On the road again
Just can’t wait to get on the road again
Well, we’d better be. It’s 12:30 PM Thursday, June 3. We’re pulling ourselves away from Ben’s house in Boulder, Colorado, with a 600-mile trek ahead of us (most of it across Wyoming) to make it home to Idaho Falls.
It’s about an 11-hour drive, depending on who’s driving. Which, in our case, it should be under a ten-hour drive, since David is driving.
We’re on our way:
Yay! Woming border, five miles ahead:
Hey! Up on that hill. It’s a giant beetle! It’s a camel! No,
It’s a buffalo.
We’ve entered the great state of Wyoming.
Here we have Wyoming tax dollars (or is it federal stimulus money?) at work,
while oil wells churn out more Wyoming State revenues.
Oil is transported in trucks
on roads
to nowhere.
Oil contained in parts unknown.
A hopeful thought. Unless you’re trying to keep your mind off oil, and spills:
Oil spills? I don’t know. Ask my iphone.
We pass Happy Jack Road.
which makes us feel … happy.
Then climb a mountain pass, reach the summit
and head down, down, down …
We’re Smokin’! again
past an oversized … cigarette? –
on our approach
into Laramie.
Hey – what’s that sign ahead supposed to mean?
The curly Q’s get a Paul Simon song playing in my head :
Slip sliding away, slip sliding away
You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away
Whoah and I know a man, he came from my hometown
He wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown
Now, I don’t know how his passion, that woman, and the thorny crowns played out, but I’m sure glad we don’t have to worry about slip sliding off the road on account of a blizzard, or any combination of slick roads and high winds.
So, where are we? Oh yeah,
96 miles from Rawlins, which make us, uh, about 470 miles from home.
Sigh.
Hypnotized by endless snow fences
going ‘zip’ zip’ ‘zip’ ‘zip’ (space) ‘zip’ ‘zip’ across our vision as we zoom past the landscape.
Into close-ups of
conglomerated trucks.
Butting up against
high winds, that jolt the 4-Runner, rattle David, and gobble up the engine’s gas with the mouth of its resistant force.
Windmills poke out of the landscape like earth’s one-day stubble.
Now entering an area
with patchy snow? ARRRGh!
Those clouds above make me wonder …
Does Wyoming have a tornado season? Does it look like a tornado could spring from those clouds? How would you know unless it happens?
Outside the city of scenic Sinclair
lives an oil refinery. Hmmm. Does this explain the origin of Sinclair gas stations?
Oh boy. Another wind warning. As if we didn’t know.
Where across southern Wyoming is it not a high wind area? That wind sock is a nice touch, all puffy and cutesy, pointing in our direction. Okay so we know we are driving into a strong head wind. The 4-Runner would be jumping all over the road like a bronco buck if David weren’t controlling it at all times with both hands in a vise grip on the wheel.
Entering Rawlins, Wyoming, now.
With its own definition of ‘scenic’.
Home of the Wyoming State Penitentiary.
Which, I suppose it’s not a bad thing that we can’t think of any reason to stop here. Ask if we could get lunch in their cafeteria?
We zoom on over the Continental Divide:
Which, shouldn’t you feel a ‘bump’ or see a crack or something when you cross the Continental Divide?
Pay attention!
See – someone’s paying the price!
Keep on truckin’
Through Rock Springs
and Eden:
That must be Adam’s cabin.
We drive on, through the threat of leaping deer,
under ominous skies
that gather up rays of hope
and rain them back to earth as a promise.
Past clueless cows
into Pinedale.
Population 1412. We pull over and dine at the
Wind River Brewing Company Brew Pub and Grill, which, to our immitigable surprise, provides excellent food in a jovial, elegant atmosphere jammed with people abuzz in activity and conversation.
Who would have thought that such a place could exist in Pinedale, Wyoming?
We exit the restaurant all sated and happy as Happy Jacks, and jump in the truck to finish the trek home.
It’s approaching dusk.
And now we have to watch for
leaping, dark, blurry deer.
Which causes chaos
in the front seat.
We pull over to let an ambulance pass
and then follow it for the next 70 miles. And we wonder, can you pass an ambulance with flashing lights if it’s traveling too slow? We chuckle as three other cars zoom past us only to pile up in front of us, behind the ambulance, which finally turns off toward Jackson, Wyoming, while we speed on into Idaho.
It’s dark now. My iphone is pretty much kaput. So are we. You are also, you say, with this long, strung out account of the last leg of our trip? Hey! It was a long, freakin’ drive, man.
Wyoming is a gigantic state to cross.
We arrive home about 11 PM. The next morning, June 4, I’m out in the back yard experiencing a miracle.
The miracle of our flowering crab, which has finally flowered.
Our lilacs are blooming too.
I plant some flowers in pots.
And will plant the rest of the gardens when it stops raining.
June in Idaho. It can be windy here, too, but not like Wyoming.
Tags: Wyoming
The Decompression of a Boomer 
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