Road Trip Almanac

It’s just about a month now since we rolled back in to Seattle. The Routan was unloaded and returned to VW’s fleet supplier pronto, but there’s still a pile of REI gear that I have to ship back along with a few other odds and ends. And part of my brain, or maybe it’s my heart, is still leaning back towards the Hi-Line, that northern Montana strip of road punctuated by old grain elevators and barbed wire fences and gas stations where time stopped in 1967. Regardless of the location of my head or heart, my body is firmly back at the keyboard. While I’m here, I thought I’d hammer out a recap of our trip.


…read more.

Going to the Sun Road

Glacier National Park knocks the breath right out of you and replaces it with sheer wonder.

You’re Not From Around Here

They all turned and looked when we walked into the diner. It wasn’t unfriendly, I think they just wanted to see who we were. We weren’t the neighbors or the shopkeeper’s kids or that guy’s wife, the one he brought in from Billings, we weren’t anyone, so the entire place, which stopped, for a blink …


…read more.

Fort Belknap, Montana

It’s not completely abandoned. Even though the arched windows and doors of the church are covered with plywood, there’s a hand written cardboard sign nailed to the fence. “Please keep the cemetery neat. Garbage pickup is on [too blurry from water damage to read].” The air is cold and the sky is blue. There wind …


…read more.

Rodeo Dust

The gate clangs open and the steer springs out into the ring. He’s brown or black with white on his butt. The cowboys are right behind the steer, the rope slices through the air with a whoosh, the horses throw dust up in the ring. The steer races to the opposite side of the ring, …


…read more.

Fargo

Fargo is flat, really, really flat. It’s a grid city with wide avenues that are seemingly all under construction. There are neat little houses with neat little yards, but more than that, there are cookie cutter developments, row after row after row of beige homes that all look exactly the same, with drying lawns out …


…read more.