Road trip

Written by karen on June 19th, 2023

After all the stuff that went on in the last year, things has finally freed up for some leisure activities.

After a week long camping trip to Oregon Pipe National Monument in May, this month I also took a 3-week long road trip across the country.

I experienced many insights from this trip, but the overwhelming one is what an amazingly beautiful country we live in. Driving back roads and camping along the way gave me the opportunity to see many places that I hadn’t seen before. So much beauty. This trip also marked my visit to the 49th state in our country. Only Alaska remains.

States I drove through on this trip included: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (a purposefully small section), Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. I visited White Sands National Park and Badlands National Park, as well as the Cache La Poudre wilderness in northern Colorado and Bears Ears National Monument and Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park and many great state parks. Some pictures are below.

As I drove across the country, mostly on back roads, I saw many billboards and handmade signs. They said a lot about the mood of our nation. (This struck me as a much more prominent display than I’ve seen in the past. Is this new? Or am I more sensitive to it?) Overall, people seem to be arming themselves, getting high, and praying a lot to hope it all works out in the end. Political signs were everywhere, including strong support for the currently indicted ex-president/presidential candidate and opposition to abortion. I saw these sentiments loudly proclaimed nearly everywhere I went, which was alarming. Next year is going to be a hell of a year.

On a more positive note, development in renewable energy was apparent everywhere. Miles and miles of solar panels and windmill farms. Encouraging.

Another thing I noticed on this trip was that many small to mid-size towns that I’d visited in the past seem to have grown considerably. This included places like Tulsa, Cheyenne, and Grand Junction. Lots of big box stores now, more traffic, miles of sprawl. Not encouraging. I wonder how much of this change is a change in my perception having now lived out of the city for so long versus a change in the actual size and layout of these cities. Probably some of both.

Speaking of which, boy am I glad we didn’t move to Moab as we had considered. I’m all for accessibility of public lands, but the development that’s happened in this area made me sick. Helicopter canyon flyovers, sound and light tours, multi-level condo complexes, ATV culture. (Note that I’ve been reading a lot of counter culture conservation work. Hat tip to Jack Loeffler, Doug Peacock, et al.) It’s reminiscent of seeing beautiful wild animals in a zoo.

As our own Chiricahua National Monument is currently being considered for national park status, I have been thinking a lot about the balance of wilderness with public access. Seeing several large national parks on this trip has made me even more fearful of this for our own area. As far as we are from an airport and any real services, we have not been seriously concerned about this in the past, but now my concern is heightened. Even since COVID, we’ve seen changes. Development like this probably won’t come to our area in my lifetime, but I wonder. I applaud the work of conservation groups on these issues, and I’m stepping up my own commitment to this work.

I fear we are killing our planet, but remember the words of longer term thinkers who say that the planet will go on, it is just life on it that will be extinguished.

Cache La Poudre wilderness

This was a lovely remote area with lots of great camping, rafting, kayaking, hiking, and fishing, and not a lot of people.