Along the back roads of America

Journal excerpts from ten years ago recounting a 2,869-mile trip through six states, starting with a couple days at our condo in Lava Hot Springs and helping Rachael move to Kansas City to live with her friend Kathryn Kieffer

Friday, July 21, 2000
Utah, Idaho

Our adventure began about 5:00 this afternoon—just two hours after our original target—as our three cars pulled onto north­bound I–15 at Layton: Rachael and Camilla in Rachael's blue Geo Prism, Eliza and I in our green Saturn, and Michael, Meghan, and Caleb in their tan Honda Accord. Traffic thinned out somewhere north of Ogden, probably near Willard Bay, which is about where the battery failed on one of our new walkie-talkies (we hadn't been sure it was fully charged), which we were using between our car and Rachael's.

After we crossed into Idaho and Eliza had to endure my awful rendi­tion of "Here We Have Idaho," we called Mom on the cell phone to re­port we were in a new state. She and Mary were staying home in Bountiful because of Mary's dizzy spells. Shauna and Jacob were in Layton. Cade, Rebecca, and Mimi start­ing today were spend­ing a week at a condo near Eden. Talmage and Carisa were at Lake Powell. And Anna is in Ephraim working at Snow College for the summer.

By 7:00 we reached Lava Hot Springs, a little resort town ten or eleven miles east of I–15 on US 30. With two or three exceptions, we have come here every July since 1980 to stay in our condo at Hot Springs Village. This year we are only staying a couple days.

About 7:20 all of us but Rachael went swimming in the big pool. It was not crowded, and Meghan and Caleb especially enjoyed going down the slide, mostly on Eliza's lap, occasion­ally on Camilla's, never by themselves. Mean­while, Rachael had gone to Shawn's Market to buy food for supper and had macaroni and cheese, rolls, and a berry drink ready for us when we returned from swimming.

Michael and I, still in our wet swimsuits, went quickly to the store to get hotdogs and sherbet to add to Rachael's supper and also fixings for break­fast.

I slept alone in the big bed on the east end of our unit. Michael, Meghan, and Caleb, who started out in the bunk beds, ended up sleeping on the floor at the foot of my bed. Rachael and Camilla each slept on one of the hide-a-beds in the west end. Eliza slept on the bottom bunk.

Saturday, July 22, 2000
Idaho

This morning Eliza and I took Meghan and Caleb for a walk along the Portneuf River that runs through town and back along Lava's Main Street. By the end we were carrying them on our shoulders.

Knowing there was a Pioneer Day parade sometime this weekend, we tried to find out when. A kid in one of the shops on Main Street thought it was today at 4:00, 5:00, or 6:00. The lady in the grocery store thought it was tomorrow at 5:00. And Gerri in the condo office thought it was either at 10:00 this morning or 6:00 this evening, having been told those alternative times, she said, by someone who was actually going to be in the parade. It turned out to be at 6:00 this evening.

Back at the condo, after our walk, Eliza and I fixed waffles, scrambled eggs, and orange juice for breakfast. Camilla cleaned up afterward.We had a pretty lazy day, which is what Lava for us is all about. We spent time read­ing, playing pool and other games at the club house, playing on the swings and other outdoor toys with Meghan and Caleb, watching TV, and such. Caleb likes the trains that rumble by several times a day, just like his daddy did 20 years ago.

This afternoon we went to the ice cream parlor on Main Street, Smitty's Sweet Shop. Caleb, who had the smallest cone possible, was a dripping mess by the time he had eaten all he wanted of his. Sitting in the air-condition­ed shop, eating our ice cream, was a welcome break from the oppressive heat outside. It was a hot one (97 degrees we heard on the news tonight, 103 degrees down in Salt Lake, where poor Mom was tending house with a broken air conditioner that won't get fixed until next Wednesday at soonest).

Michael, Meghan, and Caleb left for home at 3:15, as soon as we had finished at the ice cream store. Shauna had called earlier to see how everyone was doing and to mention her dad had driven up this morning in a minivan and took away their old red car. Wow!

