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In 1919, a young Lieutenant Colonel named Dwight Eisenhower set off with an Army expedition to cross the country by road. They took the best marked route - the Lincoln Highway, which had been marked and improved with private money to form a continuous link between the east and west coasts.The trip started in Washington D.C. and ended in Oakland, CaliforniaIt took two months, and half the vehicles didn’t finish the trip. Most of them were done in by dust as none of the roads between Illinois and Nevada were paved.In Wyoming, the trucks on the convoy damaged fourteen bridges they tried to cross. All the bridges had to be repaired.Today, that trip can be done in 43 hours by trucks much larger than the ones used by the Army and your vehicle will almost certainly survive the trip if you can get it to start.One of the real problems was that most of the roads were built by the states and didn’t connect in any meaningful way. Almost all the roads went right through the most crowded parts of cities. In wet seasons, it was common for many sections of the road to be temporarily covered in water. In winter, there was no road maintenance. The standard for road width was to put two cars side by side with a foot of clearance between them.

I’ve looked into taking the train for some 1,000+ mile trips here in the U.S. I researched all the available routes, the costs, etc.It turns out that for just about any trip I wanted to take - like Central Illinois to East-Central Colorado - the train took longer than driving and was many times more expensive. Not only that, but chances are that it doesn’t actually stop anywhere within an hour or two’s drive of your destination, so you have to rent a car or get someone to drive for hours to pick you up at the train station.I can load up the family in the minivan and drive 1,000 miles in a day without too much problem. When the kids were really young I’d do it overnight so that they slept through a big part of the trip. Now I don’t even have to do that. I can just drive through the day, and I can even have my two teenagers handle part of the driving. Our minivan is just as comfortable as a train, and we can get out and stretch our legs or stop at a decent restaurant whenever we like. We have our privacy in our own vehicle, so we can be ourselves without worrying whether we’re annoying the other people in a train car, and we don’t have to worry that they’ll annoy us either. Plus, we still have our own vehicle to use to get around at our destination.

I just returned from 喀什（Kashgar) last week and had read plenty on the internet and Quora regarding the happenings in Xinjiang in general. I fully expected that I would feel out of place and at times potentially unwelcome. This turnes out to be far from my experiences.Here are my thoughts on the trip:There is a very high police presence, in most other parts of China it's rare to see a police officer with a gun. In Xinjiang it is the norm. The CCP has done a good job of providing a stable and safe environment for all people in this area.All the people in Xinjiang seem very warm and welcoming, from Han to Uighur everyone was very friendly and seemed generally happy.There seems to be a lack of available jobs and farming seems to provide a living for most of the population. The area needs some form of economic development possibly in the form of industrial agriculture.I never once felt unsafe.I guess to combine this with my other experiences and observations from my travels to China is if there are any “reeducation” facilities ( I didn't see any ) they are probably there for a very good reason as I tend to find that the CCP makes smart decisions when it comes to maintaining harmony in society.I would love to hear from anyone that has had direct experiences in the area to learn more.