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The Map
On the wall above my desk is an old Amoco Co. road map of the eleven Western states. I've traveled through at least parts of eight of those eleven states. All the roads I've traveled are highlighted in red. Most of Wyoming, Idaho, and the western half of Montana are thus streaked, as are the northern halves of Utah and Colorado. Two-thirds of California north to south is red veined. Northern Nevada has connecting arteries into the southern parts of Idaho and Oregon. Southern Colorado west to southern Nevada is blank, and so is all of New Mexico and Arizona. Likewise, Washington state is entirely uncapillaried. I've traveled by all modes of on-the-road transportation: cars, pickups, and buses, not to mention hitchhiking. And I ain't done yet.
I first went West in 1975 to find gold in Sierra Nevada streams (having such unattainable goals when young will certainly enhance a sense of adventure). I was accompanied by two friends, a recently-divorced father and his son who was near my age, neighbors I'd known for most of my life. We camped for a month on the Middle Fork of the Feather River near Quincy, California. We'd planned on finding great quantities of gold, and were equipped with a pickup truck, camping equipment, shovels, pans, a wooden sluicebox that we'd built, and a copy of National Geographic with an informative article about the Sierra gold country. A typical day on the river was followed by an evening sitting around the campfire, drinking beer and fine-tuning our get-rich-quick plans. In the end the trip turned into more of a lark, and what little gold we found ended up in a souvenir bucketful of black sand (the last saved residue of a washed gold pan) that found a home in somebody's garage. But I'd had my first look at the American West and knew I'd be back.
Just eyeballing the map from my desk conjures up specific trips, either alone or with friends. Down Highway 1 along the mountainous Big Sur coast, where the Pacific disappears under a curtain of fog; the beeline across the snow-white Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah; the thousand pinnacles of Glenwood Canyon and the aspen groves on Rabbit Ears Pass, both in Colorado; Oregon's vast Owyhee Desert with the faraway Steens Mountains following your progress for hours; Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake, one in the trees and one in the desert, and both cobalt blue; the scores of springtime waterfalls in California's Feather River Canyon.
And there's been car trouble along the way. An overheated radiator immediately upon leaving Glacier National Park once; various flat tires changed without a house or gas station in sight; a bad alternator out on U.S. 50 in Nevada. There was the mechanic in Cut Bank, Montana, who fixed the leaky radiator right before closing on a Saturday afternoon; the guy who gave me a ride into Fallon, Nevada, so I could find a tow truck after that alternator gave out; and the high school kid who stopped to help me change a flat tire in Wyoming. Such is life on the roadside West. I can see those helpful people on the map.
I've gazed upon much of the West from the windows of Greyhound buses. If my calculations are correct, I've traveled some 25,000 miles this way, though that includes a few East Coast trips. Thirty years ago this was America's most economical way to travel long distances. I recall once going from New York to San Francisco for a mere $49. But travel of this sort is definitely easier for the young. You have to sleep sitting up in a narrow seat (the adjoining seat might be occupied by an obese or otherwise unpleasant stranger), eat bad food in Interstate truckstops, and not bathe except for quick wash-ups in bus station restrooms, which are many times filthy. The standard coast-to-coast Greyhound trip lasted eighty hours, or a little over three days. Hours spent taking in the passing scene (towns, farms, thousands of fence posts and telephone poles, etc.) could be a bit boring, and some folks resorted to discreet drinking to enliven the trip. The drivers frowned on this, but in the 1970s were more tolerant of it, and you had to be a real jerk to get kicked off the bus. Not so today. If they catch you, you're off. Otherwise, I remember a lot of reading, and recall enjoying the charming company of Madame Bovary on one trip.
Once, when I lived in California in the late '70s, a college friend named Chuck Insolo and I spent a few days riding through the Northern Rockies in his small red pickup with a camper top. Just outside Jackson, Wyoming, we drove past a restaurant with a huge outdoor deck, where a hundred or so people were having a big party, complete with a band. We were traveling on a tight budget, and were kind of hungry and sober, so we went to the party.
Chuck happened to strike up a conversation with a longhaired guy in a cowboy hat, and it turned out they had grown up in adjoining towns in the Los Angeles area, so there was much to chat about. The party was the annual get-together of a local kayaking club, and when an official-looking guy with a clipboard eyed us suspiciously and approached to question us, our friend with the cowboy hat told him that we were friends of his and visiting from out of town. So we stuck close to our new friend through a long June afternoon and evening , listening to country rock music, and enjoying free barbecue and beer to the point where we got so drunk that we passed out in the truck parked in a field across the highway from the restaurant that night. The next morning found us admiring the Tetons on a glorious day that must have tempered our nerve-rattling hangovers. But even the sweet trilling meadowlarks I heard at Jenny Lake hurt my ears.
The last I heard Chuck was in Reno. It's on the map.
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Paul D| 5.7.09 @ 9:09AM
Stuck here in Maryland, but lived in Fallon for four years. Hope to move back someday. Might try Wyoming for a change.
Cheers, Paul
Faffnir| 5.7.09 @ 9:36AM
I'm a professional driver and I've logged quite a few miles in the west. Getting paid to watch some of the most glorious scenery in the world is pretty neat.
I had a load going to Edmonton, Alberta. I was on US 2 just west of Havre and the mountains were coming into view. Storms, too. You know how they gather over the summits. Nature's power and beauty on display.
The only radio station I could pull in was NPR, which was cool. Classical calms the mind and soothes the soul.
