Last fall, just weeks before Election Day, I traveled the old Lincoln Highway, from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rockies, to learn the attitudes of voters who lived miles from the off-ramps of the main interstates and coastal America.

Known as US 30, the mostly two-lane highway connects 13 states and 128 counties between Times Square and San Francisco.

It was on that trip, especially in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa, that a realization unfolded: Many had already decided they were not voting for Hillary Clinton.

These voters appeared to defy polls and conventional wisdom. If you believed what they said, it quickly became evident that this corner of the country was going to help elect the first true non-politician in our 240-year history — one who had never held public office nor served as a general — to the presidency.

Today, almost 100 days after President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, many Americans still remain suspended at the stroke of midnight, Nov. 8, 2016. On that day, those who voted for him were giddy and optimistic, and those who never saw it coming felt disbelief and repulsion, refusing to concede that he won.

And now? “Nothing has changed,” Rob Hughes, a registered Democrat and retired businessman from Bulger, Pa., whom I met on my cross-country trip, told me last week. “Well, that’s probably not entirely true. I think I like him more now that he is the president.”

As I went back to the people on US 30 to ask them how they feel about the man they voted for, Hughes’ sentiment rang true.

Trump’s supporters are unfazed that a new health care law is not in place (yet), thrilled with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, weary of the constant accusations of his ties to Russia, supportive of his strike against Syria for using chemical weapons against its people and dismayed that House Republicans and Democrats are unwilling to compromise. To them, the president remains disruptive, unconventional, defiant and willing to change his mind — appealing attributes to his supporters, but not to the press.

When I first met Hughes, 71, he was sitting with Mary Ellen Estel and James King in the back of DJ’s Quick Stop, a deli, dry goods and gun and tackle shop that beckons Lincoln Highway travelers with a sign — “Got Far Wood” — poking good-natured fun at the local pronunciation of “fire.”

Hughes and Estel were staunch Trump supporters last fall; King was not. The three have met every morning for 25 years, setting up a card table and some folding chairs, while drinking Folgers coffee from white Styrofoam cups and discussing community concerns, fishing and politics.

When I called him recently, Hughes picked up his phone from the gun range. “I could not be more optimistic about the future than I am right now,” he told me. “Honestly, I am still on cloud nine that he won and is our president.”

Why is that? Hughes cites Trump’s unconventional approach to politics, his dismissal of political games and his willingness to compromise to get things done: “I am thrilled he has an open dialogue with China, not just on foreign affairs but on trade issues as well, and I am very pleased about how he responded to the atrocities in Syria.”

Estel, 77, who had just finished mowing 10 acres of farmland when we spoke last week, is also “very pleased” with Trump so far: “I am very concerned about the fragile state of the world right now, but that was not of his doing. That has been decades in the making.”

King didn’t like Trump back in November and still doesn’t, but that doesn’t stop the three friends from meeting every morning to solve the world’s problems.

“It’s the best free therapy in the world,” said Estel.

Megan and A.J. Hammons were split on whom to support last fall. A.J., 28, was voting for Trump, while his wife, Megan, 28, was going to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Both voted for Barack Obama in the two previous presidential elections, and both were unsatisfied with his performance. The final blow was the effect of ObamaCare on their family.

She is a home-care nurse; he’s a mechanic. The parents of two boys, they were waiting in front of the 540 Martial Arts studio on West Main Street in Van Wert, Ohio, last fall when I first interviewed them — and they were packing the boys into the car after class, again, when I called them last week.

“It turns out Megan decided to vote for Trump a couple of days before the election,” said her husband.

About their decisions, neither could be happier.

“He is doing exactly what we wanted and expected him to do,” said A.J. “Yes, there have been setbacks, but anyone intelligent would understand that was to be expected. He is not a politician, and I had no expectation of him to be anything but non-conventional.”

Many people I spoke to were still undecided right up until Election Day. Michelle Barnett, who was outside her home in Timnath, Colo., tending to her decorative gourds last fall when we first met, was one of them.

