Heard Around the West

Maybe the issue isn’t who first threw the shoes. A huge old tree close to U.S. 50 in Nevada – dubbed “the loneliest road in America” – has become festooned with shoes and even pairs of skis and rollerblades. Stories vary as to how the shoes first went airborne, but one oft-told tale goes like […]

For two years a buffalo dubbed Bart lived without incident at a Tucson, Ariz., guest ranch, apparently content in its confinement. But recently the 2,000-pound animal busted out of his pen and the puzzlement began. No one, it seemed, knew how to corral a truly wild beast, and every attempt to trap, harass, entice (“Come […]

When Ed Abbey aficionados get together in Death Valley, Calif., Nov. 6-8, hospital-lab worker Gail Hoskisson is sure to be the cynosure of all eyes. Well, maybe not her, but the vintage vehicle she’s driving. It doesn’t look like much, this blue, 1973 Ford F100 pickup that has logged 197,000 miles through the deserts of […]

“I’m having a ball,” says Ruth Thomas of Spokane, Wash. She may be 72 and arthritic, but that doesn’t stop Thomas from pursuing a dream. After the former middle-school science teacher sold her house and furniture and bought a bike, she began an odyssey across the United States, visiting the smallest town in every state […]

You’re in a car when a thunderstorm boils out of the West and rain pelts down. What do you do? Nothing, of course, since the National Lightning Safety Institute says cars are one of the safest places to be during lightning strikes – relatively speaking. Two teenagers in a ’92 Subaru near Jackson, Wyo., found […]

Hungry bears breaking into cars and cabins at Yosemite National Park in California are racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Bears have learned it’s easy to get into the driver’s seat if they “place their claws on top of car doors and peel them off,” reports AP. Relocating the black bears hasn’t […]

Maybe it had to happen. The “green glow” emanating from cool corporations in the laid-back Northwest has faded, reports the Los Angeles Times, with just the merest hint of gloating. There’s gigantic Microsoft, targeted by the Justice Department for monopolizing computer software, and Starbucks, assailed for cruelty to songbirds for removing shade trees from coffee […]

Old myths die hard, especially when perpetrated by Hollywood. On the Flathead Reservation in western Montana, tourists regularly want to know: “Where are the flat heads?” reports the Great Falls Tribune. And some people visiting the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, Mont., expect Native Americans to live in tepees and to wear feathered […]

Many federal bureaucrats like hiding behind a desk. Jim Furnish is admittedly gregarious. He also loves the Oregon coast and hopes eight citizens from around the United States will want to join him for an expense-paid weekend of brainstorming while taking hikes along the cliffs. Furnish makes no bones about needing help. Supervisor of the […]

Maybe Denver International Airport was built to test the tempers of travelers. Flighty state-of-the-art baggage system? No backup. Access road blocked by snowdrifts? No backup. A busted concourse train? No backup – so 30,000 passengers were stalled and enraged Sunday, April 26, some of them trapped for hours in darkened train tunnels without ventilation or […]

Bears are so smart. In Mammoth Lakes, Calif., nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains, some 30 black bears have chosen to become New Westerners by denning underneath hotels, restaurants and homes. They’ve become so used to gourmet food, snug basements and the amenity of a no-hunting ordinance that the animals are now familiar figures in […]

During the day, Polly Letofsky, 35, takes reservations at a ski lodge in Vail, Colo., but several nights a week she turns into Fitness Woman, snowshoeing up Vail Mountain as she trains for her dream of walking around the world. She figures that ambitious jaunt, totaling 7,000 miles across four continents, will require three years […]

There’s hot news from Anchorage, Alaska, and many hikers are going to recoil in horror when they hear it. The red pepper spray that’s supposed to ward off black bears may do just the opposite – attract them. Evidence so far is anecdotal, but U.S. Geological Survey researcher Tom Smith (contact him on the Internet […]

Drenching rain, slip-sliding houses on the edge of eroding cliffs, not a glimpse of sun for weeks – blame the rotten weather on Al Nino. Drunks and the unruly frustrated do. But Nino, a retired Navy man in the Southern California county of San Luis Obispo, says he’s getting a little tired of complaining phone […]

Why did a logging company “rape 30,000 acres of virgin forest?” A satirical magazine on the Internet, The Onion, says the answer can be found in the provocative behavior of the trees themselves: “If you’re going to tease, openly flaunting your abundant natural resources, don’t be surprised by the consequences. “It’s only natural for any […]