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As patriotic Americans, we certainly wanted to support the cause, no matter what sacrifice might be asked of us. When the commander-in-chief urged us to travel to demonstrate that we weren't scared by terrorists, we knew we had no choice.
We didn't have much time or money, either, so air travel was out of the question -- there may be people who have three hours to spend standing in line to be checked for holding toenail clippers, but Martha and I are not among those people.
Thus we had to take a road trip for our patriotic sacrifice.
My first mistake was to believe all that stuff I'd read about how the tourist industry has been desperate since Sept. 11. Maybe that's true in New York City, but I had visions of our heartland motels running at 20 percent of capacity, trying to lure travelers with $17 rooms, and of restaurants offering two-for-one meals or $4.95 prime rib specials.
But they were doing their patriotic duty, too. The authorities want us to go forth and spend money, and the motels and restaurants are making sure that we spent the customary amounts on food and shelter.
Further, most places seemed busy. Maybe that's because other people were thinking like us -- they too felt a patriotic compulsion to exercise their credit cards, and yet they wanted to minimize the risks, so they ventured to what should be the safest place on the continent: Utah.
You have to figure that the ruling party will look after its own, and the Beehive State is the most Republican state in the Union. They've got all kinds of additional security under development in preparation for the 2002 Winter Games in and around Salt Lake City. And in a state where a lapsed Baptist from Colorado can stick out as decadent coffee-drinking Gentile, you can be pretty sure that foreigners would be rare and quite conspicuous.
Or so I thought. One clue came in a motel room in Panguitch (I didn't learn how to pronounce it, but it appears to be a Ute word like our Saguache, and so the pronunciation likely has little connection to its spelling).
The desk drawer held the usual Gideon Bible, along with
what you'd expect in Utah. Sort of. It was Das Buch
Mormon.
The motel clerk recommended a traditional American cholesterol parlor whose walls were adorned with taxidermy, just like every rural cafe in Colorado 25 years ago.
It was a sausage and rib joint which sensibly placed a
roll of paper towels on each table. It had a cowboy band
that opened with Cool, Clear Water.
Every other patron in the packed room began to clap and
stomp in time with the music. When the song ended, I could
overhear our fellow diners. They said things like Die
wurst ist gut
to each other.
The next day, I managed Guten Morgan
and Es
geht gut
a few times, trying desperately to recall more
from my year of high-school German. Rural Utah was the
last place where I ever expected that class to be of any
use, and yet everywhere we went -- Capitol Reef, Goblin
Valley, Natural Bridges, Goosenecks -- English speakers
were a minority, and German seemed to be the leading
language.
They have mountains, trees and good beer, so why would they travel to another hemisphere? A bilingual tourist told me that millions of Germans are fascinated by the American West, thanks to the popular potboilers churned out a century ago by Karl May, a German writer who never saw the land he used as the setting for the shoot-'em-up adventures of Old Shatterhand.
The German tourist also told me that they don't have deserts at home, and so it was worth the trip to see the chromatic slick rock with the strata, spires and hoodoos.
I live in a desert, but one with mountains instead of canyons, and I live in a tourist town, but not one that attracts any substantial number of visitors from other countries.
So it was a surprise to learn that many of our
national parks
are really international
parks.
The West once exported silver and uranium; now
it exports scenery by accommodating tourists.
And Utah is very accommodating, moreso than Colorado, with scores of scenic pullovers and roadside parks. Official Colorado highway maps can be hard to find; Utah maps are abundant, and they're printed on better paper.
As for wildlife, Martha saw her first wild turkeys along the Sevier Canyon, and we saw our first wild bobcat scampering across the road on Cedar Mesa. And as it turned out, we missed some wildlife in Salida.
Or so it seems, appears. Sunday morning, my next-door neighbor, Walt Golden, said I needed to look at something that had appeared the previous morning near the front of his driveway, about a yard from my yard.
It was bear scat. This means you could be a lot safer if you travel than if you stay at home.
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