Our Trip

I retire next Friday, August 5, about 1745 Eastern Daylight Time, 33 years to the day since I started. I thought I would stay home on Saturday, then on Sunday Laura and I are off in the camper van for two or three months hopefully. The plan is to take three weeks to drive to Yellowstone National Park spending time across the high plains and the Black Hills of South Dakota, then three weeks in Yellowstone and the Tetons, three weeks or so in Colorado, then down to southern Utah until we are ready to come home. We have plans to see several friends along the way and we will hopefully be bicycling and/or hiking most days. The camper van is quite comfortable.  It does well in cold temperatures even down into the 20s but we do not have any experience with it in significant heat. I hope we are not too hot in our initial travels across the middle of the country. 

 I am usually uncomfortable with comparisons of  the natural beauty or virtues of specific countries and regions as compared to others. Every area is of course unique with its own history and geography and ecology. Certainly some places take more effort and imagination to appreciate, but I believe it should be possible to find every place interesting. This is my favorite planet.

Having said that, the United States  is exceptionally rich in natural beauty and wild lands that are accessible to the public; we are unusually fortunate. Certainly we have profound problems in our country, and climate change and poor governance are undoubtably damaging many of our public lands.  But gosh, they sure are lovely… we are blessed with national parks conserving landscapes of astonishing variety and beauty, federal wilderness areas with very strict environmental protections, wonderful state parks, state and national forests, national wildlife refuges,  national scenic river and recreation areas, national seashores and more.  Regarding this country’s historic heritage, we have national historical parks, national historic sites, national monuments and more.  Check out the map at 

https://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm.

At this point it is time for a happy paragraph claiming that these vast lands are a national treasure, held in trust  for us and our children’s children, a national birthright equally available to all citizens, our lands to share and enjoy. A lot of that is true; many of these attractions are free; when there is a fee it is usually low and frequently will cover multiple people for multiple days.  Great effort has been spent on facilities and programs for visitors, great care is directed to the preservation and study of these lands.  The National Park Service is my favorite government agency. 

Sadly however, most of these sites are inaccessible to those without the freedom to be away and a vehicle and the money required for travel.  Perhaps equally required are the inclination and tradition to regard this heritage as one’s own, available for exploration and of great value. When we camp most of our fellow campers are highly organized white people with the internet and travel skills to access these areas and secure the required  reservations.  We take it for granted that we are entitled to the enjoyment of these areas within their established rules. Our children have grown up being dragged about the country with the underlying premise being that it is their country and their job to get out in it. I suspect many of our fellow citizens do not feel so welcomed. 

So we leave soon,  mindful of what a privilege it is to be able to travel freely in such a wondrous land.  I will aim to post some photos and text once a week or so. Laura  will hopefully contribute some posts. My posts may or may not be worth reading, but Laura, the former proofreader, will ensure that they will be flawlessly punctuated and grammatically correct.

 On the last page of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the narrator, gazing across Long Island Sound  writes:

 “… as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that  flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green  breast of the New World… for a transitory enchanted moment man must have  held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into  an aesthetic contemplation he  neither understood nor desired, face-to-face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

Here are some pictures from our last trip to Yellowstone in June 2005 with three sons, at that times ages 15, 13 and 11: