We went looking for aspens.  Fall color a la Colorado.  Leaves the color of butter and marigolds, as intense a yellow as Julianne Moore’s gown at the Emmy’s.

Leaves that flutter like butterfly wings, against a sudden morning chill. Leaves that twirl in the searing afternoon sun. Make you think about getting out the down jackets, making soup, gathering people home.  The spell of the western aspens take no back seat to those red leaves on the east coast.

We came up with a road trip from California to Colorado, to meet with friends who live in Kansas. It was a rare man-plan vacation, concocted by my husband and his motorcycle buddy who on a trip last fall had been so struck by the blazing Rockies that they decided we should rendezvous there this year.

We packed our pickup with New Yorkers and books, coffee makings, peanut butter and crackers, stuffed pillows into our tender lumbar regions, and got out of California and into Nevada and Utah and Colorado. Using real maps, the fold up paper kind you get from the AAA that let you follow how far you’ve gone and must still go.

As conflicted as this country is, as much as we yell at each other, we still come together in our mutual adoration and pride in the physical beauty of the place. Eventually you end up at a lone gas station eating ice cream bars and talking about the last amazing stretch of nowhere.  And nobody is really paying attention to the other’s  bumper sticker or gun rack because we’re all just really wanting to ogle the pretty leaves and some big piles of rocks. All looking for a view of America.

I’m kind of chicken when it comes to the desert.  It’s so exposed and raw. And it has snakes. A rest stop in the desert consists of two toilets and no trees. There’s no cell service, hardly any radio. The sign says, next services, 68 miles. You are on your own, bud.

But it’s an adventure. I put down my Alan Furst novel set in Paris and looked up at dark, cracked, ominous mountains that look like Afghanistan. I took control of the CD player,  popped out my husband’s endless and forever Goldberg variations in favor of an old Bob Seger CD and wailed, “We were young and strong and we were running against the wind.”

Then came the giant red rocks, the enormous spires you get in Utah, that look like a stone cityscape, a walled fortress or some government buildings in Moscow. You must stop and pay respect. You have to get out of your car and place your tiny little human self next to those ancient domes and canyons.

Then you get to sweep down into the dusty town of Green River and escape from the highway food and gas marts to a side street oasis called Desert Flavors, painted purple and serving true creamy gelato and coffee drinks.

Oh, yes, the promised aspens. The Rockies delivered their fall color. Spilling down mountain crevices, bunched beside rivers, dressing up the plainest Jane town, the aspens appeared in glimmering jeweled clusters. But we saw no big super shows. We were a bit late in the season explained Constance who runs a roadhouse in Twin Lakes, Colorado which provides claw-foot bath tubs and a front porch where you can hear night sounds from wild things in the mountains.

We met up with our friends in Salida, Colorado, an arty town with good chefs, youthful energy, a river walk and whimsically painted old houses. The trees were perfectly yellow. The weather was perfectly fall.  And the funny thing was, it was almost perfectly the same when we came home. Returning through Yosemite, we were greeted by our own, perhaps less famous, aspens and back to the golden fuzzy hills and russet vineyards of a California fall.

I almost missed the boat on the cousin connection. As a little kid, growing up in Connecticut I knew we had a bunch of aunts, uncles and cousins, grandparents too, back in northwestern Pennsylvania but we hardly ever saw each other and by the time our family moved to Pennsylvania the cousins and my sister and I were too old to play hide and seek and chase fireflies.

We were in high school or college and starting to be adults. Then my sister settled on the east coast and I took the west coast and then we only saw the Pennsylvania relatives for the occasional wedding or funeral.

But I envied friends with deep long-time cousin relationships, who hang out, call each other  every week, put together family vacations at mountain cabins. In some cases they’re closer to their cousins than their brothers and sisters.

I’m delighted that my California grandchildren have their own covey of little cousins they’ve known since birth and will probably be in each others’ lives forever. Maybe you need  to make a strong cousin foundation at that early age. I fondly recall the homes of Pennsylvania relatives that came with barns and creeks and woods. One even had a wonderfully spooky family cemetery. But they weren’t part of my regular world, nor were the cousins.

