Well, after 6,300 miles, 16 state borders crossed, 17 souvenir magnets, 18 sleeps, 1 ocean, half a dozen deserts, too many mountains to count, and one UPF 50+ sun protection panama hat – I’m home!
Remote for Scale
Wait, what? Weren’t I just in California? Yes, it looks like that. By the time I got to California I got behind in transcribing my recordings and started to flounder in posts. And that’s where it sat. Since then, every time I’ve been in a hotel I’ve been working with (no kidding) an AI system to transcribe the recordings and help me organize them so I can stitch them into a proper narrative. Gemini helped immensely, and now I’ve a great system for future trips. And if I haven’t covered it, I have a small (thumb sized) recorder that I have on a lanyard so at any moment I can speak a note or memory into it. Originally for dealing with memory issues, it’s turned out to be a great travel note taker.
Beautiful, remote, and a 10 ms ping!
I also didn’t consider the fact that over half my overnights were camping, and wouldn’t have electricity, internet coverage, or even somewhere comfortable to type! Although there was a campground in Colorado that was 10,000 feet up a mountain that had the strongest and clearest 5G signal I’ve ever seen! It was surrounded by ski resorts and apparently a high class clientele expects high class cell coverage!
My task from here on out is a bit of post-trip therapy. By going over the notes and typing my story, it’ll hopefully help cement the memories and let me enjoy them in the future. If you’d like, you can ignore this post and imagine I’m still on the road. I’ll do my best to be timely!
The header image is my backup pocket tool! Oh I missed it so!
It’s been a crazy couple of days. Many miles and many adventures. Here are two tales to keep you patiently waiting for real content. The photo above is my current view. That view plus 5G? I’ll take it!
Dancing in the moonlight
Canyonlands National Park was one of the remotest locations I enjoyed. The road from the highway to the park is 34 miles. They mean it when they go big. When I checked in I talked with the ranger at the booth and she said the campground was pretty empty, no issues except one of the sites has a resident rattlesnake. I checked my reservation. What luck! She said it hadn’t been seen in a day or more, so it might not be an issue. Just stay away from the bushes. If I wanted to check it out or pick another site, she said I could choose.
Not at Canyonlands, but close, if I recall. Hi Coyote!
I drive out and the site assigned to me had a neighbor who was really quite close. I walked around and hoped to hear hissing but nothing came up. Still, I was a little apprehensive, so I went for another site. The loop ran around a huge rock formation (you can scuttle up top) and I chose a spot with a great view and no neighbors for a long ways. After I set up I went for a walk to check out the toilet situation. Imagine my surprise when they had flush bathrooms! So much for primitive. Distant, but comfortable.
It’s another one of the official Darkness Zones, so the night sky is supposed to be amazing. I did the whole dinner thing and spent time typing, but went to bed early, setting an alarm for midnight so I could see the stars.
Except the moon was out. Like a stadium light it was so bright. Shadows and all. Went back to bed, set an alarm for 2, same deal. Finally at 4 the moon was going down mostly, so I got my blanket out, laid it out on the picnic table with my pillow, and laid back to look at the stars. Worth it. Oh and the ground temperature the day before was 138 so it was nice and warm. Look it up, it’s a thing.
Double Triple Breathtaking
The altitude around here is high anyway, so when you do a pass (drive over a mountain) you get to altitudes well above 10,000. The gold mountain fire smoke was around, as well. Both of those affect your breathing, right? I found a third.
I love driving. I love driving switchbacks. I love beautiful views from mountains. But today apparently we set all of that aside. As I was going over the Slumgullion pass, the edges of the outside bounds of the turns started to be closer, and with less protection (guards, etc.) so it felt and looked like the very edge of the road was the very edge of the mountain. It started to bother me a bit, and eventually I started working on a nice panic attack – the ones where you can’t breathe. Eventually I was going around those curves so slowly, and finally I just kinda locked up. It was like I forgot how to drive, and I just stopped. After a few seconds I came back to my senses, but I was still freaking out. I stopped at a pullout to take a breath and drink some water, but I was nowhere near the summit. I knew there was no way to avoid it, so I set off again.
