It was the pandemic summer of 2020, when the road trip was king, and we needed to get out. I, my wife, and my six-month-old daughter set off with friends on a 4500-mile RV journey through the big skies and great plains of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Utah.

Aside from a lot of open carry and very little mask-wearing, what we saw was a vibrant, strange slice of America, a country still in progress. It’s eerie (Devils Tower), powerful (Crazy Horse Memorial), prehistoric (geothermal Yellowstone), evocative (ghost towns), quirky (old dude with model railroad), and even surreal (buffalo crossing highway).