Now, this was a very interesting trip.

         We have been back home in Wyoming for two weeks and are sure glad we are here. Driving a motorhome across five states in the winter can be the topic of an entirely different column.

         While we were in heart of Texas, we spent time with a futurist and a possible future president.

         What they had to say was interesting and pertained to Wyoming.

         Hewlett-Packard Futurist Jeff Wacker is a neighbor to my daughter in a Dallas suburb and we try to have lunch when we are in the area.

         He formerly held that job for EDS, which HP gobbled up awhile back and now he is the single futurist for a company with 300,000 employees. Pretty heady.

         But Jeff grew up in western Nebraska and is as down to earth a person as you can be lucky enough to find. Perhaps my Wyoming roots and his Nebraska roots cause a kinship.

         Jeff is fearful of an Obama reelection. He feels the “Europization” of America is happening and four more years of Barack may put the country on a path that will be almost impossible to reverse.

         He likes the way Wyoming is operated. He says states with commodities will benefit in the future. Wyoming’s coal, natural gas, etc. are much like Nebraska’s corn and wheat. 

         His personal hedge against the predicted upcoming inflation binge is a family farm that he is holding onto in western Nebraska. He says controlling the means of production of “something,” in his case, corn on his farm, which will always be a good hedge against inflation.

“But the new currency in the future will be energy, so Wyoming is ideally situated if you people do the right things,” he says. 

He fears inflation. He justifies his belief in the onset of inflation on how “old” the USA population is getting, which is a small reason, and the big reason is China will call in its debt.

         He thinks this will mean that the dollar will not longer be the world’s currency. When that happened to Great Britain in 1944, the dollar replaced the pound. The pound’s value immediately dropped 25 percent. He sees that possibility coming for the USA.

         It will be even worse with Obama’s reelection. “It will be the new era of serfdom in America. I fear for our country,” he concluded.

         Wacker is often mentioned in best-selling author Tom Friedman’s books (Hot, Flat and Crowded and The World is Flat) and he agrees with Friedman’s ideas that coal-fire power plants are fine as long as we have way more electric cars using that power.

         Wacker says having millions of electric cars on the road in the future will be the equivalent of a huge, giant national battery, which can only be good, because up to now it is so hard to store electrical energy.

         He believes the most significant societal trend heading our way rapidly is robotics. It will change many things in our lives, he concluded.

         Also while in Texas, we noticed that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was headed to north Dallas the day after his big win in three state caucuses.

         My son-in-law, grandson and I went over to enjoy some free munchies. We waited at a Hilton Garden Inn for the guest of honor, who was an hour late.

         He started off with a joke: “A conservative, a liberal and a moderate went into a bar. The bartender said: ‘What can I get you, Mitt?’”

         Santorum was polished and spoke authoratively. He was adamant about the positive future of natural gas in this country. He said that with the prices at historic lows, this is a chance for the entire country to switch from foreign oil to various forms of natural gas, including compressed and liquefied.

         “It only makes sense,” he exclaimed, which made a lot of sense to a visitor from a state, which happens to the nation’s second largest producer of natural gas.

         I was able to get a photo of the candidate with my 11-year old grandson Braley Hollins, which he was proud to show his teacher the next day.

         So during my brief stint in Texas, I was able to glean from a futurist that we should maintain our coal-fired plants. Plus I was able to hear from a possible future president that natural gas should be the power of both the present and future.

         Sure made sense to me.

         As a movie fan, I have been furiously watching movies in contention for the Oscars. I am also desperately trying to figure out a “Wyoming link” to any of them to justify writing this column.

         My favorites are The Descendants, Moneyball, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Help. Not much about Wyoming there.

         One of the nine nominated for Best Picture may have included the line: “It is twice the size of Wyoming but with 65 million people.” Cannot remember which one.

         Biggest Wyoming connection is the nomination of Cheyenne native Daniel Junge’s short-documentary Saving Face. He is one of the producers. The film is about how women have had acid thrown in their faces in Pakistan.

Junge produced an amazing 2002 documentary called Chiefs about the Wyoming Indian High School basketball team and their travails on and off the court.

Back to the Best Picture nominees: we owned a newspaper in Hawaii in the 1990s and The Descendants brought back memories. George Clooney is simply magnificent and deserves Best Actor.

         It is directed by Alexander Payne, who over the past decade, also did Sideways and About Schmidt, two of my favorite movies. He deserves Best Director.

         Best war movie ever made is Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. His War Horse is loved by horse people, of which there are thousands in Wyoming. Some critics panned it calling it “Saving Private Ryan’s Horse.” It may have included that Wyoming quote, not sure.

         Woody Allen’s entry Midnight in Paris is a fun movie, especially for people who appreciate Hemingway, Fitzgerald and T. S. Eliot. Not going to win, though.