No locking up, but I was having a lot of problems breathing and just feeling like I was about to fall off the mountain. I saw an official turnout/scenic view, and pulled off there. I parked and took some water and walked around, did the 12345 counting skill, and basically tried my best to get reasonable so I could get down the mountain. I did take a PRN which helped, but didn’t take much because I was driving.
I found my zen and put on Sigur Ros and headed down the mountain. Mostly breathing again, I continued on the route north, working on becoming comfortable with those bare edges. (There weren’t that many from there on. However, it was the beginning of an exciting road. Image show my arrow backwards, I had the northern part remaining!
A long driving day, with some old bones to keep me interested halfway there.
Dinosaur National Monument
“Enormous desert plains stretch out, entirely dwarfed by the towering mountains behind them. Though these peaks bear names, they are barely legible print on a map. The sheer scale of the hills makes the vast desert basin feel surprisingly intimate. Most striking of all is the sawtooth horizon line; the jagged peaks rise up so dramatically they appear pocketed with holes, creating a magnificent and imposing view.”
I stopped at the visitor center, which led me to the other visitor center, where you can take a shuttle to the visitor center. Sorry, not quarry but shuttle. I talked to a person, a real-life person. It was a guy on a motorcycle and he was traveling across the country. I don’t remember why. And he had a veteran card, too. We talked about that, and yeah, it was very social. Are those Sawtooth Mountains?
Sound of Silence Trail
Sound of Silence trail. All sorts of warnings. Set a timer for 15 minutes to turn back. It’s not silent because there’s wind. It’s like Orfield quiet here. Except for the wind and the occasional, possibly jet plane, fighter, whatever. It’s pretty. I saw a little lizard running across the path. No rattlesnakes. All of the snakes that I was very assuredly seeing tend to be wood roots. Not as exciting, but probably safer.
Sound of Silence has cooked me enough that I don’t know that I’m going to be getting out of the car again. Unless, of course, there’s something more interesting. Blah blah. See, I always figure with the convertible, you’re exposed to the sun, but if you’re always moving, the sun doesn’t have a chance to get you, and has to start all over again. So you shouldn’t get sunburned at all. Really, faulty logic.
Heading West
Let’s play smoke or sand. I was really hoping for smoke, and then I saw the sand twister over on my left. We’ll see how it goes. 95 is the highest temperature so far. Straight lines through… I mean, I don’t know how you couldn’t call it a desert. Uh, hot, super hot. Very windy. And the hills are interesting, but not notable. Lots of passing lanes. Lots of them.
Fred Hayes State Park of Starvation. Wind picked up in Utah. And I know that because I’m enjoying the anti-displacement aspect of my vehicle. But it’s okay, I managed. We’re on a bridge that crosses Starvation… Starvation Lake. Has anybody searched for His Whispering Eye anywhere?
The wind blows cooler here past the winery. A Lamborghini decided he was just over it, passed everybody in the oncoming lane. Just went over a hill or mountain or whatever. Elevation 6700 something. Yeah, these big curves that require strength and widening really are delightful. They have all these lakes and reservoirs and things like that, but there’s no life to them. No boats, no people, no docks, nothing. I miss navigable bodies of water.
Used the kickdown to pass a guy, and it got really scary, including the second time I hit it. Uh, I was going really fast and it’s a little twitchy, and did not feel comfortable. Desert warmed water does not taste good at all. Oh no, why is the car rocking? Oh, it’s the wind. 88 degrees and I’m trying to figure out how long it will take for the car to fill with cold air. It’s nice to see that Utah doesn’t know how to do a passing lane either. More likely they know what they’re talking about but they don’t. If you sat a five-year-old down and asked them to describe the space program, that doesn’t make it real.
Except for the cars, this cross over the mountain from that one city where the ice was, to Salt Lake City is quite nice. It’s been fun. Up and down and then left and right, all of that. And when I get to the hotel, let’s play how the **** do I turn this light on?
The Highway & The Salt Flats
Another car wash so I can see through the front window. And it moves around me, and it’s making me dizzy.
Utah major highway. I love when lanes compress. A vehicle will be following another vehicle, usually a truck, for a very long time, and then all of a sudden throw on their turn signals and jam over to the next lane and then go past them. Almost like a “Okay, I’m tired of this. Screw this, I’m moving on.”
