To Another Place and Time…

I’m writing this while sitting in one of my favorite places in the world…Bozeman, Montana!  Alan decided to return to Yellowstone to work this year (he’s even considering staying over the winter), and I am the one who got to bring him up.  After two-and-one-half days of driving, I have been transported to another world.

Here’s Alan, at home before we left, ready to go (he is really more excited than he looks; he just doesn’t like being in pictures or taking them):

For the most part, the trip was non-eventful.  I wish I had more pictures, but unfortunately my fare does not like to take pictures and I was a little busy driving.  We were in some VERY heavy rain for a lot of our drive through Oklahoma, and while driving through Oklahoma City the rain was so heavy that you couldn't see the signs for the exit until it was too late to take one.  Hooray for Tom Tom -- I didn't have to read the signs.  The rain wasn't exceptionally heavy throughout Kansas, although it was just misty and yucky for a lot of the drive.  For me, the most exciting sight in Kansas was the wind farm.  Even though I’ve seen it before, I still find it striking:

Kansas was more of an audio experience this time.  I lost talk radio just as we got past Hays and I started searching for a radio station.  I could only get one station at one point and it was an “oldies” station.  It was actually quite a hoot for me because it wasn’t playing songs from my teen and young adult years – it was playing songs that I remember hearing when I was quite a young girl.  There is nothing like music to take you to a certain period in time.  It was a little weird when I realized that I remembered the words to all of the songs; I can’t remember where I put my car keys half of the time!

On the second day, we got into Sheridan a little later in the day than we normally arrive on other legs of the journey.  On the drive through Wyoming we listened to a radio news show, “Wyoming Tonight”(?) and it’s always fun to get a feel for an area through its news programs.  Here are some of the big stories:

1.  Some highway near Riverton had had both lanes shut down for a while after a truck carrying some bees had gone off of the road.  The road stayed shut down until the area fire department took care of the bees.

2.  Gas prices in Wyoming are some of the lowest in the country due to the fact that they get a large supply of their crude oil from Canada, and Wyoming refineries are humming along with no problems.  I took this picture as we fueled up in Sheridan:

3.  Of interest to my husband, the hydrologist, would be the story about Wyoming taking measures to do some controlled releases of water in the area.  Apparently, Wyoming had a much larger than normal amount of snow pack this year, and coupled with the large amount of rain they have been getting/are expecting this week, they needed to do these controlled releases to make room in area lakes for storage of the large amount of melting snow/water.  This made me happy because I know that often having enough water is an issue in some places in this part of the country.

Sheridan is still beautiful, and I love being able to see the mountains, no matter where in town you are:

The best part of the drive for me is the area just outside of Bozeman.  That’s where you really start to see the mountains.  At first they were really “misty”:

Something that I found really exciting was that it began to snow as we went further up into the mountains.  The air temperature was cold enough for the snow, but the ground temperature was warm enough that it didn’t stick to the roads and posed no danger to a Texas driver.  I always love to see the snow covered trees, especially the little “Christmas” trees:

Once we were at the motel, I wanted a picture of the snow:

Alan and I treated ourselves to another “blast” from our past.  The “Dairy Queen” restaurant was everywhere when I was growing up, but they have all but totally disappeared from the area in which I now live.  However, Bozeman has a great Dairy Queen, and that’s where we decided to go for dinner.  Here is a picture of Main Street and all of the cute little shops:

After we ate, I took this picture of some birds that were sitting near a dumpster.  Holy cow!  I feed the birds at home (every day), but I don’t think I could keep up with these guys!

Alan doesn’t leave for Yellowstone until Thursday morning, so we are hoping to get out and explore a little tomorrow.  I can’t wait!