         With star power of Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, you could imagine that the 9/11 tearjerker Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close should be a shoo-in. People Magazine said it was the best 2011 movie. Nancy and I found it riveting.

When it comes to being controversial, the Stanley Kubrick of our generation is Terrence Malick. His entry for Best Picture is The Tree of Life. It features Brad Pitt and Pitt was also the producer.

         Lots of people walked out of the movie when it suddenly becomes The Discovery Channel, with wonderful scenes of galaxies and microbiology. Not sure what Malick is trying to say. I was perhaps too sober to pick up his message.

         The movie getting the most nominations is Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. With 11 nominations, you might assume it would be a big winner.

         Rated PG, I watched it in 3D at a huge Dallas, Texas, theatre with my four-year old granddaughter Emery Hollins and found it enjoyable. But long, long, long. 

         I am sure the ending was wonderful but little Emery said “time’s up” after we were sitting there for two hours. My wife says my attention span is similar to that of a four-year old, so I was ready to leave, too.

The movie The Help sure brought back memories of growing up in the 1960s including the JFK assassination. Its focus on the unfair working conditions of black maids in Mississippi made it a powerful movie. If you see it, you will never (and I mean, NEVER), eat chocolate pie again without thinking about this movie.

Moneyball features an incredible performance by Brad Pitt, who could win Best Actor. I love baseball and this true story of what happened to the Oakland A’s is an inspiration.

It would seem odd to me if the silent movie The Artist wins. Since I did not see it, I will quote what my friend (former Kemmerer editor) Sara Millhouse’s impressions:  “I would argue its big themes of hubris and the human damages wrought by changing technology are as big as those of other nominees. I can`t remember the last movie that sent me out of the theatre with such joy.”

Oh, I just remembered. That earlier reference to Wyoming was in The Hangover II. Never mind.

         One last movie Mr. Nobbs needs to be mentioned. It was produced by and stars Glenn Close, whose father was the local doctor in Big Piney for a couple of decades. Recently on the Jay Leno Show she even mentioned driving to Jackson from Bozeman.

         Oddly, Ms. Close has a man’s first name and plays a woman disguised as a man in this quirky movie, which could land her an Oscar for Best Actress.

         That is about the closest Wyoming connection this year in the major categories. Not like Brokeback Mountain a few years ago or Shane a half century ago. 

         We’ll be rooting for Daniel Junge.

         Wyoming is among the most “white” states in the country. Some 90.7 percent of the population is defined as Caucasian.

         In 2010, we had just 563,626 people with 13,336 of those folks being American Indian, 12,361 Hispanic, another 4,748 African-American and 4,426 folks of Asian descent. Thanks to state of Wyoming economist Amy Bittner for these numbers.

         Wyoming will never be called a melting pot. It is a mixture of European-descended folks who generally have found themselves living in a place with lily-white other folks just like themselves.

         This was not intentional. Nobody has accused us of being Nazis or an Aryan state.  

         We even call ourselves “The Equality State” because this is where the first law giving women the right to vote existed. It is also the first place (Laramie) where women first voted. It was also at South Pass City where the first woman held a public office, Esther Hobart Morris, the Justice of the Peace.

         I do not think I have a racist bone in my body. But that does not mean that I do not notice societal differences when outside my normal comfort zone.

         After spending three weeks in an affluent part of Dallas-Fort Worth with my youngest daughter’s family, I can recall many moments where I was the only “white” person around. Never did feel uneasy about it, though. We always felt safe.

         And all these brown and black and yellow folks were not slum dwellers. No, indeed. They were well-paid professionals living successful lives. They drove very nice cars (nicer than mine!) and were doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and other professionals.

         One day I happened to be looking for some bargains at a retail-clothing chain store. While standing in line waiting to check out, I looked around and realized that I was the only “white” person in the entire store. Over 30 people were there. There were African-Americans, Asian-Americans, native Africans, plus persons who could have been from Arab countries, perhaps? Lots of different languages being spoken.

         These folks were dressed in burkas and saris and colorful African dress. They were self-confident. And they had money. And I assume they were American citizens?

         When fueling up my motorhome at a Valero station the attendant was a very handsome and very black-skinned man. His nametag said “Negussie.”

         Was he from Ethiopia? He said yes.

         I asked him: “I went to college 26 years ago with an Ethiopian with the same first name as you. He was named Negussie Teffera. Have you heard of him?”

         “Oh yes,” he replied. “He is a very important man in our country.”

         Great. I was able to contact my old friend Negussie later, both with Facebook and Linked-in. He is, indeed, an influential man in his country. What an odd small world.

         We needed to fill some prescriptions so went to the neighborhood Walgreen’s. The two pharmacists appeared to be from India and their helper was African American. Two Asian-American folks waited in line behind us and another African American was operating the checkout counter at the front of the store.

