Father of the interstate

How I spent a chunk of my summer vacation: driving a rental truck full of books, miscellaneous household possessions and two bikes from Bloomington, Ind., to Seattle.

It was a Dad thing. Four days, one daughter, 2,445 miles. Mostly on Interstate 90, with a jaunt through Badlands National Park in South Dakota and a detour to Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. Throw in stops at the Corn Palace and Wall Drug. After hundreds of miles of billboards, who could resist?

Lots of time to ponder things in a truck cab covering 600 miles a day. For example, the Federal Highway Administration apparently decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway System by tearing it up. Vast connect-the-dots stretches of freeway were under repair in state after state. If you think a snail's pace on I-405 is annoying, try the width of southern Minnesota.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower is called the father of the interstate system, but it turns out the paternity is disputed. The whole thing is currently 46,876 miles long. That's true, but all those durable stories about the freeways being built to move troops and evacuate cities after an A-bomb attack — mmm, maybe not so true.

Seasonal travel tip: Do not buy gasoline in Sturgis, S.D., days before the annual August motorcycle rally. Prices were already adjusted for the profitable onslaught. Main Street of this town of 6,400 was being turned into one giant emporium, with shop after shop swapping their usual contents for rally gear. The 12th Step tents on north Main were already in place.

Piloting an apartment-load of boxes and odd bits gives one pause about where to stow it upon landing. Maybe if I got rid of those TVs and the computer relics in the garage. That would free up room for ... almost nothing. Actually, I am tempted to hang onto the electronic debris until, oh, 2009. That is when the state's electronic recycling law must be operational.

The state Department of Ecology is holding hearings later this month to gather comments on the first-of-its-kind law, which requires manufacturers to organize recycling collection points. No fee will be charged at the point of sale and/or collected at the disposal site. Any computer manufacturer that wants to sell hardware in Washington must register and be covered by the recycling law.

Now that we have had a moment of high-tech bonding, here is a travel tip for long-haul audiophiles: FM transmitters. Me, too — never heard of them.

The gadget was a solution inspired by a rental truck with a radio but no CD player. The prospect of endless days on the road with one's middle-aged father and no music was succinctly summed up by Daughter the Younger: "I think I'll die."

One end of the transmitter she bought was plugged into her portable CD player, and the other end went into a dashboard outlet like a cigarette lighter. The transmitter seeks out unused FM bandwidth and broadcasts your music over the radio. The middle of nowhere has signals to burn.

Speaking of the end of the Earth, or places one assumes it can be seen from, I would like to apologize to several states, one in particular. I have driven cross-country several times over the years via less northerly routes. Most freeways are boring, at best. I expected others to be the same. Iowa is lush and green and lovely. There, I have said it.

Finally, I wanted to reveal a terrific secret I could share with amazed and grateful readers, but I am way too late. Bozeman, Mont., has been discovered. Wow, who knew?

We drove into Bozeman at the end of a day on a mission: looking for I-Ho's Korean Grill, which came highly recommended by a colleague in Seattle. Local directions took us to a tiny place across from a soccer field on the campus of Montana State University. The meal was a delight, but Bozeman was the real surprise.

Here is a college town with an attractive campus, a busy downtown, reach-out-and-touch-the-mountains scenery, and healthy employment and growth rates. Later, I learned Bizjournals.com named Bozeman the best small town in America, having the top quality of life of 577 "micropolitan" areas in the United States. Real estate prices echo Puget Sound.

Cost of gasoline for the move: $565. Retrieving a daughter after graduate school: priceless.

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ldickie@seattletimes.com