Roadtrippin'

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

It's that time of year again, the merry month of June when Pa Rock packs his comfortable Kia Soul and heads out on the open road.  Last year, at just about this same time, I drove to Oregon by way of Canada - going straight north out of Kansas City to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and then left on Canada Highway 1 across the prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and on across the more scenic province of Alberta, and even into British Columbia and across the Canadian Rockies before heading south into the Idaho Panhandle - and then east across a slice of Washington before hitting the Portland (Oregon) traffic and going on south into Salem, the capital of Oregon.   Whew!

This year I am scratching Canada from my itinerary and either going across Nebraska or South Dakota as I head west.   Nebraska is a straighter shot to where I'm headed, but South Dakota is far more scenic.  I guess I'll decide when I come to the first fork in the road.  Was it Yogi Berra who said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."?

Today I am headed to the Kansas City area where I have a couple of errands to run, and tomorrow morning I will leave there as the sun is rising.

The only sad note is that I am leaving Rosie at home.   She will be eleven next month (seventy-seven in dog years - the same age as me),  and I think the trip would be too hard on her.  Rosie and I have gotten very close in our dotage, and I will miss her, and I fear that she will miss me and be worried that I am not coming back.

My destination is my daughter's home in Salem where I try to visit each year.  I have business to attend to in Seattle, so Molly and I and her two youngest children, Judah and Willow, will (hopefully) be taking the train from Salem to Seattle, spend three nights there, and then train it back to Salem.  We will be traveling through Portland, Oregon, going and coming.  Portland is a great city with a very politically engaged, progressive populace, and so is Seattle.  Trump is declaring war on Democratic-run cities, and I'm sure both Portland and Seattle are high on his hit list - so we might even get to see some of the ICE-capades during our train excursion.

Blog entries at The Ramble will probably be shorter over the next three weeks or so,  and will likely be more of a travelogue than political venom.  That's a good thing.   I could use a break from all the Trump crap, and I suspect the few who drop by regularly to partake of my witticisms could too.

Enjoy the summer;  it begins Friday - and watch out for me if you're on the road.  (And if you can't find the fork in the road, it's probably because I took it!)