The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Tonight is my last in this ruggedly beautiful state. I am spending it – for no particular reason other than that it’s on my route – in Missoula. Tomorrow morning I shall head for the nearby state line with Idaho. I had a wonderful scenic run from the rather tacky,…

My plan yesterday casually to take in Yellowstone en route to my hotel was – I now know – absurd. As Londoners say it was Dagenham (i.e. two stops beyond Barking). This is a park so big it needs gas stations! I drove more than 130 miles today on park…

I am not sure my plans for today were among my best-laid. Anyway, agley they ganged. All started well with a pleasant two hour run through Montana to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. I arrived just in time to join a bus tour organised by the Crow Nation, on…

I had a great evening yesterday at a Western style saloon in Keystone, SD with good country music and some rather feeble attempts at period raunchiness. The waitresses, despite being clad in risqué outfits and red garters, managed still to radiate down-home innocence. They are probably all solid churchgoers. Still,…

I rose early full of beans and looking forward immensely to today’s short drive. The day promised the fabled Black HIlls of Dakota, followed by the carved mountain called Rushmore. I ate my “complimentary” breakfast and hit the road. I had the misfortune to overtake a slow vehicle at just…

I don’t know how many miles I did today because I forgot to reset my trip computer. Let’s just call the last two days an average of about 250 miles each – a little below my target. On the other hand, I am comfortably exceeding my target average speed of…

I woke early, full of anticipation for the road. I set off westwards towards Colorado, pausing at the town of Colby, KS to visit the Prairie Museum of Art and History. Kansas doesn’t have a lot of history. It only celebrated its centennial in 1961. The museum, organised by a…

Dodge City did not disappoint me. This place of my childhood imaginings, this scene of a thousand cowboy shows, has made a good fist of preserving its brief moments of infamy. The truth is the Dodge we all “remember” did not exist for very long at all. Bodies were buried…

I liked Oklahoma very much. I saw the local people at their best in a crisis and it was impressive. Over breakfast at my hotel in Guthrie this morning, I heard two locals, a hotel guest and a lady who worked there, discussing how the tornado will be old news…

My Texan B&B redeemed itself this morning with an excellent breakfast prepared by a friendly, personable chef. I was beginning to think everyone in Texas was a bit cold, by American standards at least, so thank goodness for her. I had checked the weather forecasts and the heaviest storms were…