Road Trip Part III

 I stopped and took this picture at a scenic overview in Oregon. This was a six mile downgrade from the high desert to the fertile valley below. It looked to me as if the mountains just droped straight off to the farmland and the engineers had to come up with a way to get the road from the top to the bottom in a real hurry. So they split the Eastbound and Westbound lanes and sent them down (or up) by separate, twisting, convoluted routes, all at least a 5% grade for more than six miles.

 I love going through these cut outs, especially when there is a Semi doing 30mph through it at the same time.

 You can tell this is the border between Oregon and Washington, because the sky suddenly gets gray and cloudy.

 That truck is carrying one arm of one of the windmills for a wind farm up in the mountains, just to give you an idea of how huge those windmills are.

 I think the picture above is my favorite picture of the whole trip. It just needs to be in Imax, and then it would be almost sort of a little bit realistic.

 There is something austere and magnificent even about the gloominess. It is what it is, it asks permission of no person. It simply obeys God, and calls out sternness in any who want to live here. We have to adapt to it, for it certainly will not change to suit us. It calls for humility.

The rest stop at Snoqualmie pass on I-90 W. After that I hit the temperate rain forests and the rain began. A little depressing after all the gorgeousness, at first, but I am getting used to it. You have to learn to love it. God would not have made it if it were not good. It is up to me to find and love that good by His grace. It requires humility.

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.

Road Trip

So, from Jan 2nd to Jan 5th of this year I drove solo from NY to my new spot in Washington. (That's states, not cities). A total of 3,000 miles, (I made a few stops on the way) and three 12+ hour days, with the last day breaking 8 hours behind the wheel. I think I underestimated how unpleasant that much inactivity was going to be.

I did bring a camera so I can share some pictures. The first day I did not stop at all, except to get gas. The weather was mostly horrible anyway, and I drove through more than one blizzard before I made it to Illinois. So no pictures from that day.
In Illinois I made my first detour, through:

It was a long detour because the town was about this big:

And it was about a lightyear and a half from the freeway, as the crow flies.

It was too early in the morning for anything to be open so I just took some pictures of the house where Reagan was a boy

and moved on.

I know no one asked me, but in my opinion there is too dang much nothing in nebraska. Why they made that state 540 odd miles long I'll never know.

I can't remember which state this wind farm was in but it was the first of many I would see. I like wind farms. They are majestic, in their own way, and energy doesn't get much cleaner than that. This wasn't even the biggest one I saw.

Scenery didn't really start to get interesting until Wyoming, but then it was awesome. I love the high desert. If I ever get a chance, I wouldn't mind living in Wyoming.

This little tree appealed to me, standing all by itself on the top of a big ol' hill. Apparently it appealed to a lot of other people too.

Shortly after that I reached the peak of my trip... literally.

Hey look, it's a roller coaster!

More shots of the high desert. I don't know why I liked this part of wyoming better than any part of Nebraska. It's just as empty. But it's clearer, if you know what I mean.

I raced the freight train, and won.

The road goes ever on and on (and on and on and on....)

Then we got into some mountains. Unfortunately, blogger is tired of uploading photos, so the rest will have to wait for another time.