August

My idea had been hatched in the throes of winter, sitting at my tying desk mulling over the coming fishing season. Several of my friends and myself were already planning for a week in Yellowstone in August, but, calculating my work hours, my job would probably end well before then. Perhaps as early as mid-July. There was no sense in waiting around Columbia for them, so instead I decided I would go out west ahead of them by a couple weeks, road trip, fish, partake in some local adult beverages, and see what else I could get into.

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The job ended with the month of July, which seemed fair enough. I climbed into my car- a Saturn 4-door sedan with 148,000 miles (epic, right?) and balding tires, and headed west on I-70. The plan was stay on 70 west to Kansas City, then head north on I-29 and pick up a friend’s gear north of town. From there, head up to I-90 and cut across South Dakota, into Wyoming.

I like driving at night- particularly states like Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, and the rest of the flat ones. I know nothing more droll than looking out at vast expanses of corn and soybeans, punctuated on occasion by a farmhouse or a tree or a windmill. At least once you get farther west, say eastern Colorado and Wyoming, things are still flat- but sufficiently different to seem more interesting than I suppose they really are.



I really had no plan on how to get there, just a route on a map. No daily itinerary, no expected mileage. I wound up crashing at a rest stop somewhere around the middle of South Dakota, near Chamberlain. It was 2:30 in the morning and the place was packed with RV’s and motorcycles. Sturgis began the next day, and the whole scene resembled some cheap post-apocalyptic epic; Mad Max meets the central plains…