For all of our East Coast readers (most of you) I thought I’d say a few things about “The West,” now that I’ve been crawling around on it for a few days. Mostly “facts” but a few mouses/comments/questions.
- It isn’t as much “West” as I remember. Very few people are actually walking around with cowboy hats, cowboy boots, plaid shirts, blue jeans, and spurs. At the rodeo tonight, many people did have hats and boots, but they all looked to clean. So, I suspect, like we did, they donned their normally closeted gear for the occasion.
- In some places, the speed limit isn’t just 65, it’s 70!
- You can drive for 3 days, in the same direction, and still be in the same State.
- Vehicle choices are: gas or diesel pickup truck. That part about The West still seems to be true. And it’s okay to put your dog in the back, even if your pickup is a flatbed (with no walls whatsoever). That leads to the sub-section of this item:
- Dogs in The West have on-demand super glue on the bottom of their feet.
- In some places, the speed limit isn’t just 70, it’s 75!
- Most towns are in some sort of population contest, because they post their procreative accomplishments at the town limit.
- I just wonder how often they go out there with updates? When you only have a few hundred people, do you make updates every time and Aunt Maude dies, or do you have to wait until special events occur, like when Cousin Matilda has twins?
- Who declares the winner of this contest, anyway?
- If you’re at all a curious at heart, traveling hundreds of miles at a time is NEVER boring. The entire terrain changes every few miles… and drastically. And in between, almost every roadside human construction has some remarkable oddity. For example, things spotted in random fields:
- An “open range” – literally – as in, the kitchen appliance with a cook top and an oven door, which was open. Oh, and it had a sign that said “open range” in case you wondered what you were looking at
- 800 sq. ft. houses with literally 10-15 cars parked outside
- oil derricks
- a 60-foot concrete brontosaurus
- collections of neatly organized junk (cars or farm equipment, or, most often, unidentifiable metal)
- abandoned houses, trailers, barns – in various states of abandonment/decay
- full-size dolls/sculptures of people (think trompe l’oeil) doing things like riding a boat off an embankment, crashing into a pond (it would have been more believable if it was an ATV instead of a boat – who drives a boat on land?)
- Driving in the summer is pretty easy. The chain up/removal areas hint at a different story for non-summer months.
- The are always ample shoulders.
- There are no trees, bushes, or curves in the road to obstruct your view.
- In most places, there are 20-30 mile stretches with no intersections, cross-streets, driveways, stores, or gas stations to pose any cross-traffic risks, or to cause you to get lost.
- “Traffic” is defined as 2 or 3 cars within a quarter-mile of each other. If you find yourself among more vehicles than that, double-check: you may be in a Walmart parking lot.
- Basically, it’s possible to simultaneously, drive 70 mph down a road with a 20 mph crosswind, scan all surrounding areas for wildlife (or check the species of each roadkill), track the path of the horizon thunderstorm, answer questions from the passenger seat about how to operate Facebook or the digital camera, carry on 2 different conversations with people in the back of the coach, eat pasta salad, and follow the map… without crashing. It’s pretty much like the “lightsabre battle Tesla advertisement” except there are no Teslas out here. No, seriously: if you’re going to bring a Tesla out here, it would only end up in one of the above-mentioned collections
- In some places, the speed limit isn’t just 75, it’s 80! (No, I haven’t seen any speed limit signs that say something like “reasonable and prudent,” which I read about in a magazine, once.)
- I haven’t seen ANY solar panels out here, and the only windmills were in Eastern Washington, which I still classify as the Pacific Coast instead of The West.
