A Trip to California (Part Five)

That was a lesson. I would see beautiful wheat fields in the Midwest, but I would also eat the worst Chinese food of my young life in the same setting. I would see Salt Lake City at night from a high mountain pass (easily one of the most beautiful sights in the world; those salt rings in the moonlight are remarkable), and I would pass through Las Vegas in the daytime (the ugliest sight for a dreamer of casino fortunes and stage shows). This was right and fair. Whenever I hear a critic of America preach in Europe, Asia or Africa, I have to wonder and ask out loud: Have these people ever visited and travelled across that land? Do they know what America is really like when they step away from its movies, music and other advertising? It is a country that does not deserve the criticism it receives from total strangers. We slept in that open space when we could have stayed in an inn or a motel and I never lost the feeling that we were like the original pioneers who had to risk our lives to see what that great bulge of land - Jack Kerouac’s wonderful phrase - had to offer. Of course, the internal combustion system and A/C did not hurt either. But we were still out in the rough and raw places of a great and frightening place.