The mountains are all grassy, and it reminds me of Oahu. I’m headed to Ely via the Great Basin, but Ely in general. And I just went through one of the last towns, wasn’t that big. But as I got back on the road here, the sign showed that Ely was 150 miles away. So all I got to do is drive to Duluth. Next services 83 miles.
More bikers in tight pants just riding along the highway in the literal middle of a freaking desert. 80-some degrees out. Okay, the temperature is 85, but the sun makes it feel like it’s 100 and something. So part of my theory is that it’s the sun’s rays that affect us most in the desert, not the heat necessarily. But in my case specifically, is it that I’m riding in an open car for hours on end under that same sun that I’m having these reduced hallucinations? Two more groups of skinny pants bikers. I suppose it makes sense, it’s a very straight, flat road where people can pass each other safely and easily. Except for that whole under the desert sun part.
The desert really is beautiful. Not just in the ordinary definition of the term and how people describe it. But it’s that it is this unforgiving, harsh land that it would be hard to imagine trying to farm or even ranch. And maybe that’s the payback for it being so beautiful. I’m seeing some sand that looks like sand dunes so maybe those will be starting here. Or is it a quarry?
There is a huge white section to my left, so the south, and it looks like a salt flat. And those are cool and tasty. I took a taste of a salt flat once. Looking at the GPS display on the car, that whole white area looks like a blue lake. So I’m wondering if it’s a salt lake. Not the, but a. I see what looks like water over by the lake now.
Border crossing coming up here pretty soon. Entering Nevada. I am officially in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing but sagebrush and horizon in every single direction. It is both incredibly beautiful and slightly terrifying.
I swear I’m working on content – literally right now. But thought I’d throw something out there as a sign of life. This is while I was driving from the Little A’Le’Inn to a different hotel in Vegas. (Long story, you’ll get it eventually)
I was driving across the great flat desert, the line of road stretching perfectly straight to the mountains. I’m muttering into my recorder recording memories and this happened…
I don’t know how many times you would have to drive way to get that to happen. I’m imagining him up there giggling at the MINI Cooper. And normally I have the top down, from 49 degrees earlier that day, to 104 today, it’s top down. Except I was low on gas and thought the profile would use less gas. Of COURSE it was then! I think it would have caused hearing damage though..
Not very freaking well! (Just kidding, up at 3:30am and I’m rarin’ to go!). (waiting for the crash) It was my pocket tool, trying to get the valve cover off, and I “snapped it like a twig”. Happily I have a spare one at home, but I was not going to go home from edina and then through edina to leave again.
This is the same pocket tool Lily has. I say has because her life is hers. It’s not like I’d be hurt (I would) if she didn’t use it. But it’s so useful! I studied long and hard to find this.
I wanted:
Super small
pliers
scissors
screwdrivers, whatever
knife
What I got:
All of the above
tweezers (for the lols) (but I have used them for tiny screws and such)
A “retail box opener” It’s a metal stick with a small diagonal blade at the end
Bottle opener
I didn’t think much of it, just oh well it broke. Apprently it was more important than I thought. I reached for that thing for package opening, cutting paper or cardboard, jamming the screwdrivers into things to try and fix them but never using the screwdrivers for their intended purpose. The scissors even cut paper! It was a miracle of modern science. So when I’m out here in the wild and I need to do .. anything, I reach for it and it’s gone. Not even lost, so no hope that it will show up. I have a locking blade knife I got at F&F but honestly I paid too little and got junk. In order to unlock the blade and close it, you have to pull something over.. in front of the blade. Nice. I’ll make do for the trip, but it won’t be the same.
Good thing I’ve got that spare!
Other than that, this is how it’s going:
It is so hard to understand the scale without seeing it in person.
Posting this quick update to let everyone know how it went. It went well!
Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony – The Symphony of Sorrowful Song, was being performed in San Francisco on June 21st. This is the symphony I’ve listened to through Ketamine Therapy for years, and the perfect music for a rainy day. I have heard it on media so very many times, but never live. My theory is that it features a female vocalist singing in Polish, which may be hard to find. That and it’s the ultimate downer in classical music.
I thought about flying out, but that’s really stressful, takes forever, and rental cars are a hassle. So rather than take 5 hours to get there, I drove. Seven days to get there and, well, more than that to get home.
