Road trips get you there bigger

We’re halfway into our road trip, having arrived in Phoenix — where the weather has run ahead of us three or four months. Hard to believe our first day of travel Terry and I encountered snow still up to the eaves in McCall, Idaho. And now, almost to Mexico, we’re baking.

You never know what the open road will give you. It has been generous this time around. We met Zeke, a car salesman, at a Lapwai café on the Nez Perce Reservation. Didn’t know him, but the person we did know was test driving a new vehicle with him and invited him to our lunch. That’s how I heard about being from the reservation — and his teen years with the basketball team and getting the windshield wipers on their bus slashed at an away game.

On my cousin’s farm near Twin Falls, he purchased a new set of rabbit ears to help us watch Gonzaga’s “Elite Eight” game. We graduated to a restaurant with sports coverage as the game wasn’t televised on his paltry three-channel selection. He’s an engineer with a thriving business from home — far too occupied to bother watching television. At 78, retirement is as antique an idea as those rabbit ears.

Great horned owls love his giant locust trees. I woke to their hooting early in the morning. Was outside in time to see one fly onto a limb above me with its breakfast — a large bird. Witnessed the whole carnivorous scene. Not for the faint of heart — but I was awed to see this rare sight.

Pioche, Nev., is pretty much over and done with. Its mining days long gone. Its businesses mostly closed up. There isn’t a single traffic light in all of Lincoln County. That tells you something. But there is a magnificent Irish wolfhound and malamute mix named Caesar who roams the quiet streets with his person. And the Ghost Town Art and Coffee Company in the 1800s blacksmith shop — founded by the bassist for the 1980s heavy metal band Quiet Riot — has art and food and atmosphere fit for a place with a whole lot of traffic lights.

The next town over, Caliente, boasts a restaurant with a large framed picture of its owner’s great aunt prominently displayed. She’s a little unique all right. For over 60 years, beginning in 1919, she traveled with Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus in their “Greatest Show on Earth” — as “Artoria, tattooed girl.” She met her tattoo artist husband in Spokane. They decided they’d make more money if he inked her up and she became a performer. It worked.

I’ll pause this tale with our stop in Las Vegas to visit Alaska friends from two decades ago. At 84 and 88 this year, we were grateful we got to see them again. They put us up when we were evacuated from our home in Alaska’s 1996 Miller’s Reach wildfire. That stuff creates a bond.

This “on the road again” story has a moral. A plane gets you there faster. But a road trip gets you there bigger.