It started as one car parked on state Highway 2 alongside Interstate 90 near the Cardwell Store. Then one became two, a few flags popped up, two became three, and eventually 11 vehicles and nearly two-dozen people were gathered on a gray Wednesday afternoon next to the interstate, waiting for a convoy of truckers to pass by on their eastward journey from Spokane, Washington, to Washington, D.C., in the name of protesting mask and vaccine mandates.
And wait they did. The convoy, expected to pass by Cardwell just before 3 p.m. on March 2, didn’t roll by until after 6 p.m. But the hourslong wait didn’t deter those who showed up to support the truckers. People passed the time setting up and waving flags, encouraging passing motorists and truckers to honk—most did—and chatting with each other in between sessions of warming up inside vehicles. They mostly flew American flags, but also a “thin blue line” flag showing support for law enforcement, a Blackfeet Nation flag, and one flag that was a composite of the American flag, the Gadsden flag (“Don’t tread on me”) and the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—often referred to in modern times as the Confederate flag.
Sandy Reynolds, who traveled to Cardwell March 2 with her husband David from their home in the lower Boulder Valley, said she was there for “strictly the convoy, because I support the truckers, I support what they are doing for us—not just them, us—everybody who works, in general. I believe in freedom and the ability to choose, you know: If you want the vaccine, get it. If you don’t want the vaccine, don’t. And that’s the long and short of it. And the more the government says you have to do this and you have to do that, it just whittles down our freedom.”