Excited, to say the least, As a mental health exercise I wasn’t concerned that I won’t like it, or that I’ll break down sobbing, or maybe none of those. It’s that I would hear it and not care.
Well, I cared. I kept myself awake through the Chopin and others in the first half. And the introductions. But I really enjoyed the conductors explanation of things in a way I never knew, and will now hear in the music.
From those first bow strings pulled across the double bass all the way up to the violins, it was familiar music but with so much more life and vibrancy. It’s an experience I won’t forget, no matter how hard my brain tries. I enjoyed watching the orchestra play, and I was impressed that as an all volunteer band, they managed to nail it with one rehearsal a week for eight weeks!
The vocalist was a pretty lady who looked like she enjoyed what she did. She had this great smile on her face in the lead-up, like she knew what was coming and nobody else did. And when she sang it was technically well done, but also with a volume of natural life in there that made it sound genuine.
I met this nice older couple seated next to me. He was bored, she was thrilled to be there, so she had a lot of fun chatting with me. One of those people who can get your life story without you knowing it. I wish they had invited me out for drinks (ginger ale) because I would have enjoyed her life story, as well.
I think I’ll end there. The music was wonderful, and here are some pictures.
Small orchestra, mostly just strings. The Herbst theater was a thing of beauty also
One can never tell how long they will hold the ember or joy in their heart. I suppose that’s part of what makes it special. My heart has been difficult to get that ember in there and kept lit for a few years now. But tonight my heart is aflame and peaceful and happy. And it doesn’t matter how long it’s there, it’s that it was there at all that matters.
I’ve been using Gemini (AI) to help me handle my transcriptions from the audio recorder. It’s been going wonderfully. I drop some files on Gemini, they get transcribed and then added to a google doc in my drive. Simply a dream, and makes one love AI.
Until today, when Gemini decides they have never been able to add things to a google doc, or to drive. So I should just go type words somewhere else like it’s the olden days. Pay no attention to the AI overlord messing with our minds.
It is clear there will be no post tonight, but I’ve taken to speaking out the content, not just quips to flesh out later. This should make creating posts and getting them out much, much faster. In the meantime, I’ll tell you a story to tide you over!
Driving down the loneliest highway in America, highway 50. Yes, it’s lonely because there are very few towns on it. But good lord I had plenty of other vehicles to chat with. Not like it was crowded, but it wasn’t empty and desolate.
I’m cruising down one of the straight stretches and see flashing red and blue lights, and another vehicle. The closer I get I realize the police or whomever are in the middle of the road. I start to wonder what is going on because it didn’t seem normal. I sllow downand eventually come to a stop. I’m thinking if there’s a gunfight I don’t want to be right there to enjoy it. One of the two cop cars comes up the highway at me, slows down and says “I’m going to need you to pull fully off the road. Oversize load.”
I’m in a MINI Cooper. What part of oversize can you interpret from my size? Sure I have camping stuff etc. but nothing it sticking out. When I look back to see if he’s turning around to come give me a ticket for being oversized, I see he didn’t turn around. He’s going on and apparently doing the same thing to everyone. Clearly it’s a sting. They’re pulling everyone over for oversize loads and then looking for drugs?
And then I saw more lights down the road – yellow this time – and a large orange object. It was a truck pulling a massive trailer. It said “oversize load” and I felt like an idiot. The lady in the car in front of me was out of her car ready to take pictures, so I got out to apply another layer of basting butter, er, sunscreen. I miss the photo of the oversized thing, but it was just a big gray box.
Once it passed, we all hopped in our cars like the race flag had shown up again, and we were off!
I understand that quote to be along the lines of “Carpe Diem,” but in less of an empowering entitled white people in an expensive school sort of way. And to be honest I don’t like that movie because the vast majority of those kids are going to have life Carpe’d at them anyway. Because they’re wealthy and connected.
Anyway, I feel it’s saying life is here until you die, you might as well use it. Less Don Quixote charging ahead and more Sancho Panza plodding behind.