Although her husband, David, with whom she co-owns a small outdoor equipment and parts store in Fort Collins, was all in for Trump, Michelle was not. But when it came down to it, “At the very last minute, I pulled the trigger for Trump,” Barnett said. “I just could not abide voting for those corrupt Clintons.”

So far, she hasn’t regretted her decision. “Up until the strike in Syria earlier this month, I was fine with how the president has been. Now I will keep an eye on him. As long as that was not a sign of more interference in that country, I am fine with that. But if he does start to make this into the next Iraq, I will be unhappy with him,” she said.

And her husband, David? “Oh, he just loves him. Loves him. Loves everything he does,” she said.

From the very beginning, the chances Ann McMahon would ever consider voting for Trump were less than zero. The Omaha, Neb., native and vivacious mother of five, who looks 15 years younger than her 41 years, comes from a long line of professional Democratic operatives who worked on the top tier of presidential elections and on the staff of the late Ted Kennedy.

Last year, after the second presidential debate, she was the only person in a room filled with mostly Democrats in suburban Omaha who paced the floor with anxiety, worried that perhaps Trump did better than Clinton — “At least in the eyes of the voters that count,” she said.

She was right.

And she still does not like him.

“I was very concerned before the election but am completely and totally shocked at what a train wreck he has been from every single angle,” she said.

Her gravest concern has been all of the Russian connections: “The evidence of collusion that has been forthcoming has convinced me he will be impeached.”

McMahon said the “daily conflicts of interest, rampant nepotism, lack of policy, zero understanding of government functioning, chaos at the White House and the intervention in Syria that was so ineffective” has her head spinning.

McMahon said she had been hopeful he would educate himself more, act more presidential, but for her, he has fallen woefully short.

Dr. Joseph Chiaro and his wife, Donna, were very reluctant Trump supporters when I met them at breakfast at the beautifully restored Nagle-Warren Mansion in Cheyenne, Wyo., last fall. So much so, I wondered if both of them would ultimately vote for Trump.

They did.

The son of immigrants and a retired pediatrician who still works part-time in the medical industry, Chiaro was more staunchly opposed to Clinton than he was for Trump. So was his wife.

Much has changed since their initial reluctance last October. “I am 100 percent pleased with his performance so far,” he said.

“Yes, he has made some mistakes, but they are so minor that they are insignificant,” he said. “The president has us heading in the right direction. I had my hesitations about him, but they quickly disappeared once he took office.”

Voters like the ones on US 30 are the best route to understanding America’s heartland. Their sentiments eluded most reporters in the last election cycle, and many of them warn that coming to their towns to take their political temperatures isn’t going to fix the problem if the people themselves remain misunderstood.

“I just wish for once they would stop talking over us, or at us, and listen to us, so they understand what is going on in our lives,” Hughes said of the media.

“We aren’t creatures in a zoo. You can’t just parachute in, stay for a few minutes and then leave. If you want to understand how we feel about something, it takes more than a cursory look at our lives.”

Approval ratings for Trump have been abysmally low. In late March, Gallup put it at 35 percent — the worst for any new president in the first months of his administration.

Yet that doesn’t tell the whole story. Among those living in the second ring of suburbs outside the cities, or the exurbs or the third and fourth rings that make up great big swaths of rural America, the president gets a job approval rating between 53 percent and 59 percent, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey conducted at the same time as the Gallup poll.

Overall, it’s too early to critique Trump. While the 100-day mark, which we will officially pass on Saturday, is usually a symbolic point at which modern presidents are assessed, it really is just that — a mark. Journalists began the tradition with Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the country was suffering under the Great Depression, to give an early indication of his progress.

Like FDR, Trump has taken the country in a completely different direction from his predecessor. It is still unclear whether his break toward a new philosophy of governing will be successful — but, if you listen to his supporters, they have his back.

For now.