It Amuses Me...
Jul. 10th, 2007 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
That the hotel wireless provider automatically opens up the site for our hotel when starting up...
I'm not going to be able to catch up on all the nights we were on the Kalmath and out on the Lake in the Woods tonight, but we've made it from Elko, NV to Rawlins, WY today, pretty much along the route shown.
For most of the trip it looked like the whole West is on fire. There were fires around Salt Lake, Lake Tahoe, and Reno, and all the mountains were hidden behind a haze of smoke. Good thing we didn't go to Reno, as the prevailing winds had taken most of the smoke down there. Even as it was I was sneezing a lot.
I can now imagine someone coming West over the hardship of the Rockies and getting to the Salt Flats and going, "We're stopping just East of here, where we can still grow things. No *way* we're going to make it across that." What I can't imagine is the first person that looked at the Bonnevile Salt Flats and, first, said, "Oh, yeah, we'll get across that, no problem."
The mountains of bitter white salt were astonishing, next to the train car filling stations. As astonishing as coming across a white and peach beautiful ridge in the midst of the Utah landscape and suddenly realizing that it was manmade, mine tailings, not a natural ridge of stone.
Jet did a great job of entertaining himself. He's been making piles of "old" maps, he draws them and then crumples them up to make them look old. He's been giving the maps to anyone that will take one. He also watched Monster's Inc. and cheered Boo on as she beat Randell silly with her plastic baseball bat. A bat that Jet now owns. Hmmm...
He also sang a lot of songs. Just as he has the whole trip since we met up with Marina. He sang a little song of swimming in the rapids when he and John swam in Retake Rapids on the Kalmath. He sang while floating on his back and life jacket in the cool river out of the hot sun between rapids by the side of the raft or the little inflatable kayak he shared with John. He sang a little song swimming in the lake. He sang a little song to the little fishes while he was fishing and caught and released about half a dozen perch from the lake. He sang a little song while swimming, kayaking, sailing, and rowing across the lake a night under a sky bright with the Milky Way and more stars than we could count. He sang while swinging and while lying on Louie the dog and petting him and while we lay on the dock the last night and looked up at that incredible sky and saw satallites and shooting stars against that ageless backdrop.
Marina said, "Jet should make a living writing and singing songs. He makes them up *himself*."
That would be cool.
Hmm... maybe that would count as catching you up on Friday through Monday... *grin* Maybe not.
We're safe in Rawlings, just four hours from home. The rain is pouring, and I love the sound. We had a fun and good dinner at Sanford's Grub and Pub, a little local chain with a lot of choice and a few things with Cajun influences. But they serve their apple sauce with a cut up gummy worm in it, and Jet ate the whole cup and left the worm. He also left most of his ice cream for one of the after dinner mints. And he ate most of his buttered noodles and garlic bread and pink lemonaid.
We actually got to swim, too. John had to call five or six different hotels in Rawlings to get a room in a hotel with a pool. This one was last as the phone number in the AAA book had ht wrong prefix, and the guy at the Super 8 gave us the correct number, so we got one of the last rooms, no problem. The tiny, cool lap pool was perfect for cooling off and stretching locked muscles and then the hot tub was great on overused ones. Much happiness...
I'm not going to be able to catch up on all the nights we were on the Kalmath and out on the Lake in the Woods tonight, but we've made it from Elko, NV to Rawlins, WY today, pretty much along the route shown.
For most of the trip it looked like the whole West is on fire. There were fires around Salt Lake, Lake Tahoe, and Reno, and all the mountains were hidden behind a haze of smoke. Good thing we didn't go to Reno, as the prevailing winds had taken most of the smoke down there. Even as it was I was sneezing a lot.
I can now imagine someone coming West over the hardship of the Rockies and getting to the Salt Flats and going, "We're stopping just East of here, where we can still grow things. No *way* we're going to make it across that." What I can't imagine is the first person that looked at the Bonnevile Salt Flats and, first, said, "Oh, yeah, we'll get across that, no problem."
The mountains of bitter white salt were astonishing, next to the train car filling stations. As astonishing as coming across a white and peach beautiful ridge in the midst of the Utah landscape and suddenly realizing that it was manmade, mine tailings, not a natural ridge of stone.
Jet did a great job of entertaining himself. He's been making piles of "old" maps, he draws them and then crumples them up to make them look old. He's been giving the maps to anyone that will take one. He also watched Monster's Inc. and cheered Boo on as she beat Randell silly with her plastic baseball bat. A bat that Jet now owns. Hmmm...
He also sang a lot of songs. Just as he has the whole trip since we met up with Marina. He sang a little song of swimming in the rapids when he and John swam in Retake Rapids on the Kalmath. He sang while floating on his back and life jacket in the cool river out of the hot sun between rapids by the side of the raft or the little inflatable kayak he shared with John. He sang a little song swimming in the lake. He sang a little song to the little fishes while he was fishing and caught and released about half a dozen perch from the lake. He sang a little song while swimming, kayaking, sailing, and rowing across the lake a night under a sky bright with the Milky Way and more stars than we could count. He sang while swinging and while lying on Louie the dog and petting him and while we lay on the dock the last night and looked up at that incredible sky and saw satallites and shooting stars against that ageless backdrop.
Marina said, "Jet should make a living writing and singing songs. He makes them up *himself*."
That would be cool.
Hmm... maybe that would count as catching you up on Friday through Monday... *grin* Maybe not.
We're safe in Rawlings, just four hours from home. The rain is pouring, and I love the sound. We had a fun and good dinner at Sanford's Grub and Pub, a little local chain with a lot of choice and a few things with Cajun influences. But they serve their apple sauce with a cut up gummy worm in it, and Jet ate the whole cup and left the worm. He also left most of his ice cream for one of the after dinner mints. And he ate most of his buttered noodles and garlic bread and pink lemonaid.
We actually got to swim, too. John had to call five or six different hotels in Rawlings to get a room in a hotel with a pool. This one was last as the phone number in the AAA book had ht wrong prefix, and the guy at the Super 8 gave us the correct number, so we got one of the last rooms, no problem. The tiny, cool lap pool was perfect for cooling off and stretching locked muscles and then the hot tub was great on overused ones. Much happiness...