That's right folks, today marks the end of my joke contest. Sheila snuck in at the last minute posting her joke this morning. And when I put all the jokers names in a hat, I pulled hers out.
So Sheila wins a shiny used copy of "The Bean Trees" by Barbara Kingsolver. I'll put it in the mail tomorrow. Congratulations again Sheila.
The other four books I had available in this contest are still up for grabs. Which means tomorrow I'm going to announce a new contest with new rules and a new fifth book added to the mix. So if you didn't win this time, try not to feel to bad.
Joke of the Day
If you're an American when you go into the bathroom, and you're an American when you come out of the bathroom, what are you while you're in the bathroom?
European!
This joke is brought to you by Sheila. Thanks again for playing.
Mt. Hood is really pretty, but thanks to the fog I can't show you any snow packed peaks today. Since it's only 90 miles away, I'm sure I'll be back. I'll try to post pictures of my next journey to the mountain.
After almost a month on the road traveling through fifteen states, it's nice to be reminded that I already live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I love New England, and the Rocky Mountain States, but can't say enough good things about the Pacific Northwest. Today's drive across Oregon made me happy to come home. Now that I'm back in OR, I can spend the rest of the summer camping at various spots around the state every weekend.
The size of North America has been growing over the past 200 million years, causing several parallel chains of mountains. The Rockies are the big famous ones, and the cascades (current active volcanoes like St. Helen's, Hood, and Rainer) are famous too. But driving on Oregon highway 26 I crossed over the 
Eastern Oregon is a lot more arid than Western Oregon. Many of the hills were covered with sage and grasses that caused them to look purple. Are these the purple mountains majesty praised in "This Land Is My Land"? Regardless of their musical 
During the drive, I continued to listen to "1491" by Charles Mann. That meant at the same time I was feeling happy to be close to home, I also found myself really wanting to plan a vacation to Peru. Maybe I'll write a Historical Fiction book about the Inca sometime. They seem like really interesting people, and having to do research in Peru sounds awesome.
Instead, I stayed on I-80 traveling west until it hit I-84 in Ogden then headed north on I-84. Since I had been planning on hanging out in Jackson Hole all afternoon, mileage wasn’t a big push today. All I needed to do was head far enough west to get out of the crazy Wyoming weather.
So my 400 mile journey from Rock Springs, Wyoming to Almo, Idaho included three stops. I stopped at Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in Wyoming, at Golden Spike National Historic Site in Utah, and ended the day at City of Rocks National Recreation Area in Idaho.
Flaming Gorge NRA is nice, but it felt like a sad conselation prize for missing out on the Tetons. The rocky terrain is similar to most of Wyoming and Utah, the major difference being a large lake formed by the damming of the Green River. Boats are allowed on the lake, and if you want to go waterskiing in a beautiful part of Wyoming, it’s worth it. But if you are simply looking for a scenic get away, there are other places in the region with nicer scenery (assuming they aren’t experiencing 60 mph winds and snowfall in June).
When my husband was a little kid, he loved trains. Eight of the twelve boxes we picked up at my in-laws and are now lugging cross-country are pieces of my husband’s childhood train set. He spent a lot of time looking at the replica locomotives at the Golden Spike, and I thought we was loving the park more than the average seven year old. Then he started pointing out all the faults in the adornment of 19th century technology on the modern engines. The locomotives aren’t really “replicas” they are just modern trains decorated to look like the originals. According to my husband, his is a tragic failure by the parks department to educate its patrons about historic technology. So Golden Spike was sort of a bust.
Fortunately, our third and final stop for the day turned out to be fabulous. City of Rocks is a giant pile of boulders hanging out in southern Idaho. That description doesn’t sound very cool, but it’s really beautiful here. It’s a bit of a rock climbers Mecca. I think we are the only people in the park who didn’t bring ropes. But if you like climbing, City of Rocks could easily entertain for a week. It’s a very big pile of boulders, more like several different piles of boulders close together so there are many climbing routs to choose from. I do recommend making reservations in advance though. All 64 sites in the National Recreation Area were taken when we showed up, so we ended up having to stay in a campsite at Castle Rock State Park across the street. Only about half of the 34 sites in the state park were taken tonight, but every single site has a “reserved” tag on it for this coming weekend. If we were hoping to stay more than one night, we would be totally out of luck.
