Way back in 1970, I recall being startled when respectable
folks would measure their trips around Wyoming by how many six-packs of beer it
would take to cover all those long miles.
Thankfully,
those days are long gone. My respectable friends no longer do it, I can assure
you.
Back in those
days, we drove cars and pickup trucks that had bench seats in the front and in
the middle often was a cooler full of ice and refreshments.
Later on, I
measured my trips in packs of cigarettes.
I was never a heavy smoker and could do just about anything without
smoking – except driving.
There was
something about getting behind the wheel that caused me to want to smoke. My daughter Shelli Johnson, even as a junior
high kid, would go through my bags and find my cigarettes and destroy
them. She finally got me off them and I
have not smoked cigarettes since.
Readers of
this column know that Nancy and I travel a lot and now, during all that
windshield time, we measure our trips by how many packs of gum we chew.
We just got
back from a 2,100-mile jaunt to the northwest and went through ten packs of
gum. That is a lot chewing! But I digress.
Wyoming’s
brilliant fall colors were just fading as we started our trip. Wind River
Canyon was brilliant in places and Thermopolis was spectacular. As we drove
into Montana and down to lower elevations we caught the fall colors at a
perfect time. I had an AAA Auto Club
board meeting in Helena.
We welcomed
Debbie Disney of Casper to the AAA board replacing the late Leslie Blythe of
Casper who died of flu complications earlier this year.
After the meeting, we took US
Highway 12 west through some amazing stands of yellow trees.
Interstate 90
through Montana, Idaho and Washington offered a full view of fall colors. Sorry
to have been missing Wyoming’s but we got our allotment of leaf-turning beauty
to satisfy our needs.
Went by funny-named
places like Smelterville, Idaho and Fishtrap and Steptoe, Washington. We
traveled to Pasco and Leavenworth, Washington, with our son Mike, his wife Lisa
and their four kids. I was stunned to see it was only 380 feet above sea level in
Pasco in the Columbia River Gorge. Quite a drop from our 5,300 elevations in
Lander.
My son lives
in Grant County, Washington, which is one of the major Ag counties in America. Lots of potatoes. Most of McDonald’s French fries
come from there.
The county is
about 70 percent Hispanic as generations of immigrants worked that area as Ag
workers. Now they are involved in all walks of life.
It got me
thinking of some recent conversations during the Wyoming gubernatorial campaign
about adding value to our Ag products here.
Sounds like a good idea. But who
would be doing the work? Would we end up importing workers? I know of places in Iowa and Kansas where
local economic developers built huge Ag processing plants but then watched in dismay,
as no local people would work in them.
Those
communities were changed culturally when immigrants came in to do the nasty
work. There is nothing wrong with this but it can serve as a cautionary
tale. The Grant County experience shows
that after a couple of generations of assimilation, everything turns out just
fine.
Wyoming’s fuel
prices were about the lowest of any state. It appears that Washington just
taxes the heck out of fuel. Montana and Idaho are not far behind.
Speed limits
were inconsistent. Washington has a speed limit of 70 for cars and 60 for
trucks on Interstate 90. Idaho also had a limit of 65 for trucks. Made me
wonder whom the lobbyist is in Wyoming for truckers where semi drivers get to
drive so much faster?
So there we
were, driving 70 mph across one of the flattest places on earth in Washington
and off in the far distance was this bump on the horizon? Is that a local butte? Nope, it was Mount Rainier,
the giant volcanic mountain one hundred miles off in the distance. Interesting.
We came home
through Jackson Hole on a beautiful day when the Tetons glistened in the
sun. We were too late for the fall colors
on Teton Pass and Togwotee Pass but sure enjoyed the vistas on a perfect Wyoming
Indian Summer day. It was good to be
headed home. And we were tired of chewing gum!
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