A Not-so-Lonesome Dove

Watching the sun rise over Pinedale, Wyoming, with Larry McMurtry

When the going gets tough, I mostly want to get out of town. It’s the ultimate way to change the subject: Change your location.

My dad taught me how to do it, as the travel maestro in my family. He had a fairly big-deal job as an accountant at General Electric, but every summer he escaped the number crunching for a two-week family vacation.

When I was six years old, that meant riding from Connecticut to Wyoming in a Chevy station wagon that was later discovered to vent exhaust into the rear-facing back seat. Guess where I sat, as the youngest. I vomited all the way west, and then all the way back home again. It’s a wonder there was anything left of me when we crossed the Connecticut state line on the return trip.

But Yellowstone was worth that ride in the Vomit Comet. That national park’s paint pots, hot pools, and geysers make it The Disneyland of Discharge, where the bilious earth upchucks gallons of hot chunder to shake off igneous indigestion.

She’s gonna blow!

So am I!