midwest

Renovated Airstreams, trailers, and camper vans have mixed nostalgic wanderlust with modern conveniences, making many Millennials dream of selling their belongings and hitting the open road. The freedom of going wherever, whenever, is enticing—especially when these adventures are documented with hashtags and validated with likes, comments, and virality.However, Millennial minimalists are not the first ones to hit the road—not even close. First there were the pioneers on covered wagons, then the railroaders, and still today there is a large community of people who spend their lives driving, almost 24/7, without any pomp and circumstance.Enter truckers—the opposite of hipster #vanlife, and the unsung heroes that keep our grocery stores stocked and our businesses running.One of these hidden heroes is Val Stokes, founder and owner of Stokes Trucking. As a 17-year-old in the early 1970s, he worked at a local truck stop, the Crossroads, in his hometown of Tremonton, Utah, and felt the wanderlust bug bite him.Val loved watching people come and go. “I’d see the truckers pull into the Crossroads, get their fuel, go into the café and have dinner, then get in their truck and head off. I thought, ‘Geez, I wonder where he’ll be tomorrow.’ All my life, I’ve loved seeing what’s over the next hill. So I just thought it would be fun to drive for a living.”In 1978, he began driving trucks for others. But the following year, he persuaded his father-in-law to cosign on a loan that would finance his first truck. Leaving behind his wife and one-year-old son, Val began to drive five or six days a week, 600 or 700 miles a day, at the then-national interstate speed limit of 55 miles per hour.With a trailer full of canned soup, or dairy products, or bananas, or pharmaceutical supplies, or baking flour, or even bowling balls, Val would head to a new destination each week: maybe Las Vegas, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Wisconsin, South Dakota—anywhere. All without any form of GPS.“I had an atlas,” says Val. “A good old Rand McNally. I had a briefcase full of city maps, like Chicago, LA, San Francisco. You could buy those at truck stops readily. Anytime I’d go to a city I’d never been before, I’d stop on the outskirts of town and buy myself a map.”And if he needed to call a customer to verify directions, he’d have to stop at a truck stop and use the payphone.Still to this day, Val knows not only how to navigate across the country on the interstate, but how far all the cities are from one another. Photo by Paul Waldron“From right here in Tremonton, it’s 110 miles to Evanston, Wyoming,” he recalls from his inner map. “403 miles across Wyoming, 456 across Nebraska, and 310 across Iowa—and you’re in Illinois.”On his cross-country treks, he would tune into a good AM or FM station or listen to one of his cassette tapes. He would also check out books on tape at one truck stop that could be returned at another, like an interlibrary loan.Truck stops were and are central to life on the road. At truck stops, truckers refuel both their bellies and their trucks, take showers, and park for the night so they can snooze in their sleepers. Nowadays, like everything else, many mom-and-pop truck stops have been taken over by large chains.When Val would get hungry—the ice in his cooler from home melted and the homemade sandwiches long gone—he’d stop at a truck-stop café, where he consumed “good, home-cooked meals.” (Unlike today, his early trucks lacked amenities such as a microwave and refrigerator.)“You could get anything,” Val says. “Omelets, chicken-fried steaks, mashed potatoes. Any kind of breakfast, lunch. A lot of times they’d have a lunch special. Most truck-stop cafés would have a special at night. But you could get anything from spaghetti or chicken parmesan to a patty melt or a steak.”After eating, he’d head back out to deliver his load until he needed to stop again. Truckers are only allowed to drive for eleven hours at a time, meaning that if a trucker hits his or her limit fifteen minutes outside of a big town, they have to stop on the road and wait until they can drive again. In the early days, trucker logs were on paper, and a creative mind could get around the eleven-hour limit easily. Today’s trucks, with their electronic logs, are not so forgiving.Despite the daily grind, Val enjoyed seeing the sights as he drove. One of his favorite routes traversed through the Upper Midwest.“I liked the Upper Midwest in about May, when the corn’s about that tall”—Val’s hand demonstrates about three or four feet off the ground—“and everything’s green. You can look at the corn rows over the rolling hills and it wasn’t too hot and humid yet. It was beautiful.”He also loved driving to California, where you could see relics from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Now, the desert drive is bumper-to-bumper from Vegas to LA. He misses the days when you could pull a big truck onto the Vegas Strip, right up to a hotel casino, and indulge in the $1.99 buffet.The increase of traffic is one of the biggest changes Val has seen through the years. That and gas prices—when he bought his first truck in 1979, diesel fuel was just 35 cents per gallon.40-plus years, a brand-new office building, and forty trucks in the fleet later, Val only takes a load when one of his drivers is sick. But he’s still proud of being a trucker.“It’s a great profession,” he says. “It’s one that’s severely underappreciated, and that’s kind of a sign that we do our jobs so well. If we weren’t doing our jobs so well, we’d get a lot more attention.”—Ashley Evans

