Day 3

After all the star gazing last night, we didn't get off to a very early start. Before leaving Ft. Collins, we visited the Colorado State University campus and enjoyed walking around its park-like grounds. I suppose this is what our English Cottage Garden next to the Japanese garden could look like--if we never went on road trips.

As we passed through Denver and the heavy traffic, which is not even close to Los Angeles, I remembered why I moved to Moscow where it doesn't even take five minutes to get across town during rush hour--which lasts about ten minutes. It was good to leave Denver behind and be back in the countryside again where we saw more antelope off and on the rest of the day as we cut across the top corner of New Mexico past volcanoes on a mile high plateau to Texas.

Before making a beeline to Amarillo, our goal for the night, we stopped in Pueblo, CO for a stroll through the historic Arkansas Riverwalk district and some lunch. Talk about gentrification. Pueblo took this forlorn, dismal area and completely transformed it into a riverfront of vibrant shops and lots of foot traffic paralleling San Antonio.

I wonder what a little water would do for revitalizing downtown Moscow. Maybe some of that reclaimed sewer water would do the trick. We could have gondoliers and everthing. Moscow could become known as the Venice of the West. But, instead of Gondoliers, we'd have Vandaliers named after our football team.

Even though the light was wrong, I couldn't resist a picture of the magnificent Pueblo railroad station built in 1890 when the robber barons reigned supreme. It sort of puts the station at Kendrick, Idaho to shame. This one's for you, Janice, and there's a municipal court across the street so you would feel right at home.

It has been a trip of trails starting off with Lewis and Clark and Chief Joseph in Idaho and Montana. Then the Oregon trail in Wyoming. Today we crossed the Kit Carson trail and the Santa Fe trail. We even visited the site of the famous LP ranch in Texas where just about every desperado and cowboy hung out for novels to be written about them including Billy the Kid.

Gas prices so far were the lowest in Coeur d'Alene and pretty much consistent elsewhere at $2.99 with an occasional dip to $2.85. We've paid as much as $3.19, however. Expecting gas to be really cheap when we hit Texas, it wasn't--at least in the hinterlands. And that is in the land where I think gas was invented. However, in Amarillo where we are spending the night tonight gas seems to be about $2.87.

I wonder why they call Amarillo "am are rill o" when it really should be pronounced "am are ree yo". I guess it's for the same reason that in Idaho a llama (yama) is called a "lam a"--as in Dalai Lama.

Roadkill count for the day was a mere two racoons and a skunk. I think the people in Colorado eat their roadkill quicker than the people in Wyoming and Montana. We're expecting some armadillos tomorrow or as they call them here, Texas road bumps, as we head to Houston.

Full Moon

It's a full moon tonight in Ft. Collins, Colorado, which is over a mile high and that much closer to the heavenly bodies in the sky on a crystal clear night. I just happened to have installed AstroNavigator II from http://www.vitotechnology.com/ on one of my GPS enabled Pocket PCs.

I grabbed my trusty pocket pal and went outside for some star gazing. It has been a long time since I have been involved with identifying stars and constellations. Actually, I think it was when I was working on my astronomy merit badge or was it astrology?

I sure wish I had AstoNavigator then. It's a delightful way to star gaze, and I recommend it. All you have to do is connect your handheld device with a GPS receiver and point in any direction in the clear night sky, and the exact picture of what you see will appear on your screen.

Simply tap on an item on the screen, and information about it will pop up. You can search for individual planets, stars, or constellations. It's sort of like having a smart telescope in the palm of your hand. Check it out.

Day 2

Heading South on I-90 we had a history-filled day visiting forts and battlefields, the most significant of which was Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Sheridan is a charming, well-preserved old West town, but my favorite place is Buffalo, Wyoming. There is not a plot in a Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour novel or a Western movie that didn't happen in Buffalo, Wyoming. You could easily spend a week in the local historical museum delving into the fascinating events that transpired in Buffalo.


Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play. We saw scads of deer and antelope--more antelope than deer. I tried to imagine what the environment would have been like teeming with thousands of buffalo before they were all needlessly slaughtered. Lamenting that they were all gone, we happened to pass a field full of buffalo, a herd of maybe a hundred or so. Hooray!

We also crossed the Oregon Trail in places and visited Independence Rock where Oregon-bound pioneers carved their names. The arch above is about a mile south of the Oregon Trail and quite a scenic spot.

Across the vast landscapes of Eastern Montana and Wyoming, you can see almost forever. Twice, in the distance, we saw dark clouds reaching the ground in an otherwise blue sky, which, of course, meant rain ahead. We wondered if we would drive right through the squalls or miss them completely as the road meandered unpredictably. Naturally we hit both of them, and they were ferocious. I had to slow down to 30 MPH and could barely see the road, but, fortunately, they didn't last long.

Roadkill count for the day included two deer, two black calves, three porcupines, one badger, three rabbits, a coyote, three raccoons, and several lumps of unidentifiable species at 75 MPH.

I haven't seen too many birds with the exception of a couple of magpies, a great horned owl, and ubiquitous starlings.

We're spending the night tonight in Fort Collins, Colorado, the home of Colorado State University, which we will tour in the morning before continuing south.

Day 1

We got under way by 7 AM when I hoped to be gone by 6, but you know how that goes. We left the ripe, rolling hills of the Palouse behind expecting them to be all harvested by the time we return. We headed north past Lake Coeur d'Alene turning east to Montana a place of many fond memories for us.

This is a picture of Cataldo Mission built in 1846, the oldest building in Idaho. After I took this picture, the battery in my camera went dead--no more pictures today.

My plan was to stop in Billings, MT for the night, but there several big deal events taking place there, and the hotels had doubled their rates. Forget about it. We drove on to Hardin and scored a hotel at half the price with free high speed wireless Internet.

Actually, there are very few hotels that do not offer it these days. I notice that most Motel 6 properties still only have dial up service. My son called to say that he was staying in the Huntington Sheraton Hotel in Pasadena, CA, which is a fairly snooty hostelry, and it charges an exorbitant daily fee for wireless Internet.

I will be testing several navigation systems on this trip. The one I used today is the Mio Digi/Walker c520, a dedicated device that uses a windshield mount and costs less than $399 (the normal retail price) from www.buyGPSnow.com.

I was unprepared for all the features this incredible unit offers. It has a built-in antenna, so all you have to do is turn it on, and it automatically connects to the satellites. Maps for the US and Canada come pre-loaded with millions of Points of Interest.

Let me just mention a few of its features without going into detail. It has an SD card slot so that you can insert your own data and listen to your favorite tunes, an audio book, or watch a movie on its ample sized screen.

What really blew me away was discovering that it will hook up to your cell phone via Bluetooth. When your phone rings it automatically answers it. You just start talking in a safe, hands free environment while driving. Of course, you can also initiate calls and talk on it as well, and it works great. Perhaps the speaker could be a little louder. It also talks to you and tells you what turns to make so that don't even have to look at the screen.

When you get off route, it reroutes you extremely quickly and efficiently. I highly recommend it.

Day before Day 1

This is an experiment the day before departure to test and setup a moblog site via my mobile phone. In case you're not familiar with the term, "moblog" just means mobile blog. It seems to have worked. This is a picture of the bridge between Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA where I enjoyed a bike ride along the river and blackberry picking.

I filled up my bike bag about half full of the most lushious berries you ever saw. Unfortunately, they all blew out on the way back home. :-(