The four of us remaining—Rachael, Camilla, Eliza, and I—played pool, fixed shred­ded potatoes and hot dogs for supper, went to the little parade (actually just Eliza and I went to the 10-minute parade), and drove out to historic Chesterfield, now a ghost town with some of its buildings well preserved. It was founded in 1880 by settlers from Davis County who were finding Utah getting too crowded. We walked through the cemetery, which is well kept, and looked at headstones. Many of the same surnames seen in the Bountiful cemetery were here: Call, Hatch, Holbrook, Sessions, Muir. The earliest birth date we could find was 1822. The earliest death date 1888. The most recent burial 1998.

Back in Lava, we stopped at Shawn's Mar­ket to buy ice and provisions for our travels tomorrow.

Several times during the day we talked with Mom on our cell phone. This way she gets to share in the journey without having to ride in the car or endure the summer heat (except she is doing that at home anyway with a brok­en air conditioner). She doesn't do heat well.

Sunday, July 23, 2000
Idaho, Wyoming

We awoke, ate breakfast, got ready for church, and at 10:00 attended sacrament meeting in the Lava Hot Springs Ward. We re­turned to our condo, packed and cleaned up, ate lunch, and at 1:15 headed east on US 30 toward Soda Springs.

We decided we wanted to see Star Valley, which we'd never been to before, so we headed north out of Soda Springs on state highway 34, a scenic drive that took us north and east into Wyoming near Freedom. We headed south on US 89 through Thayne, Grover, Afton, and Smoot. We reached an elevation of 7,630 feet crossing the Salt River Pass before slipping back into Idaho briefly and then back into Wyoming for the rest of the day.

At Border, Wyoming, we rejoined US 30 and followed it south to Cokeville, east to Kemmerer (the home of J.C. Penney), and southeast to I–80, which we then traveled along past Little America, Green River, and Rock Springs to Rawlins, where we spent the might at the Sleep Inn. The air conditioning had been knocked out by a lightening storm a couple days earlier, so we were given an additional discount off our room. We ate sand­wiches, Jell-o, pop, and cookies in our room. Eliza and I went for a walk at sunset.

We arrived in Rawlins about 7:30, a little over six hours after leaving Lava. Camilla and Rachael drove in one car, Eliza and I in the other. We used our walkie-talkies to communi­cate with each other. Eliza read me chapters from Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine as we traveled. Anna called us from Michael and Shauna's house just as we were approaching the tunnel by Green River. We talked to Mom a couple of times. She informed us that Uncle Irv, my dad's twin brother, had died Friday. He was 85.

Monday, July 24, 2000
Wyoming, Nebraska

Pioneer Day, which we spent at Martin's Cove, Devils Gate, Independence Rock, and Scotts Bluff—all important landmarks along the Oregon, California, and Mormon pioneer trails.

We ate breakfast at the Sleep Inn, filled the cars with expensive gas ($1.65 a gallon), and headed north out of Rawlins on US 287. Not far out of town we waited for about 20 minutes because of road construction. At Lamont we stopped to take pictures of the sign saying "Lamont, Population 3."

Camilla, Eliza, and I had been to Martin's Cove with Mom and Mary three years ago, during the pioneer sesquicentennial. This was Rachael’s first visit. We went through the visitor center, watched a brief film about the experiences of a boy in the Martin Handcart Company of 1856, pulled a handcart out to the Veil Crossing, walked over to Devils Gate, and returned the handcart (with my riding while the three girls pulled me) back to the parking lot.

Next we drove 10 miles or so further east to Independence Rock. Rachael and Camilla waited at the rest stop at the bottom while Eliza and I climbed to the top. (Eliza had been on top of Ensign Peak on Independence Day and now Independence Rock on Pioneer Day.) From the top we called Mom at home and used our walkie-talkies to communicate with Rachael and Camilla at the bottom.

We then continued on to Casper, the second largest city in Wyoming, where we stopped to eat at a Pizza Hut and where Rachael made comments in front of our wait­ress about how ugly Wyoming was. We then head­ed south on I–25 until US 26 took off east toward Nebraska. We arrived in Scotts­bluff a little before 6:00 and checked into our room at the Comfort Inn.

This evening we drove out to Scotts Bluff National Monument, where Donna Davey, one of the park rangers, was very kind in helping us. She let us drive the mile and a half to the top, although it was nearly time to close the road for the evening, and was most helpful when we returned back to the visitor center. She even gave us helpful hints on where to eat and how best to drive back to our motel.

