Western Nebraska starts to look a little more like it's supposed to. To the east there are far too many rolling hills and trees. Nebraska's supposed to be unfailingly pancake flat. The closer you get to Cororado and Wyoming, though, the more hill-free the state becomes.

There's not much to see in western Nebraska. In fact there's not much at all in western Nebraska. The constant clouds and occasional rain that had followed me since Missouri finally cleared as I reached the border of Colorado. You know how when you take a road you've never taken before just to see where it goes and to your surprise you arrive in a place you've been many times? I'd been to Colorado plenty often, but never by driving across the Plains.

"There's just nobody there."
I'd been told eastern Colorado is very remote. I had no idea. It felt even more out there than much of Kansas and Nebraska. There's just nobody there. I tried to get in touch with a friend who'd moved to Denver. Her office paged her with my phone number but I went out of cell coverage before she called back. After seeing cell phones in the most rural parts of Africa I assumed the whole of the U.S. must be covered by now. Not so.

By the time I got to Denver my friend was already at her late shift preparing the ten o'clock news, so I was on my own to wander around the city's inviting yet sterile 16th street mall. As downtown name brand retail projects go it's a nice place. Block after block of cafes, restaurants and entertainment. On a previous visit I counted at least five Starbucks. I imagine there are more adventurous places to visit in Denver but this is the only one I know.

"I bought Mom a few Harley-Davidson t-shirts."
It was still early so I got back on the road and headed toward the mountains. Not wanting to take I-25 straight south to Colorado Springs I found a highway on the map that wanders into the Rockies on its way down to New Mexico. I bought Mom a few Harley-Davidson t-shirts at a dealership I spotted on the way out of town.

Traffic was awful escaping Denver. I guess this is what you get when everybody in the city actually wants to be in the mountains. Some are just going home to the unsightly developments butted right up to the Rockies; others were probably off for the weekend. A couple of hours out the traffic finally thinned and I stopped for the night.

The price of my accomodation in the small town was a little surprising: over fifty dollars. I didn't understand until I drove out for dinner and saw a sign indicating I was less than twenty-five miles from Breckenridge. It felt like I was back into the middle of nowhere but turned out to be just down the road from a ski resort I go to almost every year.

"A guy who seemed like an old friend but whom I'd never met in person."
I wasn't far, though, from the middle of nowhere. The next day saw me to the remote Colorado / New Mexico border. This felt nearly as out there at parts of Nebraska and Kansas. New Mexico was another first time state for me, another to tick off the list. I was on my way to Albuqurque to see a guy who seemed like an old friend but whom I'd never met in person.

Scott Chapin is one of the most famous people on television stations across America, though viewers never see him. If you live in a large city there's a good chance he's the voice of one of your local stations, most likely Fox. I think he's the best news voice in television. Nobody can do the "Take No Prisoners," "To the Wall" style like he can. One of my favorite promos he's done was for WSVN, the crazy news station in Miami. In it he had a line that went, "... and they don't give a damn about you." Too much fun.

Scott was the voice of WLWT when I worked at that station in Cincinnati, so we talked every day on the super-telephone line we use to record his voice. We got to know each other fairly well and I was sorry to see our corporate owners do a deal that forced us to choose a different voice. But Scott had always extended an invitation to visit if we ever visited New Mexico. I called with very little notice and Scott was nice enough to tell me to come on down.

"It was very cool to see the operation from the other side."
I met Scott, his wife Susan, daughter Liz, four dogs and three horses at their beautiful home in northern Albuqurque. He showed me the audio studio he uses right in his home to connect to stations all over the country to record his voice. It was very cool to see the operation from the other side. I'd always been on the opposite end of the line. After a great lunch and a load of laundry Scott was back to work in the studio and I was off to the south.

If you saw the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster, you've seen my next desination. It's an installation in the New Mexico desert used to listen to radio waves from deep space. A very large array of satellite dishes aimed to the heavens, it's called, rather unimaginatively, the "Very Large Array." I kid you not.

It's tough to give you an idea of the scale of this thing. It's a few dozen satellite dishes each nearly a hundred feet across. They're mounted on railroad tracks so they can be moved close together or far apart, allowing scientists to get different views of the same piece of space. The Array is so big that if the middle were at the White House, the outermost satellites would reach far beyond the Washington beltway when in their widest positions.

"It's a self-guided tour with no one but yourself to ask questions of."
Unfortunately there seems not to be much money to make it an exciting experience for tourists. It's a self-guided tour with no one but yourself to ask questions of. A small museum tries to explain what everything does and then you're able to walk right up to one of the big antennas. They must have been doing some kind of maintenance when I was there. They say the dishes seldom move quickly, instead slowly tracking a single point across the sky. But when I visited the Array was constantly moving, all the dishes in unison, panning left to right and then up and down. Very cool. There should be some way for you to find out what exactly they're looking at at any time.

"I would've had a world of trouble on my mind."
Arizona was pretty uneventful right across the state. I picked up my new license plates that Dad had FedEx'ed to Flagstaff. (There's a country song about that just dying to be written.) Then on to the northwest toward Vegas. I just missed passing through Winslow, Arizona where I would've had a world of trouble on my mind, but wound up staying the night in Kingman. I mistakenly thought it was Memorial Day weekend and that all the hotel rooms in Vegas would be full or expenisve. This would turn out not to be the case, but I stayed in Kingman anyway.

