Thoughts from the road: a south-north-south truck trip

More simply put, we went from Texas to Wyoming and back in a pick-up to be with my family of origin.  The directions could be confusing to anyone wanting to follow my route.  South began in North Central Texas.  The 8000+ feet high elevation's northern destination was near South Pass, not far from Atlantic City.  Being with one's family of origin can sometimes be as confusing.

Visiting family members' homes meant hearing a wide variety of types of news coverage of the memorializing of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy.  Some are Fox News folks; some were watching CNN.  Some are in semi-permanent boycott of the news.  None of us could speak coherently about what would become of any health care reform legislation.  Polarization seems much worse

Along the road we saw signs that a recession has been in progress.  Many small towns had smaller populations and more empty buildings.  Some seemed to be surviving better because of good crops brought on by plentiful rain.  Plentiful grass tempted grazing cattle in New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming.  Not all oil wells are pumping, but all windmill farms had grown.  Fewer travel trailers and motor homes appeared until the Wyoming border.  Then it seemed the state was every traveler's destination.

Mile after mile after mile of road re-doing was our driving norm.  The federal stimulus money is flowing out across the land in the form of asphalt overcoats for interstate highways, and small town main streets.  Occasionally, some dollars went for curbs and sidewalks.  We can assume the projects were items that were "shovel ready."  Wyoming seems relatively unaffected by the recession.  Colorado homebuilding seemed to have slowed a bit.  Rural Texas has been hit hard, except for the big agribusiness acreages now planted largely to corn for fuel.  Cattle feed lots are largely empty, but bay calves abound in most pastures.  Wildlife was abundant: camels in the Panhandle, buffalo in Texas and Wyoming, prairie dog towns, healthy deer with big racks, antelope from Texas and New Mexico to Wyoming, and big fat Canadian geese cleaning seed from harvested grain fields. 

Our family is rather tame so we do not qualify as wildlife.  And now my siblings and I are the oldest members of our family.  Our parents are no longer with us.  My dad's birthday would have been today.  Natives of Wyoming and Nebraska, respectively, my dad and mom loved the wide open spaces of both Texas and Wyoming.  And now they are at rest on a hill that looks west to the Rockies.

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