         Then an older white couple came toward us and asked a question in broken English about over the counter medications for a stuffy nose. I assumed they were Russian or Eastern Europe, but no way of telling. Just definitely not native white American.

         One of the largest populations of native Iranians live in the north Dallas area, apparently the result of folks fleeing the Islamic revolution and fall of the Shah in 1979.   They are professionals and live well. The assumption was that a whole bunch of the Shah’s wealth might have headed to Texas at that time. This is not a slur against them. They reportedly are hard working and well educated and have turned into very good American citizens.

         As a journalist, I can’t help playing the role of the observer. And this melting pot in North Dallas was rich in things to see and absorb, indeed, in the view of a resident of one of the most non-melting pot states in the union.  

         The Plano-Allen-McKinney area of north Dallas is one of the most prosperous areas of what they call the Metroplex deep in the heart of Texas. But if you go there expecting to be surrounded by stereotypical white Americans or even what you might expect in your average Texan, well, think again.

         The place is a true melting pot of people from all over the world who are successfully chasing The American Dream.

         Wow, a snowmobile trip on the Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail and a trek along the old stage trail from Saratoga all the way to Montana were two of many offerings presented when I asked readers for “their” Wyoming Bucket List for 2012 and onward.

         A bucket list, as promoted in an earlier column, is a list of things you want to do before you die, or “kick the bucket.” This was made famous by a 2008 movie of that name that featured Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

         A column of mine that first appeared in 2008 included what seemed like some easy and wonderful things for me to do, most of which were supposed to happen that year. Yet, here four years later, at least three-fourths of them are still undone. I need to get cracking.

Plus with all this input, some very good ideas have been added to my bucket list.

Former Landerite Wendy Jacob wants to snowmobile the amazing Continental Trail, although now that requires a permit or a guide to cross Yellowstone in winter. That trail, which consistently is rated one of the best in the USA, runs from Lander’s Sinks Canyon over to Pinedale and back across the Wind River Mountains to Togwotee Pass and then across Grand Teton and Yellowstone, finishing in West Yellowstone.

I always wanted to do that ride, too, but alas, perhaps in another life.

Lowell Ray Anderson wants to follow that stagecoach road that goes through places I have never heard of called Embar and Blonde Pass. Sounds like an ambitious trip.

Former Wyoming Tourism Director Gene Bryan added “camping out in the most beautiful place in the state” – at Green River Lakes below Square Top Mountain in the Pinedale area. He also wants to re-visit the Red Desert with local historian John Mioczynski and also hike to Hidden Falls behind Jenny Lake at the foot of Mountain Moran. “Those will serve as starters,” he concludes.

Gene, formerly of Cheyenne and Cody, now spends most of his wintertime, anyway, with his wife Jeannie in Tucson.

In my last column, I mentioned a stone arrow in the Red Desert, which I claimed was pointed toward the famous Medicine Wheel east of Lovell high in the Big Horn Mountains. My former Squaw Creek neighbor Ken Richardson sent me photos of the site and said my it “definitely does not” point that direction.

Ken and his wife Ann have a modest goal of traveling Union Pass from above Dubois over the Wind River Mountains to the Pinedale area.

He also said the late Bill Wilson had a goal of visiting every state park and historic site. Laura Nelson Martin also has the goal of visiting all the old forts in Wyoming. Now those are great Bucket List goals!

Former Fremont County Attorney Ed Newell plans to bike the Wyoming section of the Continental Divide Trail. It will be his chance to see “Wyoming’s back country, border-to-border,” he says.

Jared and Joanna Kail took their young daughters on a GPS-guided trip to locate the exact center of Wyoming. Sounds like a great trip.

Butch Egger wants to go back to the Hole in the Wall. He went there 15 years ago “when George Taylor owned the Willow Creek Ranch.” He says his great grandfather Mike Bader was a cook and a lookout for the Wild Bunch back in those pioneer times.

Lois Herbst, long-time rancher near Shoshoni has a fear of heights but would love to have someone take her up on the Chief Joseph Highway and also to the sky-high Medicine Wheel. I think there are some folks out there who just might help her out.

Kathy Browning wants to take her family to Devil’s Tower, which she has never seen. They are in for a treat. That whole area offers so much. She also wants to do Yellowstone in winter with her kids. John Lichty is taking a friend from North Carolina on a snowmobile trip to Old Faithful as part of his bucket list.

Mindi Crabb wants to ride the length of the Wind Rivers “with my sweetie” spending many weeks catching lots of trout. Watch out for the mosquitoes!

Phil Noble wants to follow in the footstep of Judge Pete Arnold.  As an aside, he intends to play every golf course in the state. Fore!

So there are some more great ideas.   What do you want to do for your Wyoming Bucket List? Please email me and I will include it in a future column.