Like a slow flying condor, the beast of a car rolls to the curb on this August California Sunday. The hills surrounding the small town are covered with old oak trees, each one a different shape, as if unique characters, standing beautiful among the dried yellow grass.
Two young girls pile out and head to the ice cream shop. They stand in line among strangers. The crowd at the picnic tables gawk at the blue dinosaur with Colorado plates, plastered with bumper stickers: Cheyenne Frontier Days, Yellowstone, Evergreen Rodeo, Great Basin National Park.
The girls come back with their cones; we need to eat these fast before they melt. Fire up the Mopar V8; pull on to the highway; the crowd stares as weathered blue and chrome Americana cruises off.
New landscape hurls by the window. I think of what we have seen in the last few days: the Nevada Desert, Half Dome, Wild Horses, Old Volcanic Flows, Dust Devils, Giant Sequoia, Tuolomme Meadows, the West. We follow the highway into more new adventures, as if following a ribbon to freedom. That is the best part of this trip, for all of us, and what we will never forget; the feeling of freedom invoked by hitting the road to the West, companions in a quest for fun and adventure.