Denver Puts On A Light Show!

If you would like to live in isolation, we have found the place for you. Western Nebraska and Northeastern Colorado are the places you should be looking for your hermitage. We passed farmhouses that were so out in the middle of nowhere that we couldn't see their neighbors and the land is so flat that you can nearly see all the way to the curvature of the earth!

If you are a fan of cattle, move to Western Nebraska or Northeastern Colorado. I am certain that there are way, way more cows than people out there in the lands we passed thru today. Once again we rode the chicken scratch roads, as my brother puts it. I prefer William Least Heat Moon's designation...he calls them blue highways. Very little traffic, mostly excellent road surfaces and plenty of room to see what there is to see. I imagine some people would call it desolate and since many of the fields are already harvested and plowed, it looks rather desolate. We think it is probably beautiful in the spring and summer.

In some areas, it's grazing land and some areas are farm land. Mostly it's grazing land though nearly every ranch grows hay and field corn for winter silage and feed. We didn't see any sheep although that does not mean they are not out there. There aren't many towns and most of them don't amount to much. I honestly don't know how people live in places like that. I don't understand how the towns persist with nothing there. I bet we were in places today that never see a UPS truck or the Schwan's man. There's certainly no cable tv and I didn't see satellite dishes. No cell signals. Wierder than wierd. We passed through only one sizeable town today, MT Sterling. It had some traffic lights and it had all the modern amenities. (McD's Taco Bell, Wendy's, Burger King, Arby's, cell phone signals)

It seems cowboys in the traditional sense, that being a man who rides a horse and herds cows is a dying breed. These days they use 4 wheel ATVs. Pretty soon, there won't be any "real" cowboys left. It's too bad in a way, but perhaps easier for the cowboys and ATVs don't need as much care as a horse. Perhaps todays children will never see a real cowboy, and certainly their children won't.

We saw more hay rolls today. There are 2 schools of thought on hay bales. Some believe you should gather them all together in one place, say stack them in a shed or together in the field. Others believe they should be left scattered all over the field. The reason for the scatter approach? If there's a prairie fire, then if the hay is scattered then maybe the fire will miss some hay bales and the rancher will still have some hay left for his herd. (Robin explained this to us) The stackers almost always use square bales. They are enormous bales, as big as the round ones are. Got to lift them with machinery, they are so big. Seems little bales that a man can lift are passing out of favor everywhere, like cow ponies.

It was hot today. Cool when we started out, it got hot fast. So fast that it seems like we went around a curve and up a little hill and wham! Hot! It happened so fast I checked to see if my bike was on fire. I would not have been surprised to find that it was. In the afternoon, thunderstorms started to build but we escaped all but a cooling sprinkling as we drove through the Denver suburbs.

The thunderstorm designated for Westminster, Colorado waited until after we'd had our dinner to threaten us innocent bikers. It being Monday, we opted for Taco Bell, the first Taco Bell we've had in 5 weeks. Mmmmmmm-mmmmm. It tasted good to me. Ray cheated and went over to the Kentucky Fried Chicken side.

We saw the storm coming and saw the lightening begin to strike so we scooted back to our motel. In the parking lot we were chased down by a couple who were very interesting in finding out more about my scooter and sidecar. The wife wants a rig and when she saw me driving one, she just about freaked she was so excited. So we stood in the parking lot and yakked while the storm bore down. We had just enough time to cover the bikes, get to the hotel room and back outside with the camera to catch some pictures. It was raining by that time so we retreated to our room. It's still going on out there but I think it will pass by soon. There's pretty spectacular lightening around here. Leann tells us that's the way it is.

Tomorrow we'll get the oil changed in the bikes and do I don't know what yet. Wednesday we'll spend with Leann. We checked with the house sitter and she reported that Brindi (her dog) and Normie spend about 4 hours a day wrestling and chasing and having a good time. She says they are both losing weight. I am afraid he will really miss Brindi when she's gone back to her own house. This weekend, she's taking the dogs out to Shaw Island, where she lives. She has 5 acres out there...imagine all the running and wrestling they can do out there! And in the bad weather Seattle has had our tomato crop is a total loss. Unless you adore green tomatoes, which I do not. Chris said she's taken about a hundred pounds of green tomatoes in the house. Sad, sad, sad. Such a spectacular year last year and such an awful year tomato-wise this year. Simply too cold and wet.