I’m home. And I’ve been mellowing out, simply enjoying the feeling of not being in any sort of moving vehicle whatsoever.

The trip to Montana was not bad, but was probably not everyone’s cup of tea. I don’t know how many people would jump into a car at the drop of a hat and drive 1400 miles (that takes two days, if you drive a good 12 to 13 hours a day) - then stay in Montana for 3 days and get back into the car to drive the 1400 miles back home. My family does this. Frequently.

People think it’s crazy, but I kind of like it. I complain about having to sit in the car for such a long time (and I can’t even drive, so I really do just sit), but I still kind of like it. When you drive in the western United States, you are in a different world.

Distance takes on a whole new meaning. The sky gets bigger and bigger as you drive. In two days, you can pass through more different landscapes and climates than you can find in all of Europe. You can drive for miles and miles and never see another car (you’ll see hundreds of cattle, but no other cars). You can drive for miles and miles and never see any evidence whatsoever of human habitation.

Going north, the weather changed constantly. We left Arizona in the usual dry, blazing heat. Between Arizona and Montana we hit steady 50-mile-per-hour winds, rain, hail and snowstorms. On the second day of driving - from Salt Lake City, Utah to Missoula, Montana - the sky was absolutely incredible. It changed by the minute as storms rolled across the West. Black clouds were pierced with brilliant shafts of sunlight. Mist curled around snowy mountain peaks until the breeze blew it to wisps to reveal the endless blue sky behind the mountains. The shadows of clouds raced across the grasslands of Idaho, and the hills were dappled with golden light. You could see the rain falling in the distance; it looked like someone had taken a gigantic brush and swept the silvery clouds in streaks down to the horizon. It was breathtakingly beautiful, as fantastic as anything you could see anywhere else in the world.

Driving back, the weather was blandly uniform, except for the dust storms we hit in northern Arizona. It was absolutely mad: horrendous winds, and walls of red dust that rolled towards us implacably through the canyons and over the flat, rusty desert. The wind was so bad and the landscape was so alien and unforgiving that I thought we may as well have been on Mars. I looked at the little houses on the desert floor, all shut up tight against the dust and wind, and I was really thankful that I was just passing through, on my way to someplace at least a tiny bit greener and more hospitable.

It’s such a long drive through so much empty space, but it’s funny how you really get to know it. The names of the little towns, as strange as they sometimes are, become familiar to you. Deer Lodge, Silver Bow, and Opportunity in Montana. Blackfoot and Pocatello, Idaho. The odd Utah names of Nephi, Lehi, Manti, and Orem. Horsethief Basin, Bloody Basin, and Bumble Bee, Arizona.

You come to know what you can find where along the way. I recommend eating at the Crosswinds Restaurant in Dillon, Montana (great cinnamon rolls). I don’t recommend eating at the Garden of Eatin’ in Fillmore, Utah (though they may have okay pork chops). Denny’s Wigwam in Kanab, Utah is a treasure trove of trinkets and souvenirs and really expensive rugs - it’s a fun place to explore. Camp Verde, Arizona is not particularly verde. Bountiful, Utah is not particularly bountiful if you’re looking for herbal tea. Orderville, Utah looks like a pleasant enough town despite its somewhat forbidding name. There are probably more churches per square foot in Page, Arizona than anywhere else I’ve ever seen (and there used to be a good sandwich shop there, but it is now, sadly, closed).

And one of the most puzzling and intriguing things you can see along the whole way is fairly close to my home: between Tucson and Phoenix, right on the highway, you can find the “Family Fun Park”, perhaps the most inexplicable construction I’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s a hard-packed dirt landscape dotted with…things. Three plastic palm trees sticking out of the top of a hill. A miniature rocket ship. Small, completely inaccessible cages on the tops of high, pink and green poles. It’s not a park, it doesn’t look like fun, and I definitely don’t think I’d take a family there, but it’s bizarre and unique and rather Dr. Seussian, and I love it.

And at the end of our trip, as we reached southern Arizona again and started to see the saguaro cactus at the side of the road (those are the stereotypical tall cactus with arms that have become the quintessential symbol of any desert, even though they only grow down here in the Sonoran Desert), I felt a warm, fuzzy sort of familiarity, and I knew that I was home - or at least, I was as “home" as I can probably ever get, in this country or anywhere else.

I’m happy to be home.