“Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere.”

Orhan Pamuk

 

I’ve crisscrossed the United States many times by air, but I’ve also made several round-trip road journeys over the years with my husband. All that riding in the car can be mind-numbing, but I maintained sanity by observing and recording random things I saw and heard along the way. The trips were wonderful opportunities to see the mundane but also to enjoy wondrous sights like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, and the Beartooth Highway.

 Sometime in the late 1990s, our road trip was from Massachusetts to San Francisco. We planned to board our aging dog at the kennel in our town, as we usually did when we traveled. However, they advised getting a house sitter due to her age or take her with us. We couldn’t imagine her traversing the hilly streets in SF and we didn’t know a house sitter, so we called our son, whom we planned to visit on the way, at his university in Colorado. He made some inquiries and got her a place at a boarding facility run by the vet school. Running free on their enclosed grounds at the foothills of the Rockies was good medicine and the vet students pampered her. 

 A trip in September 2005 was from Massachusetts to Breckenridge, Colorado. In Cleveland, Ohio, I learned some good news—the Cleveland Indians lost to the White Sox 3-1 assuring a wild card slot for our Boston Red Sox, and we had two negative experiences—a room-change request at an inn due to a foul smell and awful Italian food at a chain restaurant. How could they ruin Italian? 

In Iowa, Super Unleaded gas was cheaper than regular unleaded. (They said it had something to do with helping out the farmers who convert grain to ethanol.) On an Iowan radio station, I heard an ad about joining the "Presidential Prayer Team." I had never heard of it but some research revealed it was founded by retired Navy Captain Bill Hunter. He figured Bush and the country would need a lot of prayer after the contentious Bush-Gore election in 2000. With the help of a pastor friend and an advertising agency, they had launched a non-partisan Internet ministry a week after the September 11th attacks in 2001. The result was millions of team members still praying for our country. 

 Further west in Nebraska, high rises were concrete grain storage elevators, and a popular radio show in Lincoln had a lot of politically incorrect guy humor.

 In Breckenridge, Colorado, I hiked lots of trails with my husband and kids—Sunbeam, Moonstone, Barney Ford, & Juniata on the first day then Spruce Creek and Mohawk Lake trails on the second day. The fall foliage was past peak, but some aspens still had their yellow coin-shaped leaves. On the third day, we hiked the Baker's tank trail, watched the Red Sox lose the ALDS to the White Sox, and learned that Pakistan, India, & Afghanistan had a 7.7 Earthquake. On the fourth day, we hiked the Illinois Creek and Blue river trails and I noticed lodgepole pines have needles that look like green bottle brushes.

 In northern Colorado on the return trip, a radio show was pushing Hyaluronic Acid, a "youthful molecule" for anti-aging. The ad claimed the village of Yuzurihara in Japan has 80 & and 90-year-olds who are youthful looking due to high levels of HA. 

Back in Nebraska again, I heard obituaries on the radio in Ogalala and saw a sign: "Nebraska - the good life - home of Arbor Day.” I learned that what looks like a bridge in the distance in Nebraska is usually a very long rolling sprinkler.

 A lot of Iowa farms have round metal structures with pointy roofs. They look like fat rockets. 

 At the Illinois Welcome Center near Joliet, we reminisced about another time there walking our dog on the bluff overlooking the Des Plaines River.

 I saw many vineyards in New York State, and in Utica I listened to an interesting analysis of Bush's government & the Iraq War by Seymour Hirsch, author of Chain of Command & contributor to the New Yorker. Near Schenectady, I picked up WBZ radio. (Hallo Boston!)

 The Berkshires in Massachusetts had colorful foliage, and The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge had huge pumpkins flanking the main entrance. We ran into heavy fog starting near Blandford and the radio reported Logan wasn’t functioning, so there were major flight delays.

 Another ride in September 2007 was to Belgrade, Montana and back to Massachusetts. Each trip teaches me something new. Here’s what I learned that time:

The highest elevation on the Mass Pike is 1,724 feet in the town of Becket.

Minnesota is big into wind energy!

South Dakota has the world’s largest bullhead sculpture and the state also had a good yield of corn in 2007. (“Hay,” by the way, is a generic term for dried grasses, flowers, and plants used as off-season food for animals and is usually rye, oats, or alfalfa.

Gutson Borglum started carving Mt. Rushmore at age 60!

For the first time, I realized cell phone clocks are like the atomic clocks – they change time zones automatically!

The Black Hills are called that because of the way their evergreen-covered sides look from a distance.

Cowboys as young as 10 years old risked their lives to replace the vanishing buffalo herds in Wyoming by bringing longhorn cattle from Texas.

A Montana “loafing shed” is a pasture shelter for horses.

On the return trip, I saw a perfect “butte” in Laurel, Montana. I recognized the difference between a butte, mesa, and plateau thanks to my son’s explanations.

Quite a few side roads in Montana follow creeks and are named for them.

Lots of people in Montana say “Yes, Ma’am!”

There are also “Badlands” in NORTH Dakota!

You can buy elk in Minnesota – half or whole.

Minnesotans are big into having their birthdays reported on the radio.

Colorful Minnesota fall foliage wasn’t too plentiful. (Report: “ a lot of oaks, a lot of conifers, but when you see a maple, you can see it for miles.”)

Wisconsin has lots of police patrol cars.

You could get a free lead paint test kit (good for toys!) from the united steel workers (usw.com).

Wisconsin also has a large industry in sphagnum moss – who knew?

Prisoners in Ohio wear stripes and pick up trash along the highways.

You can pick up a Chinese-American radio station between Erie, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York.

New York State talk show factoid: Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh got a draft deferral from Vietnam because he had a cyst on his tailbone and now he has a job where he sits on his ass!

The Syracuse bumper sticker is ‘CUSE. Kinda cute.

You know you’re in NY when the rest areas have Breyer’s ice cream stands.

 In September 2016 we drove to Ridgway, CO and back. The Midwest had a lot of roadwork, wind power, corn fields, and hay bales. I saw a lot of triple piggyback semis along the way and many Canadian geese in vee formations. On Interstate 80 between Cleveland and Toledo, a quote and picture adorned the side of a barn: "The bold enterprises are the successful ones. "-Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president, born in Ohio. 

 Colorado provided my first glimpse of yellow aspens that year as we passed Vail along Interstate 70. In Ridgway, I loved the cowboy ambience and also the way it showcases the arts. A hike in Dominguez Escalante Canyon near Grand Junction had amazing petroglyphs. We had a fun hike near Cascade Falls in Ouray and were blown away by the awesome aspen colors at full peak while hiking in Telluride. A side trip to Arches National Park in Utah showed us incredible red rock formations.

 Some trips have been about hauling things our kids left behind when they moved out west—a motor scooter and some large plants to our son in Montana and some large tools and a drawing table when he moved to Colorado.

Our most recent cross-country drive was to Colorado in August 2018. On that trip, we attended an Octoberfest celebration near a trailhead after a hike on The Front Range with our daughter, and I had a fun evening birthday celebration in Denver that began with prosecco and an awesome view of the Rockies.

 The drive from Denver to southwest Colorado where our son lives was scenic via Interstate 70 and we did some truckin’ and exploring with our son in Ouray’s Yankee Boy Basin. The return provided stunning scenery as we followed the Gunnison River past Blue Mesa Reservoir and over Monarch Pass back to the Denver area.

 The main point of that trip, aside from getting a chance to hug our kids was to transport a lemon tree to our daughter. Like our children, the tree is thriving out there.