Home again, home again.

 It's always good to be home.

We have never taken such a road trip before, and certainly never with a dog. That was an experience. She loved the long hikes in the mountains, didn't care for the car rides, especially the long one. 

We, too, experienced new things. We listened to a lot of books on tape (well, Audible), trying to match the words to the Landscape.

So we started with True Grit by Charles Portis, set mostly in the Oklahoma Territory. One of my favorite books of all times, and it was read by Donna Tart. (The Goldfinch, etc). Perfect book for the start of the trip, from Houston to Bartlesville.

On the next two legs of the trip, to Hutchinson, Kansas and then up to Keystone, South Dakota, we listed to My Antonia by Will Cather. (pronounced, we learned, as an-tone-EEE-ah). A wonderful book for driving through Nebraska. And we were on the Willa Cather highway while doing so.

As we drove into Wyoming, we listened to Rising from the Plains, by John McPhee. The story of the geology and early ranching history of Wyoming, as told through the eyes of David Love, who grew up there. 

From Lander to Durango (actually closer to Rico), Colorado, we took a break and listened to Kate Atkinson's book Big Sky. Not, as you might imagine about Montana, but about sex traffickers in England. We'll finish that later.

From Rico to Amarillo and Waco, via Santa Fe, New Mexico, we finished the trip with another Willa Cather - Death Comes for the Archbishop. She has such a great sense of place, and of people, that it was the perfect book to end the trip with.

I am sure I mentioned earlier that I (though not Doreen) was on a Trump Diet and a Twitter Fast, so I did not follow any bog news stories. We did, however, try to count the Trump signs vs the Biden signs.

During the trip overall, I would say that it tended about 5:1 Trump:Biden. There were almost NO signs in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, or Nebraska. Not many in Wyoming. More in Colorado and New Mexico. Anecdotal, and sort of interest. 

Finally, a note about the driving. We tried to stay off of interstates, and mostly did a good job of that.  The longest stretch was from below Santa Fe to Amarillo on I-40, and I can say that was the most stressful, and least entertaining part of the trip. 

By sticking as much as we could to what William Least Heat Moon called "Blue Highways" we really enjoyed the drive. So much so that in the future we will modify our plans so that if we have to take more time, we'll take more time, just to avoid the Interstates. They certainly serve a purpose, it is just that was not our purpose on this trip.

One more thing - I think it fiscally prudent to rent a car for a trip like this. Now, I would have loved to have driven the Tesla, but the lack of charging infrastructure, and the amount of time it takes to charge just made that impractical. And a mini-van, while not sexy, is amazingly practical.

This is a great, big country. Go and see for yourself.