Sonoma Road Strategies

08/09/2025

How to not want to kill your traveling partner, in 6,500 easy miles

Five weeks on the road, zero death threats. We're counting it as a win.

07/25/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. Fifty Shades of Beige

When we last left our intrepid travelers, we were waiting for repairs to our squirrel-damaged car in Lincoln, Nebraska. A week later, we are still here, with hopes of departing tomorrow for points east and home. Having observed the state's capital city at close range, I have some thoughts. Before I express them, a caveat: if I were here of my own accord, for a wedding or to see friends or even on business, I'd probably be more open to this town's charms. As it is, I really had to look hard to find them.

A salient characteristic of Lincoln is its monochromatic color scheme. So much tan, beige, brown everywhere. But don't take it from me, take it from famed Nebraska daughter Willa Cather: born in Virginia, died on Park Avenue, claimed by the Cornhusker State for her years in the town of Red Cloud and the University of Nebraska and her writing about life on the Great Plains. But I digress.

Here's Willa praising the immigrants who brought a little dash to the drab landscape: "Colonies of European people, Slavonic, Germanic, Scandinavian, Latin, spread across our bronze prairies like the daubs of color on a painter's palette. They brought with them something that this neutral new world needed ever more than the immigrants needed land."

She got that right. The urge toward neutral shades is all around us here. Part of it is where we're staying, an aging hotel well located close to the Toyota dealership, equidistant from Costco and Walmart and mere steps through a used car lot to a Super Saver discount grocery that compares its bargains favorably to the better-known Hi-Vee. Beyond the shopping areas, the vast majority of neatly landscaped homes and low-rise apartment buildings are on the beige end of the spectrum. Even the yard art conforms: note the white toy truck, rusted metal tractor wheel and bleached deer skull decorating a local property. There's plenty of green in lawns and trees but you wouldn't call Lincoln 50 shades of green. That's the name of a local w**d dispensary.

Still, there are spurts of colorful rebellion, as in the dark-skinned doll in a red coat at the Nebraska History Museum's exhibit that seeks to explain the state in more than 100 artifacts. The Patty-Jo doll was commissioned from the Terri Lee Doll Company in Lincoln by Jackie Ormes, the first African-American cartoonist to be published in a newspaper, according to the museum. Ormes felt other dark-skinned dolls were based on negative stereotypes and found a better option here.

The prosaic nature of the place works itself into everything, including the ph***ic state capital building, topped not with a warrior or a flag or a toga-clad Statue of Freedom like the one that crowns the U.S. Capitol, but The Sower: a 19-foot-tall figure scattering seeds, symbolizing agriculture as the basis for civilization.

Not to generalize too much, but the people we've encountered here have been a bit like the folks in fictional River City in "The Music Man": flinty, down-to-earth and not all that cuddly, but helpful when you need it most. I can recommend (402) Creamery, a local chain of high-end treats -- try the peach cobbler ice cream -- and Hiro88 for sushi and innovative Chinese specialities, including a first-rate hot and sour soup. Though things can seem beige, the sunsets are often dazzling.

07/22/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. A Squirrel Killed Our Car

These are troubling times, when the world seems off-kilter and reason a distant hope. For those looking for a little schadenfreude, I can offer our current situation so you can say, well, my life may suck but at least a rodent didn't get into my car engine and send me to Lincoln, Nebraska.

Strap in, this is going to be a little long.

Those following along on this Western swing may know we've had a great time, hopping from one gorgeous place to another, most recently Scott's Bluff in western Nebraska, a pivotal point on the 19th century wagon train route to Oregon, California and Utah. We were heading the opposite direction, toward home, with what we hoped would be a utilitarian overnight in the economy-class hotel ghetto off I-80 In Ogallala, Nebraska.

Alas, a squirrel had other ideas. As we slept, the varmint ate the wire harness in our hybrid Toyota's motor, making it about as useful for propulsion as a cinderblock. But we would not know that until much later. What we knew right away was that instead of us driving east, we would need to get towed to the nearest Toyota dealership equipped to deal with the problem, 280 miles away in Lincoln. To make the timing work -- to get to the dealer's service bay early enough on a Saturday to be diagnosed -- we had to depart at 4 a.m. for the four-plus hour ride.

Nothing but kudos to Charlie of Kent's Towing in Ogallala, who arrived a few minutes early and who (swear I'm not making this up) rescued a little bird from our front wheel well before getting our car onto the tow truck bed. By 9:30 (there's an hour time difference between Ogallala and Lincoln and not in our favor) we were talking to the sympathetic intake person in the service department, who had been briefed by a colleague I'd told my sad story to the previous afternoon.

