We're Leavin' Town ... But We'll Be Back

WOODLEY PARK, D.C. -- This DCist is going to Wallyworld, no matter what! We're going to go pick up Aunt Edna and retrace the Griswold family's 1983 cross-country roadtrip. Since there isn't a real Wallyworld (actually there is online ... via a Google search, there is a "Wally" World, but it is NOT safe for work), we guess we'll have to settle for where ever the open road takes us. Living and working inside the Beltway, you can lose touch with what the rest of the country is like, so this DCist is headed west, to the Midwest that is, for a week-long road trip.

Alexis de Tocqueville searched for what America is way back in the 1830s, and today in his footsteps, Bernard-Henri Lévy, writing for the Atlantic Monthly is doing the same, 200 years after de Tocqueville's birth ... all in the pursuit to figure out what these 50 states are and what they mean to us and the world. Mr. Levy's guess is as good as anyone's, we suppose.

We, however, are setting the bar much lower. As part of the DCist's pre-Cinco de Mayo party trivia challenge, we turn to the theme of "Team America: World Police" ... the ever catchy "America, Fuck Yeah!" In the lyrics, there is a laundry list of things that make America "great," and we intend to find every one of them on our journey. We're certain to find a "Starbucks" and "Wal-Mart," but could someone tell us where we can find "Slavery" or "Sportsmanship" somewhere off of I-70 ... ? (The full list is on the jump.)

Stay tuned for updates, trivia questions and clues throughout the next week from our road trip. You could win some cool prizes.