenty miles to Folkston, where my journey down US One will begin. The small two-lane blacktop that connects them is empty and the early summer heat already shimmers off the road. It is Sunday- high noon. What few businesses border the highway are closed and they are few and far between. Only a small brick church in Greenville exhibits any sign of life, with parishioners spilling out of the doorway into the midday sun. Not far away, the Saint Mary's River flows between indistinct banks that change with the rise and fall of the water table. I am in a wilderness that seems untouched, even though small homesteads and farms break up the tree line every so often. In fact, Highway 40 is the only road to traverse a huge tract of coastal hardwood forest between Woodbine and the Florida line. Out here, hammocks and swamps alternate, drained by small tributaries like Temple Creek, Horsepen Creek and Saint Mary's Cut. Slowly, imperceptibly, the plain rises towards Trail Ridge, just beyond Folkston and just beyond that lies the mother of all swamps- the Okefenokee.

Folkston is as deserted as a Hollywood movie set. Only a handful of firefighters are manning a roadblock on US One, collecting for charity. It is easy enough to stop at a green light to drop a couple of bucks into a boot offered up by a young man who looks hardly old enough to be out of high school. He is hiding from the sun under a wet towel draped over his head. "Thank you, sir" he smiles and hands me a couple of stickers to show I supported their effort. Even though we are on a major highway and the only entry point into Florida for miles, I wonder how much they'll actually be able to collect.

When US One enters Florida, it is married to both US 301 and US 23. As it crosses the Saint Mary's River, it becomes a divided four-lane highway, a form it stays with until it enters Jacksonville. Under the cracked and worn macadam pavement are also two highways in history- the Dixie Highway and the Kings Road. The residents of Boulogne are the gatekeepers of the Sunshine State and a fading sign on the south bank of the Saint Mary's welcomes travelers coming in the back door. A small unkempt garden adds to the air of decay, matching the ruins of the welcome station that dominate what was once a thriving community. Nearly half a dozen small motels sit moldering under kudzu, windows and doors boarded over, marking a boom that went bust long ago. Built during the fifties and early sixties, no guest has checked into these motor courts since the Reagan administration.

A more modern fluorescent blue Florida sign has been posted well beyond Boulogne, as if denying any connection to it. Ironically, the landscape here looks more like an extension of Georgia's pine woods, rather than the entrance to a semitropical paradise. Over on I-95, visitors can stop at a modern welcome station and view the broad salt marshes, smell the salt air and watch fishermen plying the black waters of the Saint Mary's and Nassau Rivers. The beaches lie just over the eastern horizon from there, whetting the expectations of days in the surf and sand. Twenty miles west, US One keeps its secrets. Beyond its wide shoulders, farms and mobile homes break up the forest in sporadic clusters, passing by in anonymity. The land gently rolls like low swells on a green ocean, subtle and almost unnoticeable. It hardly fits the image so many tourists have of Florida. This far inland there are few hints of the tropical nature the state is usually associated with. The one undeniable icon of the south that is present is a glaring sun, bright enough behind the puffy cumulous clouds that pass through every afternoon that it reflects off the chrome grille of the van like high-beam headlights. Even now in late May, the temperature is already bumping the ninety degree mark, prelude to the sweltering summer days to come. This is the Florida I know.