As we emerged from our sub-par Winnemucca, NV motel Tuesday morning we stopped and stared.

Snow flurries! Our car had a dusting. So did the parking lot. 

Only it wasn’t a freak August snowstorm. Nope, it was ash from the wildfires that have incinerated the West. Smoke has been our constant companion for almost the entire trip, but the most noxious, eye irritating smoke was around Winnemucca, which somehow seems appropriate.

As we left this high-crime casino town in our rearview it hit me that this is what much of Nevada has become: A state that produces little except gamblers and small-time criminals. There’s nothing productive about casinos.

A few hours later we stopped at a filling station and gassed up. When we stepped inside the attached convenience store, the factotum behind the desk blocked our way. No using the restrooms without masks.

“You’re kidding me,” I groaned.

He was adamant. Apparently the station is owned by the casino next door and Nevada’s gaming commission could revoke the casino’s license if a 5-year-old were caught tinkling without a mask.

Covid rules are maddening and arbitrary.

As we turned to leave without using the facilities we ran into a deputy sheriff in the parking lot. I asked if masking was the law in Nevada.

He grinned and said it wasn’t.

“It’s a mandate, not the law. This is a Constitutional County and the sheriff says we’re not going to enforce mask mandates because they’re unconstitutional,” he said proudly.

“I’d give you masks, but I don’t have any. I refuse to wear one myself.”

He pointed out that we were just about a mile from the Idaho border and could find a cute little convenience store just a couple of miles up the road with constitutional restrooms.

We thanked him and sped into our new favorite state.

Idaho provided a stark contrast to Nevada and I’m not just talking about Covid rules. The land of video poker and slot machines was mile after mile of barren landscape, Idaho’s rich irrigated farmland was green and lush. Almost as if the people who live there have better things to do besides sit inside dingy casinos all day.

We stopped briefly to marvel at the Snake River - imagine how high and wild that river must have been at one time to carve a canyon like that - and then pushed on toward West Yellowstone in Montana. 

A total of 566 miles today. Tomorrow we get up early and head into Yellowstone National Park.

We’re staying just outside the park in a rustic hotel that allows dogs. Did I mention that jammed in among my daughter’s suitcases and backpacks is an elderly husky who does nothing but shed? I’ve used up one lint roller already and I’m starting on a second.

The desk clerks at the hotel are a sweet retired couple from Sedona, Arizona who are in their 7th summer up here. They stay in a little cabin, hike and fly fish on their days off and pay for their summer by desk-clerking. They stuffed my pockets with granola bars when I told them we’d be leaving before breakfast in the morning.

I don’t know why more people don’t do seasonal work in or around national parks. My son spent one summer in Yellowstone and two in Glacier National Park where he worked with an eclectic band of characters: foreign students, retirees, college kids and hippies. In the winter they take jobs in ski resorts.

These workers love their itinerant life. Nothing like the down-on-their-luck folks in “Nomadland” who move from job to job. (I watched that powerful movie on the plane on the way out. Frances McDormand is awesome. Highly recommend it.)

Which reminds me, our national park system is a treasure. I’m always amazed by Americans who brag about all of the places they’ve been around the globe, but they’ve never visited many of our national parks. My favorite is Glacier - so wild and unspoiled - but Yellowstone is a close second. I’ve been here twice before but this is a first for my daughter and granddaughter. With just one ridiculous day in the park, we’ll have to maximize our time.

We’re heading into the geyser basin so our rising kindergartner can tell her classmates about the Yellowstone caldera during show-and-tell next month. Then we’re driving the northern part of the park and on to Cody, Wyoming tomorrow night.

I know. It’s totally lame to visit Yellowstone and not hike - you barely see a fraction of this magnificent park through a car window - but I have a radio show to do Monday morning and have to be back.

Told my girls this was just a spoonful of YNP. A lagniappe. They’ll have to come back someday with their hiking boots and spend a week or two in the back country.

Hoping we spot a bear tomorrow. I know things have changed since my first visit in the 1960s when the park was full of “bear jams” as the hairy beggars went from car to car, mooching junk food and snarling traffic. Back then you couldn’t go 1,000 feet without bumping into an overweight urus americanus with Oreo breath. Dangerous for tourists and unhealthy for the bears, but for kids on a family vacay? The best!

Shoot, my mother was practically mauled by a bear on that trip.

Uh-oh. It’s starting to rain. Perhaps that will hold down the crowds tomorrow and clean the air.

See, I’m looking on the bright side! 

That’s what a day without an avalanche of non-stop national catastrophic news will do for you.