Summer time. The sun stays up till nine or so slathering me with that much needed Vitamin D, and my brain kicks into automatic road trip gear. A full tank of gas, a clean windshield, an ice chest in the back seat, and the horizon’s the limit. Roll the windows down and the scents of newly mown grass or hay, honeysuckle, or even wet dirt and worms after a shower tempt me to hang my head out the window like a dog.
It sure beats waiting in line to get frisked, waiting some more, and then dozing in a cramped seat looking out at acres of clouds, not to mention jiggling to those lovely bumps and grinds of turbulence. Feeling the lay of the land leading to your destination is surely preferable when time permits, and, what's really cool is you can change your destination on a whim. Drive the road not so frequently taken. Stop and stretch your legs and have an ice cream cone or visit with the lady in the gas station about the storm they had last week. Did you know that when you fly to the mountains by plane, you’re much more apt to get altitude sickness than if you drive because your body doesn’t have a chance to gradually accustom itself to thinner air?
Every year my dad insisted we get out of Dodge when his vacation rolled around no matter how many household projects needed tending."Time to hit the road and see how the other half live," he'd say. So, we always took a two-week vacation in mid to late July and were on the road camping over my birthday, July 20. (Having a summer birthday was a bummer, for I missed out on birthday parties and classroom treats, but now that I am a teacher and stepping into those “later years,” I cherish my summer birthday because I can ignore it if I wish or celebrate it to the extent I want without well-wishing staff hanging up black balloons or bras all over my yard or room. I'd rather sneak into the sunset, thank you.)
Baba, my grandfather, called his children "the gypsies." Every summer my mother, the oldest, as well as her two younger sisters and one brother, would load up families and campers and away we’d go, sometimes just a general direction in mind: East, South, North, but most of the time it was West, a wagon train of sorts, more like pioneers than gypsies. Truth be told, my grandfather, was envious. If he’d have been younger and in better health he’d have joined our band for sure.
This year my husband and I trekked out to Butte, Montana to attend the National Folk Festival. He had read an article about it in the travel section of the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, so we checked the website, and our plans began to gel. The Festival is a yearly event that is held in the same city for three years, and then moves to a different location. This was Butte’s second year of hosting the Festival. It will be there again next year, so if you enjoy good music, food, culture, horses and fun, give it serious consideration. A recent poll reported that Butte is rated one of the top five places to retire, considering housing costs, recreation opportunities, beauty, and services. I concur, but what about the winters?
We made our plans four weeks before the festival and hotel or camping accommodations in Butte were all booked, so we opted for Bozeman, seventy-some miles this side of Butte. I90, four-lane and scenic, zipped us across the mountains to the festival in about an hour. Butte, once a copper-mining mecca of one hundred thousand people during its hay-day is now home to less than thirty thousand. As we rounded the last curve into Butte, our gaze was immediately drawn to the humongous human bite from the mountain, revealing a gaping wound of orange rock.
The journey: the first day we left about two-thirty in the afternoon and decided to stop at Hutch’s Motel in Presho, Nebraska at about 11 p.m. We thought about resting in the car, but a comfy bed and hot shower were too tempting. We walked into the lobby; a TV and lights were on, and we were greeted in a friendly, straight-forward manner by a sign on the counter: "Self-Registration: Please choose your room and take a key; fill out the card and in the morning pay $45 at Hutch’s Café and Restaurant next door. Thank you."
Never experienced anything like that before. The trust system of hotel management. The rooms were clean and the shower hot, and the next morning at Hutch's Cafe we paid our bill and bought our breakfast which was delivered by a wry and dry comic character; if her name wasn’t Flo, it should have been.
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