21st Century Pioneers

Traveling from Florida to Utah gave me new respect for the Pioneers who settled this land.
After selling our house in 2001, my wife and I filled our Conestoga wagon (a Budget rental van) with everything we couldn’t unload at our last yard sale. Then we loaded my car onto a trailer behind the truck. Finally, we packed my wife’s car with suitcases, 2 daughters, a dog, a rabbit, a guinea pig, and a cockatiel.
For those of you shaking your heads and holding your noses, remember that the original wagon trains included smelly livestock. Fortunately, my wife has bad sinuses, so the aroma wasn’t much of a burden.
Our first catastrophe came when the kids snapped the antenna off of their battery-operated TV/VCR during a game of “Gimme That! It’s Mine!”. This may not seem equivalent to a broken wagon axle, but then the pioneers never suffered 2 kids going through cartoon withdrawals. We were rescued when we found a trading post (pronounced “Wal-Mart”) where we stocked up on videos.
We passed through Mobile, Alabama. My olfactorily-challenged wife called on the radio from her small SUV packed with the dog, rabbit, guinea pig, cockatiel, and 2 daughters and asked me what that smell was. Enough said about Mobile.
Like all pioneers, we marveled at the mighty Mississippi. We asked an American Mart convenience store clerk about the river, but like the Paiutes in 1847, he didn’t speak English.
We continued on through Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas, Texas… (it’s a big state).
Eventually, we hit Utah. The map showed we could take Route 9, drive through Zion National Park, and on into St. George. Unfortunately, the map didn’t mention anything about a cover charge.
We pulled up to the tollbooth at Zion. (The Park Service calls them “Ranger Stations”. That’s a lie.). I rolled down the window of the van and informed the nice man that the blue SUV was with me. He looked at the van, looked at the car on the trailer, and looked at my wife’s car.
“Van and a car, $20 each, $10 for the trailer,” he calculated, “That’ll be $50” .
I was stunned. “You don’t understand. We’re not visiting the park. We’re just driving through on our way to St. George.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied.
I fumed. This was a National Park, which meant my tax dollars had already paid for it once. Route 9 was a state road, which meant the nice people of Utah had paid for it again. And people with tents were paying Ramada Inn prices for patches of dirt. I realized that National Parks are not about preservation or wilderness, they are about money.
“How about this,” I ventured. “What if we promise not to look while we’re driving through?”
The park ranger was not amused. We paid.
Finally, our caravan arrived in St. George. Like the pioneers before us, we were thankful to have survived the long journey, and to have only been scalped once.