Colorado
Camping is going well. I have yet to encounter dirt. It’s all been large wooden framed rectangular areas with I’m assuming dirt, but topped with gravel. The Rubber mallet makes quick work of the tent spikes – really happy I bought the heavy duty stakes. Oh wait, no, I had dirt in South Dakota/Nebraska and it was uneven and hard to tell where a tent was supposed to be.
I went proper camping with my scooter friends. We obviously took our scoots and it was quite the adventure. There was quite a bit consumed, and lots of experimenting about how much alcohol can get in the fire before scaring us. At the end of the night I went to sleep and slept the sleep of the dead. (dead drunk) but it was that next morning when I discovered that “My Sleep Number is gravel.” Now, I’m not silly enough sleep directly on the ground, but it comforts me in knowing I could, except for the getting up in the morning part. I also like the gravel base because it’s flat. With just. a little shifting you can stand a water bottle up. And breaking camp seems easier somehow.
There is a Colorado Welcome Center and it made me wonder where exactly I had been. Apparently Wyoming. And long enough to type about it in previous posts. The Colorado side has a welcome center and there’s a cannabis store in the town right there, and ice cream, and even a church. The Utah side has a sign saying ‘Welcome to Utah’. Same sign at both ends.
Not much new wildlife to report, seeing plenty of antelope and birds but nothing incredible, like a Moose or a Marmot. The prairie gives way to hills which give way to larger and sharper hills which gave way to mountainettes which give way to proper mountains.
Okay, I figured out what was driving me crazy. I’m driving on this highway, and there’s huge expanses to the left and right, and in the background there’s, you know, bigger hills. But there are houses and buildings and things all over these expanses, and it’s—it’s haphazard. It doesn’t seem to be a system to it. They’ll be, pointing one way or the other, close together or far apart. It’s very confusing.” If anyone wanted to bring order to those communities, they wouldn’t be able to draw a straight road.
As far as roads, Colorado is pretty good. The roads out here aren’t horrible, they’re concrete or whatever. But when you hit a good long-ish blacktop stretch of buttery asphalt, it’s like French silk pie for a moment. You can go a long time without seeing anyone. This is how I wanted to cross America. One lane in each direction, middle of nowhere, often not seeing another vehicle for minutes, 20 minutes, whatever.
Although they have these point-of-interest signs that don’t tell you what the point of interest is or how far away it is. And I stopped at one out of curiosity, and it was a sign about a fire in ’88, the biggest fire in Colorado. But better than that was just the scenery and the views—the East, I guess.”
I love the twisties in California. The ups and downs, turns so tight a MINI Cooper thinks it might be tight. Ocean views and dropoffs to thrill. But good mountain passes have some intense turning magic. They’re often long. So if you’re leaning into the turn and using some amount of force on the wheel, you need to keep that up for whoeverknows how long, because these are mountains, baby! You also have the wind, which will make you sweat on one of those long curves, adding to the skill level swinging around them. If the California twisties had this kind of wind, it would totally change the game. And I think they do, and you can tell when by when they close the road.
I’ve been known to widen curves here and there, but I just can’t do it on the big turns. Widening the curve means coming into the turn on the outside of the lane, and slowly moving to the tight spot, then easing back out to the outside. Ignore that, it was confusing. It means make curves easier sometimes.
At the tops of those passes I was seeing snow – we were pretty far up! It was a treat after having watched so many mountains go by with snow on them, and now I was seeing it for real!
BTW, cruise control works downhull too. I would rather not smell your braking system melt its face off as we enjoy the crowded lanes together.
And here’s a funny: I’m driving, and the sun is behind me because sunrise, east and so on. And it’s giving me glare off of my displays. And I was just thinking, ‘Oh great, now I’ve got to sit all day with this glare on my displays.’”
Tonights sleep was The Yampa River Valley, or whatever we want to call it. It’s a lot of hills. I don’t see mountains, really. I think there are some here and there. No snow caps. But it has this river going through it, and there are like trees and stuff around the river. And so it’s this weird switch between the green desert and the hanging forest.
At the end of the day I am sitting at a campsite in my super comfortable chair which folds down to about the size of a groundhog. It’s the tree shade I was looking for. 85 degrees and I felt like I was burning everything visible. I did sunscreen today but will do it more often tomorrow. That’s the thing about this trip – it’s very desert based and I’m getting cooked. I will not compromise – unless it’s raining, the top stays down! Wind R Us!
