16 feet of Nissan, 15 feet of trailer

Laura got the good news last Thursday -- she was hired by the school district, and would start work on Monday.

With that major hurdle out of the way, and nothing promising job-wise for me in the near future, we decided this was a good time for me to go to Houston and get the truck and trailer.



Buying a one-way ticket on short notice left us with few options. On Saturday we left the house at 5.30 am and drove nearly three hours -- including up and over the Contintal Divide -- to Bozeman, whose airport looks like an upscale ski lodge.



I flew from BZN to IAH via a six-hour layover at DIA. The flight to Denver took us over Yellowstone and the Wind Rivers and featured a great view of the Tetons. My parents picked me up in Houston, where for once the temperature was NOT 95 degrees, and we had a late dinner at Taco Cabana. I spent the next day packing and unloading and reloading the trailer when I realized there was too much weight on the tongue.

I left Houston on Monday and again went to Bryan, Waco and Fort Worth. It got dark way before the Panhandle but as there were no campgrounds I wound up pulling into the KOA in Amarillo -- perhaps the most expensive campground on Earth -- at 11.30 p.m.

I was up the next day and out by 8. Wanting to bypass Raton Pass, Monument Hill and the mess that is Denver I went north from Amarillo through Stratford and Boise City and entered the weird depopulated world of the plains. Living in the West I'm well acquainted with what appears to be abandoned towns, but in the West you are never that far from a thriving town even when in what appears to be a dead zone. In the plans, however, all you get is dead zone; there are no resort cities to buck the trend. Texas and Oklahoma were particularly bad for deserted cities; in Colorado, meanwhile, there seemed to be more emphasis on redevelopment and downtown beautification.







From Lamar I headed north to Limon and took back roads to Fort Collins, where I joined I-15. After raining all afternoon the rain turned to snow in Cheyenne and started to come down heavy. I spent the night in the truck at a rest area in Chugwater.



The next morning, with light snow falling but the roads cleared, I went to Caspar and then to Thermopolis and Cody before driving into the spectacular Absaroka Mountains at Red Lodge. I spent one final night in Columbus before making it home to Missoula in the early afternoon.



Laura did not like pulling the trailer, but once you get into the West, where there is more space and fewer people, I found it to be almost enjoyable. I set the cruise at 60 and idled along into the sky. Not a bad week. And now our home has furniture!