Hurtling along at 75 mph feels so very dangerous even if the road
is a good interstate.  All across South Dakota I kept thinking about
Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her description of driving in her book
Bring Me a Unicorn.*  She was terrified but determined to keep up
since she was following someone else and didn't know the way by herself. 
She was sure anyone reading her words in the future would get a big laugh
at her fear of driving so fast at 45 mph.

After leaving SD we took a little corner off Wyoming
then started across hwy 212 in MT. 
This is a scenic route by day. 
At night it is just dark
  and much busier
    than I thought it would be. 
All the trucks and semis from MT were headed to SD.
All those bright headlights blinded me.
All those semis whooshing past on a two lane road
through Custer National Forest seemed out of place.

I felt like I was in the middle of a history lesson. 
When we drove through last spring Ellis was listening to a
book on cd telling many details of the days leading up to
Battle of the Little Big Horn. 

No one else in the van was interested. 
In fact one young adult from the back seat
phoned us in the front seat and asked, 
"Why are we listening to this?"
After awhile the book started into some gory details. 
Ellis turned it off.

This time no one was troubled by radio or cd player. 
There were just three people stuffed
into the front of a 1988 GMC 4x4 pick-up. 


* "How absurd this will sound in fifty years --
        to be afraid of driving a car at the crawling speed
              of forty-five miles an hour!" 

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh  in Bring Me a Unicorn