MOUNTAIN TIME

We pushed quickly westward, staying only a day or two at each place and not even unhooking the car. Nebraska was open rangeland and occasional cornfield. We have seen thousands of cornfields from New York State west. It causes us to wonder if it is all feedlot corn or capitalizing on the upcoming production of biodiesel. There was nary a mountain nor even a slight hill in sight. Trees along the highway should have warned us of the strong winds to come as they were bent in one direction like those on windswept shores at the ocean. We were to become intimately acquainted with those winds as Zoe fought them to stay on the highway and one night we were buffeted with 75 mile an hour winds that rocked us to sleep when we stopped for the night at the Cabella campground next to their store. It was fun the next day to wander through their extreme weather clothing and smugly hope that we would never need to wear them.

We finally saw the snow covered Rockies far in the distance and were amazed at the thought of the pioneers having the courage to continue on their trek over those forbidding peaks. Between Laramie and Rawlins in Wyoming, we could see a red pipeline stretching across the plains evidently to carry oil shortly. At the campground in Rawlins, we were surprised to see a large pronghorn antelope stroll casually through the RVs. The next morning there was a whole herd of them across the fence from us. They seemed to be totally unconcerned with the nearby humans. My worst fears were realized in Evanston, Wyoming when snow began to fall heavily. I had hoped we were early enough to miss snow. Fortunately, by late afternoon it had all melted but when the weather report said more was coming in two days, we left a day early and missed it

The red dirt hills of Utah flashed brilliant red bushes with accents of yellow trees. We cut across the corner through Ogden and up to Idaho. The crops in Idaho turned to wheat fields, potatoes and occasional grazing cattle. The brown rolling hills of grasslands carried over into eastern Oregon. The winding Snake River furnished a brief respite from brown with oasis of green. The road followed the Oregon Trail up to the Columbia River where we crossed into Washington State to visit Zoe’s daughter, Susan, in her new home there.