On the way back, as we were driving through Gering, we stopped to eat at a Runza restaurant, famous throughout Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Colorado for its Runza sand­wich, which has German–Russian roots stretching back to the 18th century. The unique blend of fresh ground beef, cabbage, onions, and special spices baked inside home-made bread has been passed down for genera­tions and debuted commercially in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1949, the year I was born. Rachael had a Swiss and mushroom Runza sandwich, I had a tossed salad, and Camilla and Eliza had cheese and broccoli soup and milk­shakes.

Hyde Frederickson called tonight to re­port that Jack White in our ward died this evening. He had lain down for a nap and was gone by two hours later when Helen went in to wake him up for dinner. [I was serving as bishop at the time and felt bad I was not there to assist Helen and her family and even contemplated ways I could abort the trip and get back to Utah. I also wanted to be home for my Uncle Irv's funeral, but in the end I missed both funerals.]

Tuesday, July 25, 2000
Nebraska

This morn­ing, after get­ting ready for the day and eat­ing our standard continental breakfast, we were on our way again. Just east of Scottsbluff we stopped alongside the Bur­lington Northern tracks to see the grave site of Rebecca Winters, a pioneer woman who died at age 50 from cholera as she was travel­ing with her family along the Mormon Pioneer Trail. I believe she is an ancestor of my uncle, Dean Winters.

We continued a few miles more until reaching Chimney Rock, probably the most famous landmark along the pioneer trails. We had our National Park passport, which we had purchased the night before, stamped and saw a film in the visitor center and bought post­cards.

We then turned north on US 385 toward Alliance, where we went to Carhenge a few miles north of town. Thirteen years ago the people who owned the farm decided at a family reunion to build an exact replica (as to size, dimensions, and orientation) of England's famous Stonehenge but out of cars instead of stones. Interesting.

We took pictures, returned to Alliance, ate lunch at McDonald's, and headed east along Nebraska highway 2 through the beaut­iful and isolated Sand Hills country. We passed successively through or by little towns represented by dots on the map: Antioch, Lakeside, Ellsworth, Bingham, Ashby, Hyannis, Whitman, Mullen, Seneca, Thedford, Halsey, Dunning, Anselmo, Merna—many of them so small they didn't even have the water towers or grain elevators common to Midwestern towns.

Mullen, one of the larger towns with 500-some people, located near the Middle Loup River at the intersection of highways 2 and 97, is the only town in all of Hooker County. Another 200 people live scattered on farms throughout the rest of the county. Just east of Mullen, at the county line, we crossed from the mountain into the central time zone.

At Broken Bow we stopped for gas and a snack. Less than 20 miles further, at Ansley, we turned off highway 2 onto 92, with a clear shot east (through half a dozen more coun­ties) to Omaha. This portion of the trip was through lovely rolling farm country rather than the rolling grasslands of the Sand Hills region. Loup City, Ashton, Farewell, St. Paul, Osceola, Shelby, Rising City, Wahoo were the towns we passed. A gorgeous sunset was at our backs at Wahoo.

It was dark by the time we reached our Comfort Inn in Omaha. We had spent the entire day traveling the back roads of Nebraska, not once coming anywhere near an Interstate, and it had been a wonder­ful day. We ate a late supper in our motel room with take-out from an Arby's restaurant.

Wednesday, July 26, 2000
Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri

Every other day the girls switch cars: Eliza rode with me on Friday, Sunday, and Tuesday; Camilla rode with me on Monday and again today.

This morning we visited the Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters, a lovely new visitor center built since our last visit here seven years ago when we were taking Rachael to Peace College in North Carolina. In the center we met a Sister Wakefield, a niece of Garth Wakefield, who works with me in the Missionary Department. We also met an Elder and Sister Ross Williams, whom we knew in Rose Park 24 years ago. After taking the tour of the center and watching a film about the Saints' stay at Winter Quarters in 1846–47, we walked through the peaceful pioneer ceme­tery and saw the new temple under construc­tion next to the cemetery. It is supposed to be completed by the end of the year.

