Forgive me but I’m going back on the road again. I don’t know if you’re old enough to take kids on road trips or you’re young enough to remember them with your own families, or whether you never took one; there are pluses and minuses for all answers above.
As a father, they involved long stretches between here and there and you had to concentrate on the road while entertaining our young children. Cosmic Brownies played a part:
As a child, I remember one of the greatest sights ever as we passed through Denver somewhere around midnight and the biggest moon I had ever seen—then and since—was settled just above the city’s skyline, painting the skyscrapers and rugged mountains in gold. I was in the back of an Oldsmobile station wagon. I was the oldest so I got choice of sleeping spots.
Going on road trips was never an option to avoid, as a child and later a parent. It’s a right of passage for us; something that living in America has given us.
I prefer West though I’ve gone East. Driving through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, there was a day where my son and I experienced 100 degree heat, a snow flurry, freezing temperatures, and back into the heat where a dust devil skimmed the road just in front of us, never mind the complete deluge we encountered somewhere between Twilight Zone atmospheric episodes. My wife and I once drove through a dust devil and it was incredible. Debris hit the Jeep as it shook; it felt like going through a car wash dryer on steroids while the temperature gage in the car said it was 119. We laughed the whole way through.
Of course there was nothing like the initial 6.4 earthquake on July 4, 2019 in Ridgecrest, California that shook us on the 54th floor of the Wynn in Las Vegas. The building is constructed to endure earthquakes but it was unnerving. The joints in the building swayed and squeaked for at least ten minutes after the shaking subsided. The next day, while eating at a restaurant in the Wynn, the 7.1 hit. Before we felt anything I saw the light fixtures swaying and then the condiments on the table began shaking, and then my wife and I began to bump up and down in our seats. It lasted about 30 to 40 seconds. People had started screaming before it ended but my wife and I both kind of laughed. Being from Texas, it’s kind of cool to say you went through an earthquake.
On the present trip, my son and I are going to drive from Houston to Carbondale, Colorado to visit an old friend and just see what’s happening in that part of the state. Next we’ll go over to Moab, Utah where I hope to four-wheel drive in Canyonlands National Park if it isn’t too slick with ice. Next, Las Vegas, Nevada.
As a young child, my father worked at the Nevada Test Site where the nukes were tested—and not too far from Area 51!
I still have a great affinity toward Nevada. We’ll probably drive up to Mt. Charleston where we lived in the early 60s. That was one of the coolest (no pun intended) aspects to Mt. Charleston: it might be a 110 in Vegas but up on the mountain, not more than an hour away, you can experience below freezing temperatures and snow deep into the summer.
So, this is a way of saying please don’t expect something weighty from me for the rest of the month. I have been working on a piece that has been a bit difficult because it really is two pieces but am forcing it into one. Maybe I’ll get it done before we leave but probably not. I will also subject you to a rerun or two that most of you probably haven’t read but if you have, discard it into that bottomless email trashcan.
If something really exciting happens along the way, I’ll make some comments in the “comments” section below this piece.
Thanks for being loyal readers and see you in a couple of weeks!
Fred