Pictures!
Love this viewThe local grocery in Craig ColoradoIt’s the couple bars of 5G that makes me wonder..
As I’ve mentioned, the Internet has been hit or miss, and my original intent of stopping at a coffee shop for an hour, sipping a nice Latte (please be a dear and insert the right little like above that) – well that idea has not happened. On this leg of the journey I’m focused on one thing. San Francisco on the 20th. So I’ve had some hefty days. Monday alone was 500 miles, which is way too much for one day. It was through Nebraska, I wasn’t missing anything.
Working on this journaling my initial thoughts of *not* listed departure time and temperature, oil level, average length of hair, etc. turned out to be a good decision. I find all that stuff amusing, but who needs it?
Getting the initial posts out of the way was easy, but the posts while driving (or is it just one?) have been a source of anxiety. And we know part of this trip is not having more anxiety. It’s that I felt compelled to post Every Single Day, and just wasn’t making it. So I figured I’d do a twofer to get caught up. But really, I just need to post when I can, write when I can, and put together a nice narrative for you to enjoy.
That said, let’s talk states! We left off at dawn in..
Nebraska
It was pretty early, at least an hour before the alarm was set to go off. Around 5:45. Yeah, I know, that’s normally bedtime. I think I was just excited to break camp and see how that goes. First this I did was make coffee successfully – yay! Packing up was good, except I was on the road by 7, which seems like a really long time to take to pack up. Future days would be better. While I wasn’t in Nebraska yet, I was minutes away. Also, I have not found a way to gracefully get out of the tent.
I don’t know if I told this already, pretty sure I did. Enjoy it again! When I was in high school my brother graduated from an Army school in Arizona. He had to drive his car back from AZ to MN and my Mom thought it would be a good idea for me to accompany him. No idea why. Anyway, of the elements of the trip I remember are seeing the Untouchables in the base theater with him and his friends, driving through the rockies with Billy Joel’s “The legend of Billy the Kid” and classical music, and driving across Nebraska. It was like someone was just running past you with all the same scenery each time. The only time we stopped overnight on the trip was in Nebraska. I was barely awake, the cones on the highway were. a blur. We were weaving a bit. So he just picked the next hotel and there we were. Next day, more of the same. The parts I don’t remember? Not my first plane right, but certainly my first alone, any kind of grauation they may have had. We’re both pretty quiet and I swear we uttered maybe 25 words the whole trip. It wasn’t uncomfortable or awkward. We just didn’t really have anything to say. Again, not in some kind of feud or anger. We were just kind of getting along, just without talking. All of the kids in my family worked at a boy scout camp at some point or another. I actually had the same job he had when I finally worked at camp. I was heading down into camp with one of my coworkers and he said that I was pretty quiet and didn’t talk much. I just said “I don’t really have anything to say. “. He replied “yeah, that’s what your brother said too.”
Back to the cornhusker state. It’s not completely flat, there are rolling hills. In fact the “big deal” in Nebraska are the sand hills. They’re hills made out of sand, and they’ve covered in grass. They have an awful lot of them. And often they just look like a hairy Windows background. Pretty, though. When there are up and down hills, they tend to be twisty, like if Bug Light decided to make twisties. Adding to the boring is that there are no pullouts, no rest stops, no tourist buildings. Just road.
I have this medical device implanted in my body, and it does a thing every five minutes. If that thing is uncomfortable to doing something annoying to my voice, I can use a magnet to pull a reed switch in the device and it skips that 5 minute cycle. When they implanted it, I got a bot with two moderately large and extremely powerful magnets, along with a belt clip and a watch band thing. Super ugly and large and obnoxious. For the last however many years I have had the belt magnet on me. It works for the task intended, but it’s also a great thing to fiddle with. If I needed a token like in the movie Inception, this would be the one. Bulky though. In thinking about the watch band, somehow I thought maybe someone had a magnetic ring. And they did. It’s a magicians thing for palming coins. Rare Earth, baby! So I’ve been buying and losing and buying and breaking (brittle) rings from Amazon for a long time. They’re cheap, like $7 each.