Back on I–680, we drove across the Mormon Memorial Bridge into Iowa, joined I–29 and headed south into Council Bluffs, where we found the reconstructed Kanes­ville Taber­nacle, where Brigham Young was first sus­tained as the second President of the Church, with Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards as his counselors in the First Presi­dency, at a special confer­ence on December 27, 1847. Elder Williams, whom we had seen over in Winter Quarters, was our tour guide. He let Camilla and me play an old organ—over a hundred years old, he said—in the tabernacle.

We ate lunch at a Blimpie res­taurant up the street, got gas, found I–80, and headed back across the Missouri River into Nebraska. Back in Omaha, we headed south on US 75 down the eastern edge of Nebraska rather than driving on I–29 down the western edge of Iowa. The Missouri River forms the boun­dary between the two states.

South of Nebraska City, we turned off US 75 onto state highways 128, then 67, to find the little town of Talmage, population 246, and took pictures. (There is also a Tal­mage in Kansas that has only 126 people living in it.)

We returned to US 75 and at Auburn turned east on US 136, crossed the river into Missouri, and headed south another 100 miles or so on I–29 to Kansas City. From our visit here last summer, we were able to drive straight to the Kieffers' house at NW Adrian Terrace, which is just off I–29 at exit 5. Mom and Dad Kieffer are in Utah this week, Kenny had left for work at 3:30, and Kathryn was supposed to have been home from work by 5:00. It was about 6:45 when we arrived, and Rachael went through the garage, which was not locked, and peeked her head in the door into the house, which was not locked, calling for Kathryn, who was not home, and set off the burglar alarm, which was not turned off.

So we waited outside. Half an hour later two policemen showed up in a squad car to see if everything was OK. We explained the situa­tion and apparently looked honest, and they were nice about it, but had we been actual burglars we could have hauled away a lot of the house before they arrived. We waited some more. A friend of Kathryn's came by and knew how to turn the alarm off, so we were able to wait inside the house. She said Kathryn had gone shopping with a friend. We waited some more. Still no Kathryn, so finally we wrote her a note with our cell number on it, and we went to eat dinner at an Applebee's. Kathryn was home when we got back, and we sat up visiting until midnight.

Severe thunder­storms moved across the Kansas City metro area and put on quite a spectacular light show, reminiscent of our visit here last year when lightening knocked down their neighbor's tree. (This afternoon, when we were still in south­eastern Nebraska, we had heard on the radio tornado watches for southeastern Nebraska and southwestern Iowa, although the weather looked fine to us at the time.)

Uncle Irv's funeral was held today in Woods Cross.

Thursday, July 27, 2000
Missouri

Tonight, sitting in the Kieffers' living room in Kansas City, I finished reading one of my birthday books, Larry McMurtry's Roads: Driving America's Great Highways. I share McMurtry's passions for books and the road (he lists a third: women) and have enjoyed both during this week's foray into middle America. Not only did I read Roads, but Eliza has been reading aloud from Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine as we made our way across the back roads of Wyo­ming and Nebraska.

In his final chapter, McMurtry writes, "Some years ago I had a sobering realization about women, which was that there are just too many nice ones. . . .

"As it is with women, so it is with roads. There are too many nice ones. I could go on for a long time, driving America's roads. I could see the sandhills of Nebraska, follow the old Oregon Trail along the North Platte, see the Tetons, dodge moose in Maine, slip down to Salt Lake City and remind myself what an inspired city planner Brigham Young had been.

"But I can't drive all the roads. On even the narrowest highways that I've driven on these trips, and in even the smallest towns, there are signs pointing down even narrower highways to even smaller towns, many of which I will never see."

Something like that thought occurred to me yesterday afternoon as we were pushing south along US 75 in eastern Nebraska. Our fourth child and second son is named Talmage. We knew from our road atlas that a little town named Talmage, population 246, was in these parts.

As we were looking for Talmage, we over­shot our intended turn off by a few miles, so turned instead onto a little paved road that after a half mile turned into "a rock road," so called by the friendly farmer from Talmage who stopped to see if we needed help as we sat at roadside studying the atlas. He won­dered who we were visiting in Talmage and, after explaining our purpose in visiting there, explained that we could indeed arrive there along the rock road (what I would call a dirt or gravel road) that his tractor was planning to follow but suggested we go back and take the regular road instead. "Maybe I'll see you there," was his parting comment. He seemed so helpful, I was almost surprised we weren't invited for supper.

