When Murphy wrote his law, he neglected to finish it. Compton’s Addendum is “at the worst possible time.” There are days when that law haunts the best of us and Robert Burns’ observations about mice, men and plans become painfully true. Such was the fate of my “retirement trip,” which was scheduled to begin on April 1, 2020. Beside the obvious coincidence with April Fools Day, it was also the day the world shut down for COVID-19.

A week short of five years later, I collected on that plan, much modified from the original — in fact, largely unplanned. There were some deadlines early on involving visits with friends in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. But these were significantly remodeled shortly before launch date. My friends in New Mexico were leaving home, refugees from a juniper pollen bloom that was affecting them badly. Rather than spending three days with them in Santa Fe, we spent a couple of hours visiting in an Indian restaurant in Salt Lakealopolis.

The only other deadlines involved flights to Maui and back, (the first of which I managed to modify by accident) and a May 13 date with a thesis defense in Corvallis, Oregon. Beyond that, I was free to wander as I wished, and I did.

My goal was to average 100 miles a day. Ha-ha-ha. In the 61 days between March 23 and May 23, Jeeper’s odometer recorded 7,823 miles. Considering that I spent 10 days on Maui in the middle of all this, during which Jeeper languished in the PDX Super 8 parking lot, I averaged 153 miles, plus or minus, daily. There were several less-than-20-mile days in Ajo and Corvallis, and several 300-mile-plus days made escaping blizzards and places like Salt Lakealopolis, Las Vegas, and South Lake Tahoe.

Jeeper crossed the Continental Divide a half a dozen times. I have no real idea of the amount of elevation gained and lost, but my rough guess is a quarter of a million feet. Hoosier Pass in Colorado is 11,542, and Death Valley at Furnace Creek is 190 feet below sea level.

Twuad (twisty, windy, up-and-down) roads made up the majority of miles, as I did my best to avoid Interstates unless absolutely necessary. Some were more twaud than others. The good thing about twaud roads is that they most often lead through beautiful places, of which I saw many and took way too many pictures of. Over 400 of them are in the following pages.

Who knows what the fate of this “little” book will be? If you have one, you were either gifted with it by me, or it caught your eye somewhere and you actually bought it. In either case, thanks. I appreciate you.