We all dreamed about hunting for treasure when we were little. We would get on the playground and pretend we were sailing on the deep-blue sea, searching for lost islands full of unimaginable riches. Somehow treasure hunts were fascinating to us as kids, and even as we grow older we seem to find excitement in discovering hidden goods. Yet we tell ourselves that we will never actually come across a chest deep in a cave, that there is no buried gold on the bottom of the ocean floor, that there is no red x marking the spot where we will uncover a lifetime of wealth. But what if, somewhere in a mountain range, there really is a treasure chest waiting to be discovered? Anyone visiting the Rocky Mountains really could end up walking away with a chest full of gold.An Invitation from Forrest FennSo how did this treasure end up in the Rockies? Forrest Fenn, an eighty-four-year-old currently residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has the answer. Back in 1988, Forrest was diagnosed with cancer. His prognosis? Less than a 20 percent chance of living for three years. Forrest decided that he wanted a way to leave a legacy behind if he was going to die. Additionally, he wanted to encourage children and adults to go out, get into the mountains, and explore the outdoors. He aimed to “give a man and his wife a reason to get the kids out.” So he planned a treasure hunt. Turquoise beads are just one treasure to be discovered in the Rockies. Photo by B. Jefferson Bolnder. CCHowever, it took Forrest fifteen years (well past his projected three-year allotment) to actually bury the treasure. He had to purchase the chest, collect the gold to put into the chest, and make the trip to bury the chest once it was full. And, most importantly, Forrest had to set up clues. He wrote the book The Thrill of the Chase, which talks about much of his life growing up and some of the experiences he had as a kid. Forrest also included a poem written specifically for the purpose of aiding interested readers in finding his hidden treasure.An Unsolved PuzzleForrest hid the treasure in 2010, in the Rocky Mountains somewhere between Santa Fe and the Canadian border. He said that he hid it in a place that is very important to him and that it only took him about two seconds to decide where to hide the chest. He then published the poem, which will supposedly lead readers straight to the treasure, assuming they interpret the clues correctly. However, previous searchers have looked extensively throughout the Rockies over the past five years, and the treasure still has not been found to Forrest’s or anyone else’s knowledge. (Yellowstone National Park seems to be a popular site for hunters.)But to Forrest Fenn, the treasure hunt isn’t about somebody lucky finding a chest full of gold. The hunt is about enjoying nature, seeking adventure, and getting into the mountains with the possibility—though no guarantee—of a huge reward. Forrest says that “we’re a sedentary people today” and that the most rewarding part of the treasure hunt for him is when people contact him and tell him about the great experiences they’ve had getting out into the mountains searching for the treasure, especially when it involves their kids. He likes the idea that his book is impacting people’s lives and that people are seeking entertainment from the outdoors rather than from television screens and gaming systems. He added that he hopes his book will “give people a reason to do something different with their lives.” It took Forrest fifteen years to gather all of the gold and jewels to put in his treasure chest before hiding it in the Rockies. Photo by Mykl Roventine. CCA Guide for SearchersWhile adventure and fun await hunters in the mountains, the treasure itself seems to be much more enticing to searchers. So how can interested parties seek the treasure? Obviously there is no sure answer, or else the chest would have been found by now. However, there are some ways that individuals can increase their chances of locating the mysterious chest. Forrest suggests that before searching for the treasure, those interested in looking should read his book The Thrill of the Chase, and especially his poem that goes with it. He has also written “scrapbooks” (similar to blog posts) and another book, Too Far to Walk, both of which may be helpful in providing readers with additional clues about the treasure’s location. His scrapbooks can be found at dalneitzel.com.Additionally, Forrest recommends that those wanting to look for the treasure be prepared both mentally and physically. He said that searchers should have a definite plan in mind and know what they’re doing and where they’re going rather than looking blindly for the treasure. Searchers should have a map, proper clothing, food, water, and any other equipment that may be necessary or useful on a trek through the Rocky Mountains. Reminding readers that this hunt can be packed full of adventure, Forrest advises searchers to be prepared for everything “from grizzly bears to fast running water and bluffs that drop off a thousand feet.”Forrest also emphasized that anyone wishing to find the treasure has to be motivated. Nobody is going to just happen upon the treasure chest. Searchers should do their research and study potential locations before attempting to locate the treasure.Finally, Forrest’s treasure hunt is not for the faint of heart. Rather, it is for anyone wishing to find excitement and adventure in the beautiful and historic Rocky Mountains. Forrest points out that “the mountains are full of excitement . . . and every place you look there’s something to be learned.”An Opportunity for AdventureWhether searchers strike it rich or not, Forrest’s treasure hunt is continually providing motivated people with an opportunity to experience nature. “You don’t have to ride a horse for four months to experience what’s out there,” Forrest said. Planning a trip to the Rockies can be rewarding for individuals, couples, and families regardless of whether they locate the treasure or not. Forrest hopes that people, especially those who haven’t spent much time in nature before, take this chance to get outdoors and have fun, with the possibility of finding a chest full of gold. One of Forrest Fenn’s main motivations for setting up this treasure hunt was to get people, especially kids, off their couches and out into nature. Yellowstone National Park has been a popular site for seekers of Fenn’s treasure. Photo by Julie Falk. CCSo do you think you have what it takes? Read Forrest’s poem, solve the puzzle, grab a map, and start looking! (However, Forrest also advises not searching in the winter, so maybe wait until spring.) “Everybody likes treasures, everybody likes gold, and everybody likes to read stories about pirates and Robin Hood, and to me it all ties into the same thing. It’s all being outdoors,” Forrest remarked. The hunt for Forrest Fenn’s treasure is a great, family-friendly opportunity to search for something worth more than its weight in gold—as valuable as the treasure is, the memories formed and the adventures found while searching for the treasure will be priceless.—Shanna ClaytonFeature image by Andrew E. Russell. CC