This is pretty minor compared with the experiences of most, but the year I was a senior in college, a friend and I wanted to go somewhere for spring break. He was an Air Force brat, his parents and family in Japan at the time, and I was an orphan, and so really we had nowhere to go.
Everybody else was going home or going down south.
We wanted to go somewhere else, but couldn't decide.
That is, until the Thursday night before spring break started, and he mentioned at supper that he had read that Anaconda, Montana, had the world's tallest smokestack.
To which I said, hey, let's go there.
We took his 1968 Pontiac two-door convertibile GTO.
It was late March.
The weather was pleasant, all the way through Nebraska, Wyoming, and the eastern half of Montana; typical spring-time weather. We both had taken along clothes suitable for the climes of southeastern Nebraska, and no more than that.
Nearing the continental divide, it abruptly became a different sort of weather; blizzards and winds and cold temperatures, and one had to use tire-chains to get over the various passes. And once over the other side, it didn't get any better.
But we had a good time nonetheless.
