Driveabout (DA) 2015

Hi, folks!  It's good to be back, but it's proving to be something of a challenge, blogging off my iPhone (which, I'll just say, I do not love; probably more on this later).  As if travel blogging weren't already kind of surreal, throw in poky typing, a rambunctious spell-checker (I have fewer goofs with extended verbiage, apparently), and wi-fi anxiety, and one frequently chooses other activities.

But it's good for me to write, and there's been some clamoring from the back (hi, fanno-tryon).

So, here i am, driving around in 2015. For several reasons, I'm en route from Portland to Albuquerque, which I'll get into later.  Also, on my last driveabout in 2009, I realized I had given Montana too brief of a look, so SW MT was on the itinerary for DA15.  Which looked like this:

Portland--Missoula--Butte--Little Bighorn--Denver--Albuquerque--Mesa Verde--Moab--Golden Spike--Portland

Writing now from Denver, I can say that's PRETTY accurate so far.  I'll try to catch up in the next few days, especially as I get access to real keyboards.  The first couple of days were pretty low-key.  The drive to Missoula was fairly blast-furnacey, with 105 degrees in Pasco on Saturday, and a firecast (oops, I meant "forecast") for Sunday of 110.  Ouch.  Everyone in Portland nods their heads knowingly at this point.

But Missoula was relatively cool, though still too warm, and pretty cute.  I met my friend David there for dinner, and we talked at length, as is our habit. Sunday morning I walked around downtown.  It reminded me a bit of Corvallis: definitely a college town, but clearly more than that, too.  It'd be easy to see living there, for a while.  In fact much of Montana felt simpatico.  It's just...the distances. Everything seems really far to me. Butte, the next stop, is an hour and a half away.  At 75mph.  Which is the posted speed limit, I hasten to add.  You'd get used to it, I suppose, and spend a lot of time singing to yourself, but there's really no way around it.

AND, we've got it easy.  Because my route pretty roughly approximates Lewis and Clark's, I've been thinking a lot about the contrast.  In this part of the world, where I can cover over 100 miles in a little over an hour, THEY had days when covered a little more than 2.  Are we the spoiled children of history, setting up camp in all these impossible places? *shrug*

Dunno. But the answer will have to wait 'til after breakfast.