Now, I’ve lost the belt clip, but it always shows up stuck to a seatbelt or inexplicably in a pocket. And I’ve lost the rings – they’re easier to lose because they’re smaller, but also the fit has to be right. If it’s too lose you’re going to lose it, or it’ll fall off and shatter on the floor. The thing is, I’ve never lost both at the same time. And idiot me didn’t bring a back up ring. So when it fires I sound like Saw Gerrera from Star Wars. I’ve talked to many a clerk in the last few days where I talk to them normally and then all of the sudden I’m hoarsey mchorserson. I get funny looks.
Tonight I stopped at a hardware store and got some magnets, superstrong tape, and velcro. Taped the magnet to the velcro and BOOM problem solved. Though not elegantly. It’s ugly, it itches, and I assume now that I have a solution that works (it just worked! Yay!) I will find the other magnets. Would be great..
Let me complain a little bit. Small towns, would you please just tell us how slow you’re going to make us go? Don’t try and fool us into 50mph and then on no how about 35mph but really we mean 30 mph PSYCH IT’S 25 MPH SUCKER!
On the nature front, not a lot of excitement there, except I saw a little gray fox standing by the side of the road and darted when I passed. Pretty cool since they’re mostly only in Nebraska and don’t hang out on highways much. The campground the night before was beriddled with cottonwood trees, and I don’t think I’m going to get all of the cotton out of the car. Come to think of it I was looking for a tissue today and came across some cotton. I’m just now remembering that’s Actual Southern Cotton. The bugs on the road were really bad, so I ended up finding a car wash which took care of that. Two days later and I’m looking for another car wash..
Was in a much deserved (after a whole night of camping) hotel for the night, loves the bed, the shower, the flushing knob. Miss the challenge of it all, the. sounds, the smells. “Breaking camp” in a hotel is just as time consuming as a campsite, apparently. Pack everything, get it to the car, and reconfigure back to camping ready for the day.
The morning was well under way when I headed for Scott’s Bluff National Monument. I drove on the Oregon trail. At least that’s what the parks called it. I was *so* excited to use my parks pass for the first time. Bad news – it’s free. Hit the visitor center, gift shop (magnets), then off to drive to the summit. (Their words). I thought it was going to be a short nothing road, but it ended up being super twisty. And tunnels! They had tunnels! And not just boring straight ones, but tunnels that had curves, some sharp, in them. I would love to be able to drive up and then back down that road with no other cars. It would be twisty fun!
The view from the top was as you would expect. Very far away things, but also some closer things that were pretty. Look at the picture below to see just how FAR you could see. And I’m going to curse myself here but I’m not sure if it’s because I’m applying to logic and research to some of these places but I just don’t see the crowds I expected. I was alone on top of the Bluff for a good amount of time. Crazy.
Little Observations
Cherry Dr Pepper does not improve Dr Pepper.
I could listen to Barber’s Adagio on loop forever.
Old windmills doing what old windmills are supposed to do.
The car just asked if I wanted to take a break. Bragging point or bad sign?
Wyoming
The route really just glanced off Wyoming. I stopped at a visitor center / state info place that had a monument to Lincoln (his highway is here). He looks so sad. It’s his head on a pedestal. Like someone carved the head and then just abandoned it.
Wyoming was pretty flat, but there are mountains in the distance, and they are striking and beautiful and many have snow. I still don’t understand what a port of entry is, and why they have some not even on borders.
Wyoming infrastructure when it comes to roads is excellent. Everything you wanted in Nebraska you can find on this side of the port of entry.
Health wise, the noises my body makes when breaking camp will be revealed. My shoulder and that whole area is doing okay, taking the muscle relaxants as needed. Depression is still riding shotgun along with whomever that person is. Sullen teenager has be thinking of one of my kids. We’ll see.
My favorite thing of beauty? I’d say the fox. He was a cool dude.
Tomorrow: Colorado and beyond! (hopefully)
Pictures
Nebraska Untamed
The other stuff
An actual sunrise! I had no idea they still did those..
She just looks so small sometimes!The solution to my visibility issueAbe in his block of rockA view from Scott’s BluffSquint, hold the screen up close. The pointy thing in the middle is Chimney Rock. That’s 23 miles away!A little evening espresso, waiting for the weather to cool enough to put up the tent.Oh. Me. Oh. My.
The Windmill Posts 