contentiousness of people has died" (142) and he worried that Americans had grown too comfortable and no longer interested in risk-taking and rebellion, two of the traits that made the country great. Crossing into North Dakota, Steinbeck said that Fargo always fascinated him as a place where the winters were (seemingly) colder and the summers hotter than anywhere else. He found the real Fargo to be just like any other busy American town, but said the reality of Fargo didn't interfere with his old mental image of Fargo. Driving across North Dakota, Steinbeck decided that the real dividing line between east and west was at the Missouri River. East of the river, odors and scenes were essentially "eastern"; west of the river was where "The West" really started. Steinbeck crossed North Dakota into Montana, where he declared, "I am in love with Montana." He explained Montana was a place unaffected by television; a place with kind, laid-back individuals. "It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana (158)." He went to the battlefield of Little Big Horn. He traveled through the "Injun Country" and thought of an author who wrote a novel about the war against the Nez Perce tribes. Steinbeck and Charley then traveled to Yellowstone National Park, a place packed with natural wonders that he said "is no more representative of America than Disneyland." In the park the gentle and non-confrontational Charley showed a side of himself Steinbeck had never seen: Charley's canine instincts caused him to bark like crazy at the bears he saw by the side of the road. The pair next stopped briefly at the Great Divide in the Rocky Mountains before continuing on to Seattle. Steinbeck reflected on seeing the Columbia River and how the American explorers Lewis and Clark must have felt when they came west for the first time. He noted the changes the West Coast had undergone in the last 20 years (p. 180): "It was only as I approached Seattle that the unbelievable change became apparent...I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction." (181) Steinbeck then drove down the Pacific Coast through Oregon and California. On the way, Rocinante, Steinbeck's overloaded truck, had a flat tire and he had to change it in a rainstorm. In Steinbeck's retelling of the event, he wrote, "It was obvious that the other tire might go at any