Road Trip, Part II

I saw these bales of hay north of Salt Lake towards the end of the third day (as you can tell by the light.) Tons and tons of hay. Some of the fields are about three or four times the size of our whole farm back home. The speed limit is also a pretty fluid concept. I was doing 80mph most of the way (speed limit was 75) but I got passed by someone doing about a hundred, on a curve. He had a heavy foot and his hand was none too steady on the wheel. I watched him almost wipe out on the curve right in front of me with his girlfriend or wife in the passenger seat. I thought I was going to have to stop and render aid for a second there.

The next morning in Oregon. Did you know in Oregon it's against the law to pump your own gas?

I love the early morning on the hills. I was a little over 5,000 feet elevation here I think.

That was my first glimpse of the real Rockies!

I want to climb it! Why? Why does Kirk climb the mountain?

It took me a while to get this picture. I had to wait for a gap in the hills, and then semi's kept passing and blocking the shot. I have a couple of pictures of blurry semi's before this one. And it's not easy to do at 85 mph.

This is the other half of the same town. I don't remember the name of it, only that the whole mountain range opened up to form this huge flat-bottomed bowl, and someone back in 1870-something decided it would be a good place to build a town.

I think this is actually in Washington but I'm not sure. I was passing a little town with five houses stuck on the side of a mountain, wondering what makes someone want to live in a place like that. Even I would want to be able to get to a town when I needed to. And then I saw a sign for "historic bridge" and there was a convoluted little exit off the interstate. There was this little one-lane bridge on the gorge and a hardened road leading off into the hills, goodness knows where. Someone had built a small garden and some park benches around one end of the bridge and had set up some bronze plaques like you see at historic sites to explain why they are historic. Only these plaques had no words. I guess they hadn't gotten to that part. Or maybe no one up here knows how to read?

I climbed underneath for an artsy shot. (It's not really that artsy, but I like it.)

And once again I've reached my photo upload limit for one blog. I'll do one more later this week.