WESTERN READS by aaron downey
Summer is for road trips! Round up your family and friends, some tunes, a camera, and a couple good books and hit the road. There’s no experience quite like driving across the beautiful and fascinating western United States. Planning a hike in Arizona? You can drop some calories and pack them back on again with Roger Naylor’s Boots and Burgers: An Arizona Handbook for Hungry Hikers. In this read, Roger shows you his favorite places to hike and the best joint for burgers and other favorites afterward. You’ll want to do the northern and higher altitude hikes in the summer and save the others for the winter. Young kids love this book. Period. Jump around with Barb the jumping cholla cactus in Guy Porfirio’s best-seller, JUMP! Hilarity ensues when Barb accidentally gets stuck to the back of a coyote and ends up on a crazy road trip of her own. Guy is a crazy-talented illustrator and one of the nicest ‘Guys’ I’ve ever met. Road trips are about learning and experiencing new things. Sometimes the things we see all the time and take for granted might have actually changed the course of American history. Barbed Wire: The Fence That Changed the West, by Joanne S. Liu, tells the story that barbed wire played in the settling of the United States. Nothing says American road trip like a leisurely drive down the Main Street of America: Route 66. Arizona Kicks on Route 66 and New Mexico Kicks on Route 66 give you some of the best neon signs, pie, cowboys, hot rods, scenery and roadside dinosaurs those states have to offer. In these reads, Roger Naylor and Martin Link, respectively, teamed up with photographer extraordinaire Larry Lindahl to document these trips down the colorful, iconic Mother Road. Did I mention there’s pie? Finally, what’s a road trip without great food? Check out Jonas Cramby’s Tex-Mex From Scratch. It has a simple, modern design with beautiful, authentic Tex-Mex recipes and easy instructions. It’s part Tex, part Mex, and all good. I’m ready for a tall, chilled michelada right now.
26 :: summer 2018 :: western ag life
