Today many towns throughout and around the Rocky Mountains are still as wild as they were 30 years ago. While a few have transformed themselves into havens for artist colonies or hobbit holes for hippies, granolas or whatever they are called today, quite a few remain quite content to look the way they have always looked. Plain, western, downhome - anything but cutting edge might describe these places.

The towns I am talking of have Rexall Drugs, the old Lincoln style theaters, a drive-in, a burger joint with pinball, a truck stop with actual truckers (the rough traditional kind with scraggly beards, tractor hats and yellowish-brown teeth smiling at you when they laugh together like a pack of lost dogs) and maybe one traffic signal with more than just yellow if you are lucky!

These watering holes are what the cowboys used to call one-horse towns. The children who grow up there cannot wait to escape into the world in search of golden opportunities. "Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly; they fly over the rainbow, why oh why can't I?" (music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, sung by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz).

In the Rockies these one-horse towns can feel a long way from everywhere, mostly due to traversing mountain ranges, valleys. gorges and rivers to get to the nearest city. They have so much charm it is easy to believe it is some trick. It is no trick. The trick is finding a livelihood in these watering holes.

The people are friendly, independent, proud, know their minds faster than you can talk, but are both trusting and defensive both at once. As with anywhere, though, you find modern technology floating around, such as cell phones, ipods and Internet. Life is dramatically slower though and that is exactly the charm, is it not?

I will introduce you to a few of these towns I know quite personally. Hang on to your horses! You might be surprised and you might not, but you will come through with an appreciation for the American West.