he described as a "mystique closely approximating a religion," but he loved and respected Texas. After detailing his Thanksgiving at the ranch, Steinbeck drove to New Orleans where he witnessed the angry and racist protests by white mothers outside the recently integrated William Frantz Elementary School in the Ninth Ward. The encounter depressed him. By the time Steinbeck nears Virginia, he says that in his heart, his journey was over. His journey had ceased to be a journey and became something that he had to endure until he reached his home in New York again. After passing through Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Steinbeck finds himself back in New York where, ironically, he realizes that he is lost and has to ask for directions home. As he spent a good deal of his journey lost, it becomes evident at the end of the story that being lost is a metaphor for how much America has changed in Steinbeck's eyes. America, it seems, is in a sense directionless and is therefore endangered as it moves into an uncertain future marked by huge population shifts, racial tensions, technological and industrial change, and unprecedented environmental destruction. Best seller Travels With Charley was published by the Viking Press in mid-1962, a few months before Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list (Non-Fiction) on October 21, 1962, where it stayed for one week, replaced by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring on October 28. In the arts In the Steinbeck novel The Pastures of Heaven, one of the characters regards Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes as one of the single greatest works of English literature and eventually names his infant son Robert Louis. Later, Steinbeck and his wife Elaine were inspired by Stevenson in choosing the title Travels with Charley. In 2010 the Dutch journalist and author Geert Mak traveled the same route Steinbeck had followed, basing himself on the notes from Steinbeck's diary as well as the book. Mak wrote a book about it, called "Reizen zonder John" (translation from Dutch: "Traveling without John"). He reviews American society and comments on the changes he encounters since Steinbeck traveled the same parts of the country. In 2018 Minnesota-based Bluegrass group Trampled by Turtles released a track entitled "Thank you, John Steinbeck." This track references the book with the lines: "I