Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

On the road…again!!! in 2018

On the road again…is not just a line from the Willie Nelson tune of the same name.  On the masthead of the older Chronicles of a Footloose Forester, the catchy expression (that he pinched from Willie Nelson) was a stimulus to share travel stories and has continued to be a long-standing aspiration.

The last time we were On the road…again!!! on a longish jaunt, The Bengal Tiger and The Bear travelled west from their modest home in rural Greenbackville,Virginia to points west that included stops at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and the Devil’s Tower National Monument in NE Wyoming.  On that bucket list trip, we continued westward to see the Great Salt Lake, our turnaround point, decided largely because Grand Daughter Jaelyn Hunt wasn’t feeling the wide expansiveness of the western landscapes and life styles.  In any case, the senior (choke) citizens put 5,500 miles On the road…again!!!

Flash forward to 2018 and the now 80ish Footloose Forester was On the road…again!!! with The Bengal Tiger and her cousin Sothi from France and Sothi’s husband Phillipe Rech. The trip was back to Mount Rushmore, back to the Devil’s Tower, and back to the wide expanses of South Dakota and Wyoming.  Our travel companions remarked about the small towns, the flavor of the real West and of the discoveries that popped up in the form of an occasional cowboy, and the unexpected plentitude of the Chinese food that was served to us in Gillette, Wyoming.  That may have had something to do with the Chinese links between The Bengal Tiger and the Chinese waiter who hailed from China and was now working at the Hong Kong Restaurant in Gillette.

No Great Salt Lake this time, but the 3,800 miles on the odometer was evidence that we are fond of travel.  As a bonus, this time around, we were delighted to see about a dozen rock climbers as they worked their way up and back from the top of the Devil’s Tower. 
 

A climber in green shirt is a mere speck, two columns to the right of the one with a broken bottom 

There are a few photos of climbers but they appear as mere specks and may make more for interesting conversation than convincing evidence.