We dropped our car off, picked up a loaner and were having lunch when we got the diagnosis call that a squirrel had done the fatal deed. How could they be sure? Because the squirrel was still alive and under the hood when the technician opened it up. What kind of mutant radioactive squirrel sticks around the scene of the crime, when that scene is barrelling down the interstate at 80 miles an hour? We will never know. It ran away and is apparently at large in Lincoln.

Long story short, they need parts to fix the damage and parts don't get delivered until Tuesday when they're ordered on Saturday in this part of the world. No idea if that has happened yet or exactly how long the repair will take. We're hoping no more than a couple days, but nothing is certain.

Meantime, we are pampering ourselves as much as possible, given the circumstances. Lincoln is not Smallville (that's in Kansas) but it's close enough, so we went to a real movie theater and saw the latest "Superman." I got a spa-in-a-box pedicure at Zen Nails, which involved a foot and calf massage with hot stones, pumice, lavender oil and (checks notes) orange slices. Then we had dinner at Florio's, a local Italian place where they have a house specialty called Carsoni alla Pesto. Presume it's named after Johnny Carson, a favorite son of Lincoln who used to perform a magic act as the Great Carsoni before he found late night TV fame. It was pretty good. And the retro soundtrack and friendly service can't be beat.

07/18/2025

Geezer Tour 6 -- Western Swing. The Best Highway Rest Stop Ever

Full disclosure: I have not been to every highway rest stop in the world or even in the United States. However, I'm prepared to say right now that the Southeast Wyoming Welcome Center at Mile Marker 7 on I-25 is the best on this planet. In addition to the full complement of toilets and free tourist maps, it has a monster skeleton of a Columbian Mammoth, found in the North Platte Valley in Wyoming and dating from some 11,000 years ago. It also features a metal sculpture called "Wind Code," a short paved hiking trail and a working train line running parallel to the parking lot. Most people stumble upon this roadside gem but if you're heading north from Denver, I urge you to build it into your travel plans.

We are homeward bound now, focused more on getting some miles behind us than on historic, gastronomic or natural substance. Still, we had to stop to see Scott's Bluff National Monument, a series of stony, eroded cliffs jutting up out of the Great Plains, a sort of preview of coming attractions for anyone heading to the Rockies. This particular area of badlands squeezed western migration by people coming from the eastern U.S. in the mid-19th century, funneling those headed for fertile farmland in Oregon, gold in California or the Mormon "promised land" in Salt Lake City through two narrow passes just wide enough to accommodate wagons in what came to be called the Oregon Trail. The place is named for Hiram Scott, a clerk for the American Fur Company who sickened and died near the bluffs sometime around 1827, after being abandoned by traveling companions.

07/15/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. Obsessed with The Three Gossips

When you get right down to it, Arches National Park is basically a lot of rocks, most of which can be seen from a slowly moving car. Most are otherworldly in appearance, as if they'd been chiseled by some monster sculptor (which I guess they were -- by the hands of time, wind, water and geological upheaval). But my favorite of all the landforms in this nearly century-year-old preserve are the pillars called The Three Gossips, photographed here in the broiling hot midday sun and at dusk. Whoever named them got it right. I can see them nodding at each other and ruining some other rock's reputation.

This was a break in our expected month-long tour, with three whole days in Moab, Utah: an opportunity to rest, refresh and do a couple loads of wash in the hotel laundry room. Temperatures were over 100 degrees F every day, and reached the high 90s by noon or earlier. We were at odds with many visitors to this outdoor sports center, and failed to take a river rafting trip. Neither did we get up before the sun to jog or bike along Highway 191, as we saw many others doing. Instead we went to the Moab Diner (have a classic malted after lunch and be full for the rest of the day).

On our way out of town, we stopped at as desolate a historical site as I've ever seen, the ruins of an old Depression-era camp of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Roosevelt plan to employ men in range management, construction and forestry in the absence of jobs elsewhere. After the CCC camp closed with the advent of World War II, the site had a more sinister function: as a de-facto prison for so-called "troublemakers" among Japanese-Americans interned in places like Manzanar in California. Open from January through April, 1943, it was known as the Moab Citizen Isolation Center.

Little remains of the actual prison, which is on the grounds of Utah Raptor State Park. One chilling artifact is a wooden box, about 6x5x4 feet, the same size as one used to transport five inmates over bumpy roads on the back of a truck to a larger isolation center in Arizona. You have to really want to see this place. Worth it, in my opinion, if only for the dark picture it conveys using only the visitor's imagination

07/11/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. My 50th State

Oatmeal, Nebraska. Coyoteville, New Mexico. Dead Man's Fang, Arizona. Old movie buffs like me will recognize these as the fictional tank towns where Don Lockwood and Cosmo Brown honed their vaudeville act before making it big in Hollywood in "Singing in the Rain." It does feel like we've seen our share of Coyotevilles -- tiny communities rather than cities -- on this geezer tour, which is how we've come to like it.

