They say long road trips on your own make you discover things you never knew in yourself and it's true. One part of you is excited to be in new territory gathering stories for those back home; another part of you misses everyone you know and all you knew as familiar. At the same time you begin to feel a certain emotional tie to those with whom you share the passing signs and dotted white lines. You are in limbo, leaving one life behind and anticipating another ahead, suddenly reminded you can be whoever and whatever you want, wanting nothing more than where you've chosen to go, committed only to where you choose to rest along the way.

Road trips to other states are one of my favorite things to do with time off. Since 1998 I have driven or ridden across the USA four times. The first was a family trip to Montana in January, then a few months later I took Greyhound out to Colorado Springs to visit family, in 1999 I helped a friend move to Salt Lake City (took Greyhound home), and for summer of 2000 I finally got to ride with a trucker friend for a month in his Freightliner sleeper cab. That was a fun trip. We went to 24 states, NYC, LA, Chicago and Atlanta, and photos from the ride will be posted when I get them developed! Pictured at left are Erik (outside) and I (at the wheel of the highway pirate ship) with our dream vehicle from high school days, the Freightliner Classic XL. Actually, we dreamed of a Peterbilt 379, but the Freightliner has room to stand up and stretch in the sleeper berth. That became an important feature after only two days on the road! Check out my Online Museum of USA Trucking.

Billboards adverstising Wall Drug in the small town of Wall, SD appear all along interstate 90 in that state. Even in the middle of nowhere, it's almost impossible to be lost when almost all of the billboards tell you exactly how far it is to Wall Drug. It's actually a pretty cool place, and I stopped in during the dead of winter when the wind whistling in the town water tower high above main street was the only sound in the air. They really do give out ice water to travellers there. It's a gimmick that helped the pharmacist save the store from bankruptcy when he bought it during the Great Depression. You can find out more by clicking on the sign! About the only other thing you pass by along S. Dakota's I-90 are the occasional lonesome farms, pictured below.

Tree caked in frozen fog at Badlands National Park, South Dakota. The early settlers didn't like this area very much. Nothing would grow, the climate was horrible, and the land was hard to get past. So they called it the Bad Lands. My first multi-state road trip was to Montana, better known as "Big Sky Country." They're not kidding. You really can see a lot of sky there. That's because the entire eastern half of the state is flat. There are scattered cities built around oil refineries, military bases built around things you're not supposed to know about, and in between all those things you have land. LOTS of land. At night, the speed limit drops to 65 and it's not unusal to see a herd of big game thundering across the road in front of you. It's wise not to exceed the speed limit. Along I-90, better known as the "Montanabahn" you come across the town of Reed Point (below), with a population of 96. This place boasts itself as "sheep drive capital of the world." The photo shows one of the buildings in its downtown area during the month of January. The only other person I saw in Reed Point was the sheriff in his truck. In the town of Hamilton, just a few miles south of Missoula. MT, you can see "Dunc's museum of Natural History." That is, of course, when Dunc isn't out tracking wildlife. He's the most ethically-responsible person I know when it comes to hunting, and tries to follow the same philosophies used by the native tribes when they hunted. He eats the meat, rather than buying meat at the store, and also grows his own vegetables in the shadow of the Bitteroot Range. Raised in Massachusetts, he learned the ways of the wildlife while working as a forester in Alaska. Now retired, he is guides wildlife-tracking expeditions all over the world, for purposes of both hunting and photography. If there's an animal you want to find, Duncan is the man you want to find. If you can.

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