Some themes from our trek to Albuquerque – Part OneA:

Theme #1: Many good things can be created only by government action.

For example, on our first night out, we stopped at Plymouth Park in Eastern Washington, a lovely campground built by the Army Corps of Engineers. Plymouth Park sits on the bank of the Snake River which begins to form the Oregon-Washington boundary. (See picture 1)
On days 1,2 and 3 we drove on the Interstate Highway System, built in the Eisenhower era, ostensibly as a matter of national defense, but obviously a great boon to both civilian traffic and commercial (truck) traffic.
On our second night out, we stopped at Three Island Crossing State Park near Glenn's Ferry, ID. This Idaho State Park was a quiet, comfortable, well-equipped place to spend the evening – you can bet that it was constructed before the famous pronouncement "Government isn't the solution to the problem – government IS the problem!" (See picture 2)
Mark Oct. 29, 2009 on your calendar in red! Why?
"it's worth noting that we're about to celebrate the 40th anniversary of one of the most important federal initiatives of our time.

The event was the launch of the Internet, which we date from Oct. 29, 1969, when a refrigerator-sized special-purpose computer in Leonard Kleinrock's engineering lab at UCLA transmitted its first message to a twin machine in Menlo Park, Calif." (Note that this date falls before the famous pronouncement.) Back then it was called ARPANet, where ARPA is "Advanced Projects Research Agency," of the Pentagon. A Pentagon report on this stated:
" Communicating online will be as natural an extension of individual work as face-to-face communication is now." Sound familiar? 

Taylor tried to interest private industry in his project, but the companies he approached dismissed the idea. IBM told him its computers already talked to one another, completely missing his point that their computers should talk to everyone else's. 

AT&T, then the monopoly proprietor of the phone system over which the network would operate, fought Taylor's project tooth and nail, contending that the network's "packet switching" technology (a method of transmitting data in discrete blocks) wouldn't work on its phone lines and might even damage them. Packet switching remains the Internet's governing technology to this day."
Let's see, this message has reached you . . . how?

On our third night out we stayed at the Golden Spike RV Park (private) in Brigham City, UT and spent the night parked about fifteen feet off of I-15, where cars and trucks passed by all night long. Yes, it had the amenities, same as the previous nights had, but lacked the quiet, peaceful location. More about the name "Golden Spike" under one of the other themes.
Our fourth night out was not much better, as we spent the night at Slickrock RV Park in Moab, UT – by far our most expensive evening so far. But the next day more than made up for it as we made a quick run into and around Arches National Park – "On April 12, 1929 President Herbert Hoover signed the legislation creating Arches National Monument, to protect the arches, spires, balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations. On November 12, 1971 congress changed the status of Arches to a National Park, recognizing over 10,000 years of cultural history that flourished in this now famous landscape of sandstone arches and canyons."
(See pictures 3,4 and 5 -- #3 shows a formation nicknamed "The Three Gossips – recognize anyone?)
More on this theme in the next e-mail . . . followed by other themes . . .