If not now, when?

SOMEWHERE IN THE FOUR CORNERS REGION—Vacations are hard to come by these days. The Great Recession of Twenty-Ought-Whatever-It-Was has successfully squeezed the wealth out of the hands of the Little People and placed it in the hands of the One Percent. But they'll get their comeuppance soon enough. Retribution is at hand, and a disenchanted rabble with no hopes for leisure or vacation time is a dangerous rabble. As Boston showed us, America is a pressure cooker with the relief valve welded shut.

Beauty still exists in America.

The American economy is being held together by nothing more than the thinnest veneer of public faith that the money we're spending is actually worth something. Soon it will become crystal clear that Fed printing presses have been kicking out bushel basket after bushel basket of worthless fiat currency. While this ocean of cash would seem impressive if piled up inside some great sports stadium somewhere, deep inside each and every American lies an uncomfortable realization that the amount of money in circulation far exceeds the actual value of all the goods and services that have been procured with it.

We all know that dollar notes are worth mere pennies. Inflation is just around the corner, and it won't be long now until the system begins to right itself by collapsing under its own weight. When the debts are called in, no amount of cash out there will cover them. Once that happens, a loaf of bread will actually cost what it's worth in terms of materials and human sweat. Visions of people carting wheelbarrows full of bills to the grocery store will become commonplace. Austerity measures will be enacted across the country as the Super Rich attempt to roll everyone else under the bus and make off with whatever ill-gotten gains they can—like cockroaches skittering out of the country with an armload of toxic Rembrandts before the stompings begin. Riots in the street with thwart most of them, as Wall Street executives are tarred, feathered, hoisted up on rails and dumped at the edge of the cities by those who were gullible enough to trust them to manage their retirement nest eggs. Cities will collapse under the weight of worthless promissory notes, and their rubble will be filled with the stench of rot.

The poor won't notice any difference, and many of them will actually find opportunity once the playing field is finally leveled by the very sledge hammer of greed and excess that had ruled it for far too long.

The air freshener reminded us to search for pie.

The One Percent and the Middle Class will become casualties in what is to become known as The Great Reckoning, and no amount of Fiscal Policy, Punditry or Fox News Outrage will drown out the mournful howls of the victims.

This is precisely why we decided to sneak away for a quick road trip while there is still time. Nature doesn't care about banking crises or Stagflation, and there are no televisions out in the the woods and the wild.

Knowing that it will only be a matter of time before our savings becomes essentially worthless, we decided to crack open our wallets and flee on vacation, away from worries about the mortgage debt of our home or the televised cacophony of Monday Morning Quarterbacking about the Boston Marathon bombings. Nature doesn't live by a script, and animals don't hire collection agencies; entrance into the wilderness does not require laying yourself out naked under a curtain of radiation or a pat-down by a Federal Agent with a 30 percent chance of having a felony rap on his or her record.

This place is remarkably safe!

Being out in the wilderness is much safer these days than being out in the cities.

Our path took us north, away from the cities and toward the dry desolate outback of the Desert Southwest—where the U.S. Government had banished the American Indian. These days out here, gas is cheap and mutton is easy to find. A tank of gas is synonymous with Freedom and a few strips of roast sheep flesh atop a greasy sopapilla means you're well nourished, all things considered.

We threaded our way west into Northern Arizona and then up into Utah, where the rock is pink and the pie is plentiful—at least in theory.

She'll lure you in for pie, alright....

Despite the promises of the sign outside of the Thunderbird Inn in Mt. Carmel, Utah, the eastern gateway to Zion National Park, the last decent slice of pie in America has been subverted and corrupted. Based on previous road-trip experiences and this final blow of gastronomic indignity, there really is no more decent pie for sale in America anymore these days. Like everything else, pie has been outsourced, optimized and brightly packaged for low taste and high profit. The only thing sweet and tasty about pie these days is the profit margin for the shareholders of the companies that produce them. Like the Cherry Pie air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror of our Family Truckster, road food these days smells a bit off, and it gives us a headache.

People these days blame such discomfort on the presence of gluten; personally, I blame it on bad ingredients and the system of abject apathy that has been cultivated in the New Breed of American Worker. While corporate profits rate at an all-time high, wages have stagnated and have lost ground against increases in the cost of living over the past 30 years. While Wall Street was partying and growing fat on taxpayer bailouts, the American worker grew poorer and more discouraged, cultivating a work ethic similar to the one currently employed by migrant workers: Pride and quality supplanted by the promise of low wages.

Animals know better than to approach humans.

We have entered The Age of Good Enough. Our vacation is no different. We are taking some time to sit in the sun without spending a wheelbarrow full of money. And along the way, we're stopping to marvel at what's still left of the natural world—before Northern Arizona and Southern Utah become permanently obscured behind a sickly whitish haze from the coal fires that are so necessary to keeping the illusion of American Superiority alive.

See you on down the road.