By Kerry Speckman
I don’t know how Lewis and Clark did it. When the American surveyors set out to explore the uncharted West in the early 1800s, they did so on foot, by boat and on horseback with little more than rifle flints, mosquito netting and a book on botany.
My brother Billy and I, on the other hand, embarked on our own
cross-country journey in the comfort of a 2001 Dodge Caravan with modern conveniences like cell phones, credit cards and AAA membership, and didn’t even make it out of our departure city without incident—namely, a power steering belt that snapped not three minutes out of the driveway.
And it wasn’t just mechanical problems that made 21st-century gadgetry integral to surviving our 10-state, 3,201-mile trek from Jacksonville, FL, to Big Sky, MT, by way of Las Vegas. A mile into Florida’s Osceola National Forest, for instance, I couldn’t remember if I had turned off the oven in my apartment—thank goodness for Billy’s cell phone! Or the subsequent 465-mile stretch to Baton Rouge with nothing but pine trees, scrub brush, more pine trees and an occasional cow as scenery—hallelujah for CD and DVD players! Anti-lock brakes, as we learned, also come in mighty handy when trying to avoid turning armadillos and coyotes into hood ornaments on the back roads between Denton and Claude, TX. A hotel room with cable TV and Internet access helps, too, when you are spending the night in a city hit by a snow storm no one expected (no one more so than me and my equally geographically challenged brother who had no idea it even snowed in Albuquerque).
Yet, as much as we depended on technology to get us from point A to point B, it was the natural (read: unmodernized) wonders that truly fueled our journey: The ginger-colored plains of Arizona’s Painted Desert juxtaposed against the sweeping majesty of Mount Tipton; the vast chasms of Nevada’s Black Canyon, which surrounds Hoover Dam; and the Virgin River Gorge, located—ironically enough—just outside of Sin City; the multicolored canyons and rugged mountains that sprawl across Utah and Idaho. We saw deer and eagles, cactus and tumbleweeds, and our first snow flurries in 20 years.
But it took our arrival in Big Sky Country to really take my breath away—and it had nothing to do with the altitude. Billy, his new boss and I had just finished lunch at The Yellowstone Club, where Billy was starting work the following week (hence, the reason for our trip). From our window seat at the Rainbow Lodge, we had a spectacular view of Lone Peak, blanketed in newly-fallen snow and dotted with towering Ponderosa pine, giving me pause to reflect on everything we’d accomplished (first, not getting lost; second, not running out of gas; third, my not killing him for smoking in the van; and fourth, his not killing me for singing in it) and everything we’d seen in the previous 10 days.
Like I said, I don’t know how Lewis and Clark did it, but I sure know how they felt.
To plan your own Montana adventure, call or visit your local AAA Travel Counselor.
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