I’m not sure when my love of a good road trip took deep root in my soul, but my guess is that it had something to do with growing up in the High Plains of Texas during my earliest years.
We were about forty minutes from a break in the seemingly-endless, flat prairie and rolling wheat fields in the form of Palo Duro Canyon (a quite worthy if not somewhat compact geological marvel), and there were a few pothole lakes around, but the travel to get to any really fishable water involved what for most these days was a serious drive.
There was my grandfather’s fishing camp at the mouth of the Colorado River on the Gulf, but that was a ball-busting ten hour run stopping only to gas and pee when you just about couldn’t manage another mile.
The damned attractive, yet for the most-part spartan southern Rockies of New Mexico were a hustlin’ five and a quarter hours at bare minimum, but getting to the good stuff often took closer to seven hours by the time you wound your way into the final backcountry.
We just took the fairly lengthy drive to access fly fishing/hiking/climbing/hunting for granted, accepted it as part of the adventure, and learned to lean into it and embrace the road. Gas was cheap back in the day, we could backpack for ten days on about $40 bucks of food, and expensive flies were $0.79.
You get to know your traveling companions a bit better on a longer drive; the guys who are ready to pull their time behind the wheel, give up the last Cheetos in the bag, and spring for the next tank of gas can almost take on a heroic aura, particularly when contrasted with the odiferous, snoring (and drooling) tightwad who never seems to have cash around when it’s time to pitch into the gas kitty or buy the afternoon’s fishing beer (even the cheap stuff).
Those drives also taught me the simple pleasure of watching geography and geology unfold as you traipse across the West in particular; you see and feel things from your car or truck that the hurried masses passing overhead, crammed into coach next to the tubby lady from Alabama (no offense) chomping through that little bag of SunChips, can’t even imagine.
My lovely wife and I are just traversing Wyoming on the way back home to Montana, and it’s glorious this time of year, particularly after a bountiful winter, and a cool, pretty damned rainy spring season. The grass is green and high, the rivers are plump and settling into their summer rhythms, and critters are looking fat and happy.
I like to drive.
Image above: Montana Country Road, Jake McGlothlin; Image below: Running the Raft Home to Montana, Mark McGlothlin