Now, we cousins are the matriarchs and patriarchs of our families. We’re getting up there. Some cousins have died. And I, so late in the game, still have questions about where we all came from.

And so when the chance came to meet up with some Pennsylvania cousins my sister and I decided it was time for a reunion. Jack is our mother’s sister’s son married to Carole.

We met in Vermont,  where they were finishing a bike trip. At 71 and only slightly older than me, the had ably taken on Vermont’s steep hills in the heat and rain.

It’s exciting to discover strong, firm apples hanging on your family tree.

I like any excuse to go to New England and Vermont was a neutral and attractive place for a family reunion. I also admit to an occasional  hipper-than-thou California attitude especially when it comes to rural Middle America, as if all they do is go to church suppers and worry about the government taking their guns.

Of course it’s silly and unfair to label people by where they hang their mailbox and now I see it was my loss. These Pennsylvania relatives, retired teachers, not only are gonzo bicyclists they ski from their back yard, make  maple syrup, have created bright and talented kids and grand-kids and travel the world. After Vermont they were on their way to China. I liked them so much I didn’t even ask their politics, although I was pleased to learn they don’t think much of the No Child Left Behind program. And they are loyal newspaper readers.

They also know family things my sister and I did not. That our mothers had a two year old brother who died after falling down the cellar steps. That our grandfather, the kindly small town undertaker, was a shrewd businessman. That we have Native American ancestry, confirmed by another cousin who lives in South Dakota.

That is the beauty of cousins, I’m learning. They never get bored with family stories or staring at old black and white photo albums. They’re people who even decades down the road you recognize as your own. Jack looked at his feet and my feet in sandals and said, “You can tell we’re related. Look at those toes.”

I’ve been wondering what we will talk about this summer as we travel across our divided country. Part of the joy of vacation is meeting new people, striking up conversations with strangers on ferry boats and in coffee houses. Or catching up with far-off family and friends you haven’t seen for years.

But what do we bring up after we say, “How you doing?” It’s a minefield out there.

Conversational etiquette used to call for avoiding the subjects of politics and religion. But in this scrappy environment almost all roads lead to one or the other.

The weather would normally be a safe topic. Who can argue which way the wind is blowing, but what causes it is something else.  Say something like “Nice day, but a little off for July, don’t you think?” and you could prompt a big debate over climate change. You might add something like, “We are really messing up the planet” and find yourself facing off with a local who thinks all scientists should be fired and it’s all in God’s plan that the polar bears learn to swim better.

Shall I assume by the flag on your T-shirt you are my kind of American?  Or the other kind?

You might innocently open a newspaper on a park bench next to someone who hates the media. You might ask a stranger where he gets his news and if he said, “I watch Rachel” would you give him a high-five or roll your eyes? And if she said, “O’Reilly’s my man,” would you get up and walk away?

We can get on Congress for having no interest in reaching across the aisle but apparently Greater America has a similar paralysis of cooperation.  We don’t agree on who should get married, who should have children and who should decide when they should have them. We don’t even agree on birth control which we thought we had long agreed on.

A Pew Research poll reported that as a country we are at near historic odds.  Democrats are more to the left and Republicans more to the right than in recent history and there’s a big wash of independents in between, and who knows what they’re thinking.

If we mapped our vacation route by stereotype think of how many disagreeable places we might have to avoid. Can’t go to that anti-immigrant state. Or the one where they let you bring guns into the bar.  Whoa, isn’t this the state that wants to kill Planned Parenthood? Is this the one owned by Big Oil?

Yeah, and I live in a state where everyone grows pot in the zucchini patch.

Oh people, can’t we get along? Probably not likely, especially not this year. Americans are said to be more polarized along partisan lines than at any time in the last 25 years.

If you don’t like unions or think Citizens United is dandy I’m not sure we have much more to say. And if I tell you I listen to NPR and I’m really rooting for the nuns am I going to lose you?

And while we can agree that theses are hard times for most of us you may think it’s my guy’s fault and I think it’s your guy’s fault. And you think my guy has to go. And I think your guy will make it worse.

So, read any good books lately?