CASEY: Roanoke’s continent-conquering real estate agent is almost home
Sept. 8 was our last check-in on the great North American road adventure of Maximillian J. Witherell. At that time, the intrepid Roanoke real estate agent and his trusty car, "The Dolphin," were near Glacier National Park in northern Montana, headed for Alaska's largest city.
Witherell, 30, who goes by "Max," made a pile of money selling homes this year. He's single with few obligations, so he's celebrating with a road trip for a lifetime: A (mostly) backroads drive from Key West, Florida, to Anchorage, followed by a return to Roanoke.
That journey's almost complete.
"I'm no longer avoiding highways," Witherell told me in a voice-text message Friday before noon. (Thursday night, he stayed near Denver, Colorado.) "So I'm hitting (Interstate) 70 East for many hundreds of miles."
Friday night, he landed in Wilson, Kansas.
Witherell's trip calculator "says it will probably be about 22 hours of driving left to get back to Roanoke," he told me. That means — at least conceivably — he could make it home for church services in Franklin County on Sunday morning.
But it would require successive 12-hour stretches behind the wheel of his 2004 Honda Accord. Even at Witherell's relatively young age, anything beyond eight hours in the driver's seat "gets pretty brutal," Witherell said. He knows, because he had a few of those days heading north from Key West.
When he and The Dolphin left the southernmost point of the continental United States, the 2004 Accord's odometer read 172,000 miles. Thursday it topped 183,000. By the time he gets home. Witherell expects to have driven 13,000 miles over roughly six weeks.
Roughly, that's equivalent to driving halfway around Earth at the Equator — if such a drive was possible.
The Dolphin has performed admirably, Witherell added. Except for a one flat tire, which he replaced in St. Louis, the car's offered zero problems. (Along the way, he's had the oil changed twice.)
"You should pitch Honda on using your 20-year-old Accord in an ad campaign emphasizing Honda's reliability," I told him.
"I will be drafting some communication with them on this, yes," Witherell replied.
Updates on Facebook
Witherell grew up in South Carolina, which is where he attended high school and college, which he almost finished.
His parents are divorced. After his mom, Sharon Witherell, obtained a job as music director in 2020 at a church in Moneta, they moved to the Windy Gap area, with his younger sister Olivia.
Witherell's an agent with Virginia Realty Group, and income he earned earlier this year is bankrolling the adventure.
At first, he intended to start in Roanoke. He posted tip-seeking messages about his plans on the subreddit /roadtrip. (A copy editor here at the newspaper spotted those, and suggested it might be worth a story.)
Meanwhile, others responded suggesting Witherell begin his cross-continent journey in Key West, the literal end of U.S. 1.
On Aug. 21, he climbed in the The Dolphin and piloted it solo to the Florida Keys. By Aug. 23, he was heading north to Roanoke for an appointment with his mechanic for routine maintenance.
He headed west on Aug. 29, and snapped a few photos of the Greenbrier River as he passed through Hinton, West Virginia. Until that day, the South Carolina native had never driven west of Christiansburg.
He's kept a running account of his travels on his Facebook page, Maximilian J. Witherell, and also on Reddit (user name: ABKA_TM).
Originally, he was going to make at least part of the trip with a longtime friend, Gregory Battis, a financial analyst who lives in Portland, Oregon. But Battis couldn't get the necessary time off from his job.
Instead, Battis has served remotely as Witherell's day-by-day travel agent, finding and making motel, hotel or Airbnb reservations for his friend along the way, depending on where Witherell expected to land on any given day. (Typically, he spent $150/night for accommodations, but it cost him double that in St. Louis and Banff, in Canada).
After Witherell left Anchorage, Battis joined him for a four-day leg of the journey, with Battis' driving alongside The Dolphin in his 2007 Porsche.
Canada to Alaska
Witherell was just about to enter Canada on Sept. 6 when I last caught up with him. He was headed north through Calgary on his way to Edmonton, Alberta.
There, he visited a half-sister, Daisy, before he embarked on a roughly 2,000-mile stretch west into Alaska that had almost no mobile phone service at all.
So for $300 plus a monthly subscription fee, Witherell picked up a satellite phone that allowed him to make an emergency call from just about anywhere. Bonus: It sent Battis GPS coordinates for Witherell's location every 5 minutes.
"This trip has taught me, with this kind of a journey, there's always going to be a risk you're taking," Witherell told me Thursday. "You're able to accept those kinds of risks as long as you plan ahead for what could happen."
Battis, of Portland, Oregon, was able to get a handful of days off work. After Witherell got to Anchorage and was on his way back to the lower 48, Battis met his friend in Prince George, British Columbia, a town that's hundreds of miles north of Vancouver.
Battis was driving his 2007 Porsche Cayman S. They drove together for four days, through Whistler, British Columbia, Vancouver and south to Leavenworth, Washington, which is east of Seattle.
That's where Battis split off to return to Portland. Altogether, he put 2,173 miles on the Porsche over four days. And it began having engine problems, with burning oil pouring out of its rear exhaust, 30 miles from Portland.
Battis fretted his engine was cooked, but the problem proved to be a relatively minor malfunctioning air/oil separator. Though the engine ultimately lost all its oil, Battis pulled over before irreversible damage occurred.
Best and worst places
One of many questions I posted to Witherell was, "What's the one place you're definitely returning to?"
His answer was Whistler, a ski town in British Columbia that readers of Conde Nast Traveller this year ranked as best ski resort in North America.
"I don't feel like I got enough time to properly take photos of it," Witherell said. "Yellowstone (National Park) and Bighorn National Forest (both in Wyoming) also were very much worth more than one day.
"Glacier (National Park, in Montana) was the most beautiful spot out of the national parks in the U.S.," Witherell said. "But I had a hard time forgiving its lack of parking in some areas." (When I visited Glacier in 1983 – on a bicycle – parking was tight even then.)
I also asked the opposite question: To which place does Witherell never want to return?
"I would be happy to never visit the state of Georgia again, honestly," he replied. (That's where, on his way to Alaska, a Georgia state trooper followed The Dolphin for 20 miles on an interstate highway, miles before pulling it over and issuing Witherell a verbal warning for an improper lane change in a construction zone.)
He added a postscript: He plans to return to Vancouver, British Columbia, someday, but not by car.
"If I do go back, it would be flying there, because bringing a car is absolutely pointless. You're not going to use it, you don't want to use it, you're better off walking."
He also wants to return to Jasper, Alberta, a 5,000-population town in the Canadian Rockies, once it's rebuilt. A raging wildfire destroyed much of Jasper in July. Witherell showed up there almost two months later, and snapped many photos of the devastation that remains.
Another act of God has forced Witherell to alter the end of his journey.
"When I started this trip I told myself I would drive the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I decided to do that at the end."
But damage last week, wrought by the remnants of Hurricane Helene, has closed long stretches of the parkway, particularly in North Carolina.
Witherell will have to save it for his next road trip, whenever that comes along.
Dan Casey (540) 981-3423
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