We backtracked to state highway 128, one of those narrower roads that lead to even smaller towns that McMurtry referred to, and I thought of all the myriads of little roads like this that crisscross the places people call home. After a few miles heading west, we turned south on state highway 67 and after another couple miles had to take an even nar­rower road, a half-mile spur that led to the little town. Talmage. Like so many other towns we've seen here in the Midwest, the name was proudly emblazoned on the town's water tower, as if water towers wandered off or were misplaced and had to be returned from time to time to their rightful owners.

Today was a rest day. It was afternoon by the time we were ready to go find the Liberty Jail visitor center and deliver a package of pam­phlets from Winter Quarters. We took the tour at Liberty Jail, where Joseph Smith and his companions were in prison during the cold winter of 1838–39 and where some of the most sublime revelations were given to the Prophet.

We then drove back to Independence in Jackson County and visited the home of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States. He was the president when I was born in 1949 and Claudia in 1951. The guided tours through the home are limited to only eight people at a time. We were the last tour of the day.

Afterward we drove by the Truman Library eight blocks away, the temple and other world headquarters sites of the RLDS Church, the LDS visitor center, and the National Historic Trails site (which had just closed for the day).

We drove back to the Kieffers' house in Platte County, and Kathryn had dinner ready for us. Rachael and Kathryn went off to an Institute class this evening. Camilla, Eliza, and I caught up on journals, read, and such. I finished reading Roads: Driving America's Great Highways.

Friday, July 28, 2000
Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming

Today we headed home. We told Rachael good-bye and took off. She was standing in the Kieffers' driveway as we left, looking pretty sad, reminding us of an August after­noon seven years ago when we left her bawling in a parking lot at Peace College.

It rained on us pretty much all the way up I–29 to the Iowa border. During the 13 miles we were in Iowa before crossing the river at Nebraska City, it did not rain. At Lincoln, where we stopped for lunch at a Runza restaurant, it started raining again and did for a while as we headed west along I–80.

Originally we had a motel reservation at Ogallala in the western part of Nebraska, but we were reaching there by mid-afternoon, so we called and canceled that room and made a reservation for Rawlins, Wyoming, the same motel we had stayed in last Sunday. All they had available, unfortunately, was a smoking room, which we took but later regretted.

We stopped for supper at a Wendy's in Laramie, Wyoming. As we were pulling onto the highway again, I observed that we were now 700 miles away from Rachael and was overtaken by such a sense of sadness, an emptiness, that she was now so far away from home. We will miss her a lot.

It was about 9:00, thirteen hours after we left Kansas City, when we pulled into our Sleep Inn in Rawlins. The stench in the smok­ing room we were put in was pretty bad and caused everything we took into the room to smell. Eliza had a hard time sleeping because of it.

Saturday, July 29, 2000
Wyoming, Utah

We awoke right at 6:00, ate our break­fast, and were on the road toward home by 6:40. At Little America we stopped to buy 35¢ ice cream cones and fill the car with gas. After we reached Utah, we took I–84 down Weber Canyon, then south on US 89, and then I–15 to Bountiful. Mom called us on the cell phone as we were passing Farmington, and Camilla and I each talked to her until we were on 500 West in Bountiful. Our intent was to surprise her; she wasn't expecting us until this evening. Finally, she asked where we were, and I gave a vague enough answer that she was totally surprised when we walked in the door only moments later. It was 11:00 and our trip was over.

According to our odometer, our house is 1,100 miles from the Kieffers' house in Kansas City by the route we took home. During the 2,869 miles of our trip, we saw license plates from 40 states (we were miss­ing Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and West Virginia) and 4 Canadian provinces (we saw Alberta, British Colombia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan). Our highest elevation was 8,640 feet on I–80 at Laramie Pass in Wyoming. Our lowest was probably when we crossed the Missouri River at Kansas City. We stayed in four different motels (in Rawlins, Scottsbluff, Omaha, and again in Rawlins) and spent $245.70 for lodging. We stopped 10 times for gas and spent $123.38 for fuel. We spent about $165 on food and about $30 on other stuff. We traveled through parts of six states (Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri). And Eliza read aloud all but 30 pages of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. It was a wonder­ful trip.