AMERICA THE EXCEPTIONAL - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 250

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AMERICA THE EXCEPTIONAL
When the Becker family took its first vacation west of the Missouri River, my father plotted
our itinerary around visits to national parks. We left our old home in western Iowa and
drove from park to park, like a game of hopscotch, heading toward our new home in Seattle,
Washington. The Badlands were our first stop. That endless moonscape of sharp, jagged
buttes, dizzying rock spires and cliffs was my introduction to wilderness. There wasn't a
town or farm or house as far as you could see—a revelation, since we six Becker children
had spent our entire lives on the tamed Iowa prairie. Climbing and falling and pushing
each other on the cliffs, we enacted our version of “cowboys and Indians.” Then it was back
in the car and the Black Hills. We made the obligatory stop at Mount Rushmore, which
was a shrine, not an adventure.
Farther down the road, we saw them: the magic of buffaloes. Their heads and horns were
enormous. They were shaggy, frightening and familiar, dark buffaloes come to life, pawing
the ground, running in herds and kicking up dust. The whole Black Hills were straight out
of the western movies, except the greens were deeper, the sky higher and the lakes mirror-
clear, reflecting the clouds.
Our powder-blue Buick managed the long stretches, then the twists and turns from the
Dakotas across to Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park. We arrived when it was already
dark, pitch black, since there were only stars to light the way, and we checked into a log
cabin for the night. When we woke up, we were in another world. An entirely other world:
snowcapped mountains, evergreen forests, thundering streams, the Old Faithful Geyser that
smelled of rotten eggs, hidden valleys, wild animals—bears and more bison—yellow wild-
flowers on the trails. Decades later I still remember shivering with excitement taking my
first gulp of pure, sharp mountain air.
Later, after we had crossed the spine of the northern Rocky Mountains, I woke up from
a nap in the backseat and stared at this remarkable billboard. “What's that advertisement
about?” I asked. “Where?” said my mother. I pointed directly ahead, and the rest of the fam-
ily burst out laughing. I was staring at Mount Rainier, its snow cap pink from the setting
sun, rising so high with such grand, majestic proportions that my brain couldn't believe it
could be real. Forever after, Mount Rainier has been my favorite national park.