“The Highway Walkers” shown Thursday night at the Wild Rose film festival in Des Moines was a fun cross-country adventure. Two buddies decide to thumb their way from the Leon-Weldon metroplex in southern Iowa to Mount Hood near Portland, Oregon.  Darrell Johnston and Josiah Laubenstein are our two adventurers out to discover why the practice of hitchhiking has stopped being commonplace.

“Along the way they struggle to get rides, play music at nursing homes and experience the beauty and hardship America has to offer.  This trip forges them as friends and changes their outlook on life and hitchhiking.”

We see Darrell and Josiah stop at a mission in Denver where Jesus saves the homeless and the drunks from off of the streets of Denver.  We meet a woman who sees their ad on Craig’s List and takes them on their next leg along with her huge Malamute in the back seat.  It is a thoroughly entertaining travelogue by two video virgins.  It is staggering what two first-timers have done.

It was an interesting study in human nature and the innate goodness they found in the strangers they encountered.  They discovered that even in 2011 murky danger did not lurk around every corner.  They said that they found that people were basically good.  Their film proved the timeless truth that we viewers are voyeurs, we like to meet new people, hear their conversations and peer into their lives.

Darrell Johnston after the Q&A following the screening of his film, “The Highway Walkers”.
photograph by DME