As a native of Wyoming I have an in-grown appreciation for the beauty of that state. I love the wild freeness of the prairies. Sagebrush dotted rolling hills complete with antelope are beautiful to me. Of course, I love Wyoming’s mountains. As a native, I don’t actually count the Tetons and Jackson. Those are beautiful places, but they are full of tourists and tourist traps, so that area isn’t really Wyoming to this native. The mountains I am talking about are the Snowy Range and the Sierra Madre in southern Wyoming. Beautiful beyond any mortal’s imagination – rugged and wild and sparsely populated. Gorgeous.
We are travelling this week. It’s the ‘shakedown cruise’ for our new toy hauler camper. We loaded it up and left last Monday with our ultimate destination being our daughter, Amy’s house. The occasion? Our oldest grandson’s high school graduation. Our trip took us first nearly straight north to Rapid City, South Dakota (through a storm and some really scary crosswinds that bounced around the trailer with gusto and perhaps a little malice!) That’s where we bought the trailer and there was a little bit of work that we needed done on it. We spent our first night in the trailer parked in a Cabela’s parking lot. Not our normal camping venue and an adventure in its own right. It didn’t take them long to fix the details on the trailer and then we were on our way across South Dakota on I-90. We stayed on I-90 through South Dakota (after a fun stop at Wall Drug!), then Minnesota – where we slept at a rest area sandwiched between a motor home with a huge dog and a semi hauling some flammable liquid, then into Wisconsin. I-90 joins I-39, then splits off, and we stayed on 39 to go south underneath the lake at Chicago, then we took a left onto I-80 ending up on Wednesday evening in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Elkhart, Indiana. Definitely not our normal camping. Thursday brought us finally to Amy and Bret’s where we are currently parked, safe and sound, in their wonderful and park-like back yard.
There’s a lot to tell about this trip. I’m thankful for a handy and capable husband who knew what to do when the brakes on the trailer failed and ultimately ended in totally melted wiring. I am thankful that it was not fire but “only” a short and lots of smelly smoke – yay, the trailer didn’t burn down! I am thankful that our shakedown cruise took us to the very city it was manufactured in (Elkhart/Topeka, Indiana) and that a very helpful man named Keith made sure guys came out to our ‘new home’ at the Wal-mart to replace all the melted wires and find the problem to fix our trailer and get us going again. (Even if you don’t believe in guardian angels, there’s no denying heaven-sent people who come to the rescue.)
What I started out wanting to talk about wasn’t the shakedown cruise or melted wires, though. What I wanted to talk about was how very beautiful a drive we had getting here. When you leave Wyoming as a native, it is easy to get all prideful and think that nothing is as stunning as the prairies and mountains we claim. But. The flat expanses of lush, rich, green farmland of South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin are wonderful. I love how church steeples and water tanks jut up from the flat land like exclamation points (Here is a small town!) (This church welcomes you!) I admire how Minnesota is covered in graceful, useful wind turbines slowly dancing a ballet with the breeze.
The farther east you go, the more green you see. Trees look different when you leave Wyoming. The fierce wind of my state require trees to be hardy and rugged in order to survive and it trains and grooms branches to grow in lopsided and gnarled tangles. At lower and seemingly kinder altitudes and climates, trees are allowed to grow tall and have branches that spread out in every direction. I delight in their elegant symmetry.
Actually, I am delighting in the overall symmetry of the world. For every rough and awe-ful vista there can be found a gentle and awe-some one that contrasts with it. I love how God loves and gives us infinite variety!