I hadn't been to Las Vegas since a trip there as a teenager over a decade ago. I suppose the city's changed a lot, though I don't really remember the first time around. I found it depressing, smelly and taken far too seriously. I know Vegas exists in its own world and can only be understood in relation to itself, but I still didn't like it.

For starters I don't like gambling. Not a moral issue; just doesn't do it for me. That pretty much dooms the city from the start. Second, the city's glitz and tackiness are of course a big part of its charm, but it now seems to want visitors to take all that seriously. While the Eiffel Tower or the Luxor pyramid might once have been meant as quaint, over-the-top attractions, they now seem to be striving to be authentic landmarks worthy of the same awe as the actual sights they copy. And it's working. People take photo after photo, oohing and aahing at "how beautiful it all is."

"With Celine Dione songs in my brain I headed, appropriately, for Death Valley."
This is probably all a little too cynical, but I have to add one more bit of irony. The Luxor casino is named after the Egyptian city of the same name and is shaped like a gigantic pyramid. The only problem: there are no pyramids in the real Luxor. To my chagrin I found plenty of rooms in Vegas for cheaper than my room in Kingman. I debated staying a night to see the Strip lit up at night, but Celine Dione's face on one of the casinos' giant signs was enough to send be back to the road. With Celine Dione songs in my brain I headed, appropriately, for Death Valley.

"Even in mid-May it was near 100 degrees."
On the two lane road into the National Park they mark your elevation with signs announcing every time you've dropped another thousand feet. It's not really necessary since you can keep a rough account based on how unbearably hot it's getting. The main visitor center, located near the lowest point, is in an area called "Furnace Creek." It's a good name. Even in mid-May it was near 100 degrees. I refused to turn on the A/C. With the air movinig it actually wasn't so bad. If you can survive jam-packed buses in Africa, the dry heat of Death Valley is nothing.

Unfortunately I missed the actual lowest point. I suppose somewhere there's a monument that says you're at the lowest point but I never saw it. By the time I realized I'd missed it I was already out of the park.

It was getting dark as I reached the eastern edges of Yosemite National park. I stopped in at a hotel/coffee shop in a small town called Lee Vining at the foot of the pass leading into the park. The owner/manager or whoever at the front desk was apologetic and a little worried about giving me a room with only a communal bathroom. I assured her it would be fine.

"I had a wonderful gourmet veggie burger at a local gas station."
I finally got in touch with my email aquaintance Matt Lerner who did a round-the-world trip just before mine. I read his website constantly while I was saving money for my own travels. We'd never met in person so I was looking forward to meeting him when I arrived in San Francisco. I had a wonderful gourmet veggie burger at a local gas station and watched Denver's 10 o'clock news. I have no idea why it was on in California.

The high pass leading into Yosemite National Park probably just opened a few weeks earlier. There was still plenty of snow on the sides of the roads. The rangers got my twenty dollars entry fee which I guess I can't complain about. My excuse for not paying the park fees in Peru was that I figured the money would just line someone's pockets. Probably not the case here.

The park was beautiful as always. I'd been here once before with my family when I was in high school. We'd done El Capitan and the famous waterfall. And since I wasn't in the mood for any serious hiking I kept driving right through the park. On the way out I saw a guy wearing a backpack and hitching a ride. I figured he was a kid who'd been out trekking and needed a ride back to his car. I offered him a ride. Mistake.

"Turns out he was a homeless guy named Cliff."
Well not a seriuos mistake, but an annoying one. Turns out he was a homeless guy named Cliff. He said he was headed for Nevada City, and that I could drop him at an intersection on my way west. He speculated aloud that he might just go with me all the way to San Francisco, but a few tactful statements on my part quickly dissuaded him from the idea. Despite his rather robust aroma, Cliff was fun to talk to. I kept a close eye on him and wherever his hands wandered but never felt like I was in any danger.

"Got convicted of a felony. Can't own a firearm."
We chatted about fishing and hunting, both of which Cliff enjoys. "But now I can't hunt anymore," he said. I had a feeling what was coming next. "Got convicted of a felony. Can't own a firearm." I was happy to arrive at Cliff's turnoff and discharged him from the vehicle with a bit of relief... and not just for my olfactory senses. I reached the freeway and sped into San Francisco, arriving in the early afternoon.

I parked near Matt's apartment in the Panhandle neighborhood with about five hours before he would arrive home from work at eBay. I decided to walk through Golden Gate Park down to the Pacific. Had I had any idea how big this park is I would have worn something other than my Teva sandals. I eventually walked all the way to the water and back, wearing blisters all over both feet. Walking five or six miles was nothing when I was traveling, but I'm home and getting soft.

I met Matt's girlfriend, whose name sounds like Micah but is spelled nothing like that. We had dinner in and went out for some drinks to a place called Fly Bar, which my brother had frequented when he lived in the city. It was nice to swap travel stories each of us had read on the other's website but never heard in person. We had shared experiences in Africa, but Matt was able to tell me about Asia and me him about South America. We both still have one big trip yet to finish.

As a nonsequitorial aside, only in America would two people in a car be considered a high occupancy vehicle.