One bucket list item for me was seeing these little places in Idaho, completing my set of visits to all 50 states. I had a head start, having lived in Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, California, Indiana, Hawaii and Maryland. The rest largely got filled in with business travel, including a few political campaigns where I knocked off a dozen or more with each trip, but until now, Idaho eluded me.

First stop was Salmon, on the Salmon River, which makes it a whitewater rafting hotspot, even though the Salmon is the so-called River of No Return because of its strong current, rocks and rapids. Explorers, fishermen and traders would go with the flow down river in shallow draft scows, sell their wares in the nearest market town and sell the scows for firewood, never going back to Salmon. It's still not a bustling metropolis (population about 3,100) but it does boast a human-made dam that lets kayakers and the occasional boogie-boarder practice paddling against the current.

Next it was on to Lava Hot Springs, with a lunch stop in Blackfoot and a visit to the Idaho Potato Museum in an old train station. When in Idaho, watching the landscape go from snowcapped mountains to grazing lands to potato fields, this is a must-see. There's also an all-potato cafe. Pro-tip: call ahead and reserve your baked spuds at least two hours in advance so they are at their "peak of fluffiness" when you arrive. There's a grand luxe version with every topping (jalapeños, black beans, black olives, corn, etc etc) for $6.50. We opted for a pair of Idahoans, monster bakers topped with butter, cheese, bacon, sour cream and chives for $5.59. Probably our carb and fat load for the week.

The bus-sized baked potato out front practically demands a posed picture. To get it just right, use the gizmo designed by Eagle Scout Reagan C. Reese, with thanks to E-Z Tarp & Truck'n Trim and Troop 209.

07/06/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. The 406

You see a lot of things in Montana that start with 406, the big state's sole area code: 406 Sports, 406 Labs, 406 Accounting and on and on. The place does get a hold of you if you let it. Take it from John Steinbeck, who admits to falling in love with it in "Travels with Charley": "The land is rich with grass and color and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were put on my agenda. Montana seems to me what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans."

He's got a point. This is my fourth trip here if you count a family outing when I was a kid, and I do. This time we started in Livingston, which used to be a haven for Hollywood refugees in the 1970s and still bears some of the hallmarks of that time, including a whole block of art galleries. The Yellowstone River flows through town and most hours see at least one person fishing and several people and their well-behaved dogs strolling on its banks.

Our current perch is Whitefish, our third visit, this time just on our own. It's still lovely but it has been mega-discovered since our last visit in 2019. Condo developments have proliferated along with higher-end restaurants and shops. You can have BBQ, burgers, traditional Italian, sushi or innovative Mexican cuisine, as we did, including a bright red huckleberry margarita.
An all-day rain sees the downtown area flooded with tan but glum-looking tourists, foiled in their pursuit of outdoor activity and forced to buy stuff: leather goods, hand-forged knives, pottery, artwork.

We took a different tack, heading to a farm market and then a mansion-turned-museum in Kalispell a few miles south. The market didn't have much at this season (local cherries are still a few weeks from ripening) but the mansion was fascinating. Built by Charles Conrad, who made a bundle in trade along the Missouri River and built the house and the town of Kalispell in the late 1890s, the mansion is not exactly cozy -- but not too imposing either.

They make a big deal in the self-guided tour about all the modern features the mansion had for its day -- a big fridge cooled by ice chopped from the Flathead River, indoor plumbing, an electric samovar -- but they tuck away what might have been a scandal in the first Gilded Age. Charles' first wife was Sings-in-the-Middle, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and mother of his first child. They gloss over the fact that Charles kept the child when his wife returned to her people.

There's another Blackfeet relative whose life story is itching to be told: Kokoa Baldwin Conrad, the first wife of Charles' son Charley. After bearing two children, she divorced Charley in 1915 and headed for Hollywood to become an actress and stuntwoman in silent films, including "Madam Who," "The Woman and the Web" and "Rose of Paradise." She died in a skiing accident in 1932. All you writers out there looking for a screenplay subject: you're welcome.

