“So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies

And walked off to look for America.” 

America…Simon and Garfunkel

It’s time for my annual migration to Florida and warmer climes.  The late fall and early winter weather in the Colorado mountains has been positively pleasing, allowing extra sunny days to explore remote canyons and chase wild trout.  But now the cold is seeping in, so I get ready to hightail it to the subtropics.

I like to take the back roads when pulling my travel trailer (aka mobile fish camp) on the long 2,000+ mile journey, avoiding the big trucks roaring by on the interstates with their big backwash that sets my rig to swerving back and forth on the hitch.  Anyway, it’s lots more fun, relaxing, and enlightening to get off the straight-as-an arrow highways and see the real America.  Back in the 60’s the Simon and Garfunkel tune “America” was my generation’s anthem….they’ve all gone to look for America.   I continue to do so.  More and more it seems like a country and place I don’t always understand.  When I served as a city councilman in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the 80s I always felt that if citizens got the facts they would eventually make the right common-sense decisions in the country’s and fellow American’s best interests.  Now I am not so sure.  But each year I come away from my peregrinations around the country feeling hopeful, optimistic.  So here we go…

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