I've done most of this trip many times, multiple routes (used to live in Santa Fe but visited SEA and PDX frequently, now we do it the other way around) with my sweetheart. Even in the most red-necky hicksville backwaters you could imagine (and there you have my cultural biases in a nutshell), no one has ever given us a hard time . But then, almost everywhere in the world, business is business. Just ask the virtuous, teetotaling Mormon merchants who gladly cash in on all the coffee drinkin', cocktail swillin' fornicators who flock to Moab and the parks in Southern Utah.

And, if you bother to swing off the freeway and visit some of those red-necky hicksville backwaters, you will frequently be very surprised at the kinds of people who've found homes there.