Just as the lightning started over the nearing peaks, the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony crashed out in time with the flashes.
At that moment, I saw the hand and heard the voice of God.
Aaron| 5.7.09 @ 9:58AM
Great article Bill, when you are up to it you need to take on the mother of all road trips... a drive to Alaska. Nothing is quite the same as realizing the size of that place in person.
owyheewine| 5.7.09 @ 10:07AM
Now that you've explored the west, it's interesting that you've settled in Idaho. You are obviously a man of good taste. When you ventore across the state, drop by and we'll share a glass of my wine on the deck overlooking the Snake.
Kent| 5.7.09 @ 10:15AM
If you ever plan to visit Washington St. I would recommend not missing Highway 20 through North Cascades Nat'l Park. As much or more relief than the Grand Tetons! Maybe on the start of the trip to Alaska. Thanks for the great piece. It reminded me of my traveling youth!
cary| 5.7.09 @ 11:07AM
Bill, I drove out west from Ohio for the first time in 1972 to attend Western Washington State. Those years saw many car/camping trips back and forth through all of those 11 States. What a glorious country and what a glorious people. Red, white, brown-all Western Americans full of good cheer, a helping hand and stories that this Ohioan will never forget. Hope to mark up a new map while I'm still able.
Marc| 5.7.09 @ 11:09AM
Hi neighbor!
Hope you can make it to Eastern WA sometime; just a few hours west of you. And we are NOT part of the 'Left coast' like the Seattle area. Check us out; the farmland of the Palouse is gorgeous; then come north to Spokane for small city life. God bless you.
Irish Spectre| 5.7.09 @ 1:01PM
I'm reminded of a two-day drive I took alone back in the spring of '92, from Los Angeles, through Death Valley, then north up a two lane highway through the Nevada mountains, to Rt. 80, then east into Utah, past Salt Lake, to Salt Lake City.
The Nevada drive through the mountains and old silver mining towns, and past vast ranch tracts, remains an awesome memory.
...really, really starkly beautiful terrain, to this Easterner, at least, but dangerous too; how many times I kissed the road shoulder while taking in the spectacular views as the highway wound through the mountains, I shudder to recall!
rssg| 5.7.09 @ 2:24PM
The American West is still wonderful.......although it may soon become Mexico thanks to endless family "chain" immigration.
Think about it.
The big city, government dependent metro-sexuals like Barry Hussein are winning.....at least for the moment and since they control the media and the public schools, that will ensure generations more of big government loving, statist, feminized collectivists.
Woo-hoo.....give me my government healthcare!!
Don| 5.7.09 @ 3:06PM
Great story. I am in an office down by Wall St.
I would like to fly across the US in a Piper Cub with the windows open and see it all.
All the farms, all the fields, all the creeks and rivers... in our beautiful country...
Then, on the way back, I'd like to drive back in a convertible and smell all the smells of the summer or Fall..
We have to have a dream... Maybe someday..
Pingback| 5.7.09 @ 5:52PM
World Currency Unit » Lithocarpus densiflorus links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Alan Brooks| 5.7.09 @ 6:15PM
you are romanticizing the West, it is more tasteless and violent than any region aside from the South.
Howard Hirsch| 5.7.09 @ 11:45PM
Every morning I wake up here in northern Nevada to the view of the Pine Nut Mountains from my window and thank G-d for two things:
1) that I live here, and
2) that Alan Brooks doesn't.
fullmooner| 5.8.09 @ 2:15AM
Interesting, descriptive article followed by well-deserved complimentary comments - - and in waddles the skunk at the garden party, Alan Brooks.
Ah, but then Howard Hirsch ripostes. Perfect! Mixed a few metaphors there, I know skunks don't fence.
Alan Brooks| 5.8.09 @ 2:45AM
I DO live in the West, but its culture is trash. I don't have to suck up to your platitudes.
Berkeley is beautiful, but do you have to like the way they live there? the politics?
Alan Brooks| 5.8.09 @ 2:53AM
N. England is most 'civilized'.
Midwest comes next
then the West (incl. Southwest)
then the South.
Look, I admire America for its economy. But its morals?? only other nations being worse is what makes it bearable.
JoP| 5.8.09 @ 3:23PM
Our boy Alan is another one of those "feminized", "moderates"......ha, ha.
He thinks the west is too violent. Boo-hoo Ally boy, boo-hoo. You demostrate you don't have a clue to what being an American is all about. You have a worldview of a professional student, like the Dear Leader in the White House. Someone who never actually worked in their life, got goverment jobs and sipped on tea at university seminars.
Pingback| 5.8.09 @ 5:02PM
Topics about Montana » The American Spectator : The Map links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Sue| 5.8.09 @ 5:08PM
Loved the article! I never traveled outside of my state's borders until after I married. My first major trip was out west to Yellowstone to backpack through the park. We drove for three days to get there and it was very much worth it. We rode back on a Greyhound bus from Livingston, Montana and I can support everything he said about the bus depots. Now, we're planning on returning soon, not to backpack though, too old for that, but still looking forward to it. There is so much to see and do there that I've been out there five times and have barely scratched the surface. The same with the East coast from New York to Virginia. "My Country 'Tis of Thee" is the best!
Kay | 5.9.09 @ 9:24PM
I live in Island Park , only 20 minutes from Yellowstone National Park. If you haven't ventured this way, yet; please do so and fish one of the best rivers in the US. The Henry's Fork of the Snake River. There is something for everyone here in IP. We still have snow, so wait a few weeks. It should be gone by Memorial Day.
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