Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere)’s Reviews > There's Adventure in Civil Engineering > Status Update

It ends in Ushuaia:
"Like his brother, Sam also wanted to be a civil engineer, to blast mountains and fling huge bridges across mighty chasms. But all this was now being done. Sam had a more original idea for a bridge.
"how far is it," he shouted to his father through the wind, "to Antarctica?"
--No word on how they get home.

At this point the author only has two pages to get us to the end of the road at the tip of South America, and then theoretically home.

Randy wants to help build the highways of the future but he knows:
"What was needed were long hours in the university classrooms and laboratories with slide rule and books."
--And randomly the Morrows eat dinner and spend the night at this American engineer's house in Argentina. Because people do that all the time with total strangers who want to talk all night about engineering.

"But there's one thing we're almost certain to have in the near future - purely as a defense against the increasing number of traffic accidents." - Road guidance systems - the self driving car idea. Of course in 1959 they didn't foresee what a vast difference seat belt laws and other car safety measures could make. And how much easier that was to do rather than redesign/rebuild all the roads.

American engineer has a working model highway of the future in his basement. Spoiler: we'll all be driving hovercraft. Er "air-cars." And there will be "nuclear-powered truck-trains." Though the engineer does say that "most guesses about the future turn out to be wrong."

Oh I forgot to mention - there's dynamite in this construction too. Unfortunately the family isn't trapped in the tunnel and so no one has to stuff a sock in Mr. Morrow's mouth to keep him using up the breathable air with one of his helpful lectures. (Now I'm almost sad that didn't happen.)

The illustration this time shows the family in a tunnel, wearing hard hats like all the men doing construction around them. Way back when the boys got to see the dynamiting of rock? All the workmen wore hard hats in the illustration - but the family didn't. (Yeah, I notice stuff like that. I've also read posted fire code info. Which is why it's odd that this book is boring me silly.)

Boy it sure is interesting that suddenly in Peru, near the Andes, you can just stumble on an American company building a tunnel for the Pan American Highway. And the American engineer in charge is happy to have the family come in and then to show them all around the tunnel construction. Nothing about that sounds at all unsafe! Or odd!

"The long narrow belt of Chile ran for 2700 miles from Peru to Cape Horn. Day after day, they bumped and rattled over those miles until their bodies were sore and El Carreton squeaked in every joint."
--Again, family vacation. In the end Mr. Morrow may get a magazine article out of it, but this (again) does not sound like fun.

Every now and then the author tries very hard to explain something scenic/pretty/nothing to do with engineering:
"Watching from his bunk that night, Randy could make shapes out of the rolling fog in the distance. If he looked hard enough, he could see the ghosts of the ancient Incas, floating up from the ocean, dimming the countless lights of modern Lima."