Monday, August 20, 2007

The trip begins



Packed and not ready to go. Pops sure is photogenic! ha ha hah
A person could NOT ask for better friends! This is a good picture! Thanks for dropping by to see me off Dave! Chad, get in touch my man!
Wyoming! Beautiful, mellow Wyoming! Of course this wasn't the first state that we crossed! We didn't take many pictures of Oregon as our start was late in the day and it was raining. Idaho was awesome the next day, but pictures where on the back burner as the weather was our main concern. It snowed mostly. And it snowed hard! Visibility at times slowed traffic to 25 MPH. The roads were fine as there wasn't much on them, but it sure was fun!

Utah, well, I'd just rather forget Utah along with Ohio. We'll get to that later, but Utah was commercial, high stressed, and just this really weird vibe, especially in Salt Lake (Which was no longer visible from the road). The word "gross" may be used to describe the vibe there. Of course once on the road from Salt Lake city the Geology is awesome! But if you are traveling at rush hour the Mormons like to flip the bird more than a NYC cabbie! So, no pics. They aren't worthy!

Wyoming!
What the landscape lacked in beauty (which wasn't much in Wyoming) the sky made up for! There were scenes like this stretched all across this whole state, some with Black Angus, some with horses and most without. At one point on a bluff along side the road my Pop and I viewed a lone rider on his horse trotting down to a little stream about 2 foot wide. We waved, he did not. Perhaps his land was divided by the highway that we traveled. Maybe we just interrupted his meditative stroll. Maybe he just didn't see us. Or maybe he was awestruck as many are by my beautiful truck! :-)
It's a shame that I had the trip map on the dashboard when this picture was taken as it really captures that "big sky" feeling that you get when you are 10000 feet above sea level. Pops and I were both totally taken aback by the enormity of the sky and clouds! I swear you could have touched them! What a beautiful day that was! It made the whole trip worth it!
A lone Wyoming "watchtower" as Tolkien may have called it. There's a house and stables at it's base. I'd be in awe of mother nature everyday looking out my bedroom window at such a sight! I might be wary of a little rockslide here and there as well!
Some of Wyoming's beautiful stratified Geology! What an awesome spectacle! Those different color layers were set down on the bottom of a body of water millions of years ago. The different colors come from different rocks eroded from some far off mountain top, then buried over time and compacted into rock ultimately to be later uplifted like this! This spire must have had a more durable layer of caprock on top to help it maintain the castle-like shape. How majestic!
This is just one of the best pics Pop took! Imagine if only that were a steam locomotive! I live in a wrong era! I suppose I should be dreaming that that locomotive were powered by Biodiesel. Still, it's just a classic photo from inside the cab of Moby through the window.
Pops and I had a little joke running once we got into Wyoming that we would only see a house every 75 miles or so. Usually a fellas' property was bisected by the road as the house and stables would be on one side of the road and the prairie on the other. We surmised that there was once an angry landowner. Anyway, the joke backfired on us as we were going to send my Uncle Rich "one of the only houses in Wyoming" as there were no more houses left but this utility shed before we got to Nebraska.
It was difficult to capture the feeling of the sky and clouds being so low and perhaps this isn't the best picture of that, but the landscape...
One of the last sights from Wyoming. I bet this is breathtaking with more snow on it!

2 comments:

Foul Pete said...

Your blog is so random Sean. Its chronologically fucked but I like it. So whose boards are you fixing?

ssspider said...

beautiful pics! drove by your old house today.