KentsUSdrive: ...now, where was I? Oh, yes...

Thank you for coming back. It's been a while. I apologize to you who have faithfully looked for my drive into the US to resume. I took nine months off. (You probably got discouraged, and did, too.)

When I left you, I was just entering Astoria, Oregon.

I continued on through a whole lot of Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and finally: New York.

Many states. Many towns. Many adventures. I'll get to them.

But I want to tell you some stories about people I met along the way, stories I didn't have room for in my previous posts. I've had a lot of time to think, and as we all have experienced, time has a wonderful way of helping us cull the dross from the gold.

A year ago this month, my great friend, Steve Wilson, and I were heading north from Sun Valley & Ketchum, Idaho. Cruising slowly through the Sawtooth Mountains...seeing the sand-colored grasses waving in the wind far below us ...wading in the wild Salmon River...in short, being surprised by the beauty of Idaho was worth the trip. (I'd planned to zip across the northern Idaho panhandle in about four hours, and dart directly into Washington. As it turned out, Steve and I spend four days in Idaho.)

We were on our way up to Grangeville. On the way, we stopped for lunch at a small bar & grill in a little town along the Salmon River. (A guide was drowned there earlier in the day, having saved his eight clients, but that's another story for another time.)

Steve and I hate air conditioning. We never used it in our van. So when we entered this place for lunch, we went from a 105 degree outside temperature to an inside 72. it felt like jumping into an ice bath after a sauna. We asked the mini-skirted waitress, Karen, if there was an outdoor patio where we could have a sandwich.

"Sure is," she said, "But whyja wanna do that?"

"We don't like air conditioning," I said.

"Folla me." Karen went through a side door to a small patio with four metal tables. Closed umbrellas stood dutifully in center holes in each of the tables. "Ya want some shade, surely?" Karen asked, and went to open one of the umbrellas. It was a big thing, heavy looking. Karen was sort of slight, pretty and late 30s, so I stepped over and said, "Let me."

I wrestled with the darn umbrella, trying to get it up and open. No luck. It was pretty heavy.

Karen moved in, pushed me aside, put her hand on the table and the other hand on the slide at the base of the umbrella, and pushed it up in one fluid motion.

"How'd you do that so easily?" I said. Steve was grinning.

"Well," said Karen, hitching up her miniskirt, "today I've got my big girl panties on."