We just returned from our holiday vacation. This year our trip encompassed 22 days, 14 states, 6,300 miles, temperatures from single digits to the high 80s, and miles and miles of smiles. We spent most of our time at an RV resort in the lower Florida Keys where you may back your toy hauler right up to a beach that straddles the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, lower the rear deck over the high tide waterline and watch manatees swim by.

As nice as a tropical paradise can be, we couldn’t live there. Like many vacation spots, the Keys are a great place to spend a week or two, but that’s about as much as we could tolerate. The traffic on A1A is akin to some apocalyptic AR driving game where the winner is the most spectacularly stupid kamikaze. There’s not a lot of unique local flavor. The local restaurants and shops are generally not better than the national chains. And the older people who flock there in droves from up north to retire seem to be content to just fade away.

That last feature, in particular, was depressing. I may be about the same age as a few of those folks, but I’m just getting going. Retirement doesn’t have to be just the lull before checking out; it can be the opportunity to embark on fantastic new adventures that you just never had the time to pursue before. When my time comes to just run out the string, my last act just might be to recreate Evel Knievel’s jump over the Snake River. And to show my disdain with conformity and shuffleboard, do it without a permit.

After close to 20 years, we have the RV routine down. It all began with a slide-in camper and an F-250. Then came our first travel trailer — a 24-foot bumper pull. Then came duallys and fifth-wheel trailers. As our rig has grown, so has everyone’s role in making things run smoothly. Everyone in the family has some daily responsibility for advancing us down the road — even the kids. Our 5-year-old is the master of getting all of the RV switches and controls set right. Our 3-year old has figured out that it’s in her best interests to get toys off the floor and away from the slides.

One of the best things about travel is the opportunity to chat up lots of people. Although we travel with a semi-truck sized rig, we prefer back roads over interstates because you meet more varied and interesting people in local diners and campgrounds than you do in truck stops and rest areas. Talking with people is invariably one of the best features of these trips. It always makes me feel better about this country, and people in general, than I did before we left. It feels really good to recharge the humanity batteries.

We were treated with kindness and hospitality everywhere we went — in the fashion of the folks there. The valediction, “You have yourself a blessed day, sugah.” might get you in hot water in some places, but not with us.

I find that talking with people as we travel provides a refreshing perspective on things both cultural and political. And though this perspective is anecdotal, it’s not necessarily wrong — especially when compared to the perspective that you get from much of the media.

I first began to suspect that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election during a three-week-long road trip across the country that fall. Virtually no one that I spoke with across the country supported Hillary Clinton. And despite the media’s portrayal of Trump supporters as a few loud and obnoxious hayseeds, I found his support to be widespread across a broad swath of folks — including disaffected Democrats.

On this trip I discovered that almost everyone I spoke with — Black, White, Hispanic, Native American or other — thinks that “woke” culture is silly and foolish. I did not speak with a single Hispanic person (out of many) who favored the word “Latinx,” Indeed, I spoke with more than a few Hispanics who were offended by a word that they consider an attack on their cultural values.

I spoke with educated people who voted twice for Trump and explained, in non-crazy terms, why they’d do it again if they had the chance. Yet I also found overwhelming support for the legitimacy of the last presidential election even among those who weren’t happy about the outcome.

I encountered widespread support for vaccines. Not so much for masks, mandates or shutdowns.

I’m also convinced, after several weeks on the road, that if the midterms were tomorrow, Democrats in D.C. would be an endangered species. And not at all for the “fail to deliver” reasons that you keep hearing about in the media either, but rather because the left’s ideas resonate with almost no one outside of their bubble.

One of the highlights of this particular trip was taking the ferry from Key West out to the least visited U.S. national park — Dry Tortugas. I’ve wanted to visit Dry Tortugas since I was a kid, more on that in a moment. But as an adult with an interest in, and huge respect for, Abraham Lincoln, I’ve long wanted to visit Dr. Mudd’s cell in Fort Jefferson.

After touring the fort, as we were sitting down to lunch, Megan, my wife, said to me, “This place is cool. But what made you want to come here in the first place?” My response: “Well, when I was a 7-year-old kid living in Fort Myers, nearly six decades ago, when hurricanes came I’d sit in our house with the windows all boarded up pretending that our old Philco was a shortwave. I’d say ‘calling Dry Tortugas’ because it was a place on the hurricane map that sounded cool. I’ve wanted to come here ever since. And, of course, to visit Dr. Mudd’s cell.”

She looked at me sympathetically, squeezed my knee and replied, “Well, there’s not a box for that on the prize form from the ferry company, so I’ll just check ‘other.’”

Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist. writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding mountain bikes and motorcycles and playing guitars. His video blog: “Howlin’ at the Moon in ii-V-I” may be found at facebook.com/HowlinattheMoonin251 and on YouTube at bit.ly/2SN745k.