07/02/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. Margaritas and Monuments

Is that a pre-noon margarita the size of a foot bath? Oh yes, on our last urban stop in South Dakota, Rapid City. We passed up Mount Rushmore --we'd both seen it before and what with all the rumblings about adding the current president's visage to the four already carved there (engineers say it's not possible) -- in favor of a drive-by of the decades-under-construction Crazy Horse monument. Not exactly a wow at this point, but if sculpture is the art of chiseling away, or blasting away, everything that doesn't look like what you want it to look like, they're getting there.

We broke the trip at a Mexican place called Puerta Vallarta, which I would heartily recommend for its artful enchiladas (shrimp and fresh spinach, for one), its well-balanced drinks and its soothing playlist, including the definitive mariachi version of "Jambalaya".

Crossing into Wyoming, we toured Custer National Forest, where the buffalo (more properly, bison) roam -- thrilling for this suburbanite to see a substantial herd grazing freely. There's a meme around here on T-shirts and bumper stickers: "Do Not Pet the Big Fluffy Cows!" Evidently many tourists haven't figured out that bisons' aggressiveness is no joke.

After a quick view of Devil's Tower, which honestly does not look real even closer than this image I took from quite a ways away, there was an obligatory stop at Little Big Horn National Monument, where George Armstrong Custer made his fatal last stand against massed Lakota, Nakota and Dakota warriors. In addition to antique markers for Custer and his troops (even though Custer is buried at West Point), there is a moving memorial to the native tribes who prevailed against a U.S. attack.

06/30/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. Loving the Badlands. Wall Drug, not so much. You almost certainly know about Wall, South Dakota, if only because of the hundreds of signs advertising the town's monster tourist attraction and clip joint (our personal first sighting of a Wall Drug sign was outside Mankato, Minnesota, about 350 miles away). In answer to one of the many questioning bumper stickers touting the place, yes, we have now dug Wall Drug so you don't have to. Free ice water and 5 cent coffee, check. Mediocre overpriced meal, done. Creepy animatronic cowboy orchestra, been there.

However, there's more to this wide spot in the road than immediately meets the eye. Badlands National Park -- part lunar surface, part evident inspiration for Dr. Seuss's landscapes -- is nearby and captivating. The sign warning of rattlesnakes is worth noting, even though we didn't see any. You do have to give extra credit to any wildflowers that bloom amid the natural desolation.

After a searing daytime visit, we returned to the park to stargaze (this is a Dark Skies place, with very little light pollution from the 699 souls who live in Wall to spoil the view). We took as our signal the dimming light glimpsed between a couple of huge grain elevators by the railroad tracks, then headed for the Badlands as the sun disappeared. It took more than an hour for the stars to come out, but once they did there were so many they were almost bewildering. After the moon set, you could see the arc of the Milky Way.

06/27/2025

We stopped in Mankato, Minnesota, and got more than we bargained for

06/27/2025

Geezer Tour 6 - Western Swing. "Forgive Everyone Everything." Somehow that motto carved on a stone bench is the saddest thing about what is now called Reconciliation Park in Mankato, a college town on the Minnesota River. Reconciliation came mighty late, in 1997. First there was a stone tablet and then an obelisk meant to memorialize the U.S.-Dakota war of 1862 that led to the mass hanging of 38 Dakota men near the park site. The root cause was starvation on the reservations nearby and broken treaties with the local Dakota bands, according to the Minnesota Historical Society's compelling version of events.

We meant to stop briefly in Mankato before lighting out for South Dakota but we wound up staying the night because a few minutes after these pictures were taken, tornado sirens started wailing and the light rain that had fallen all day turned into a downpour. Luckily there was a room for us in town -- it's summer and most students are gone -- and a friendly pub with the NBA draft running in the background. The next morning, the quiet streets featured frankly wacky sculptures, including an orangutan with a chair and a palm tree (why?) and an escargot made mostly of old auto fenders (get it?) with a fork added because it wouldn't stand up otherwise.

06/26/2025

Geezer Tour 6: Western Swing. Bucket list item in the books after a visit to a Wisconsin supper club, a descendant of booze-selling restaurants born during Prohibition that really took off in the middle of the 20th century. Of course I started with a brandy old-fashioned (sour, not sweet, which means the active flavor ingredient is grapefruit soda instead of lemon-lime soda) at Delaney's Steak Seafood Wine in Madison. It wasn't exactly set on hallowed ground, being close to our low-rent hotel, a car wash and an all-you-can-eat sushi place, but the knotty pine decor and white tablecloths were right on the money. House salad and mushroom soup with wild rice started the meal, followed by monster servings of glazed lamb chops and a porterhouse pork chop with grainy mustard cream, plus a side order of perfectly cooked asparagus to share. Not cutting edge, but when it's what you want, nothing but a supper club dinner will do.