We zoom down rural highways at 65 miles an hour (if we obey the limits), not thinking much about the passing countryside or what would happen if we broke down.
When you stop to think about it, the people who moved west along the Oregon Trail were just barely this side of broken down. They really knew little about what lay ahead of them.
Journalist Rinker Buck and his brother Nicholas decided to see what that was like. So they pushed themselves and a mule team over the old path, a journey told in the book Oregon Trail. Rinker Buck visited in 2015 with highlights, an interview we revisit here.