Tonight while sitting around the campfire, my husband made the comment that we will get to the Tetons some other time. We’ve both been there before and both want to go back. But if our plans hadn’t fallen apart, we probably never would have come to City of Rocks. And unless my yet unborn children become rock climbing junkies, I’ll probably never be back. So today wasn’t a total bust. I’m really glad that I got a chance to see City of Rocks. It’s a beautiful place, even without a rope.
Just as we made several stops today before finding someplace we liked. We also went through several listening choices. We started and rejected four audio books before settling upon “1491” by Charles C Mann. I have a degree in anthropology, and this is my second reading of “1491”. Still, I’m finding myself learning things. There is a lot to Early American history that is greatly unknown, and Mann does a great job of recounting it. Even my physicist husband, who knows virtually no history, likes it.
The last 300 miles were in Wyoming. That section of the drive was a lot more exciting. Wyoming is a really beautiful state. The contrast in scenery hit us almost the second we crossed the border. Unlike Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico with their simple mountain range for the continental divide, Wyoming has the Great Divide Basin. That means that after climbing to the top of the mountain, I didn’t get to start going down right away. Instead, I got to stay above 6,500 feet for 150 miles.
Have you ever noticed how storms like to hang around the tops of mountains? That was this afternoon/evenings excitement. Wyoming is a beautiful state, but today is was also really stressful. For 150 miles, we were stuck at the top of the continent in the middle of a thunder storm, with 30+ mile an hour winds.
After finishing “Murder on the Orient Express”, we didn’t put on a second book. Instead, we listened to the NOWA weather service. They are predicting gusts of up to 60 miles per hour between midnight tonight and noon tomorrow. Our original plan was to jog north up to the Tetons tomorrow. There is also a prediction of 3-6 inches of snow falling in Yellowstone tonight, so I think our national park adventure for tomorrow is out of the question. I’m just hoping we don’t blow away during the night.
We stopped at the Rock Springs KOA. We are technically out of the Great Divide Basin and slightly lower in elevation (only 6,000 feet). But KOA’s are really expensive parking lots. So the only thing sheltering us from the wind is the giant RV’s parked beside us. Technically, I may also be inside a giant RV, but I still feel very gouache “camping” at a trailer park. But they do have free wi-fi, that’s a plus.
Nebraska is a flatter duller state than Indiana, so there state parks are even more built up. The hotel at Eugene Mahoney sleeps more people than it’s campground. And the park also includes a golf course and a water park. When did the department of natural resources state managing hotels, golf courses, and water parks? I guess in planes states like Nebraska there simply aren’t any real natural resources to manage, so the parks department had to go into the man-made resort business.
I do have one good thing to say about today, though it too is a man-made observation. The majority of my engineering career has been related power delivery. So seeing windmills sprinkled between the corn fields is both picturesque and inspiring. I can’t understand how the corn growers of America managed to lobby ethanol into American cars. Farming sunlight and wind power are much more efficient ways to generate energy. Seeing corn dominated states like Iowa embracing windmills makes me smile. But if my boss is reading this, I’m not saying I want to relocate to the Midwest. Just so we’re clear, I enjoy living in a state with mountains and beaches and very little corn.
We stayed at my in-laws house last night, and didn’t take off until after lunch. This morning we did our final repacking/reloading in preparation for our return journey. This doesn’t just mean that we emptied our recycling bin and did a load of laundry. Somehow, this repacking involved the addition of 12 boxes and several small machines of unknown purpose that were not a part of the first 17 days of our trip. My husband enjoys collecting various machines and pieces of rusty metal. He inherited this trait from his father, so every visit to my in-laws involved ogling over useless hunks of iron and the eventual transfer of goods from one collector to the other. I guess I can’t complain too much up our new treasures. The last time we drove to Pennsylvania, we towed an empty flatbed trailer 3000 miles simple to then tow several thousand pounds of iron home with us later. The 12 boxes of childhood paraphernalia doesn’t seem quite so bad by those standards.
During the drive we stopped at the Corning 
During the drive I took a break from audio-books to listen to some music.
We spent all of today in Ithaca, New York at the Cornell reunion. We went to a department 
After lunch we went for a hike in one of the gorges around Ithaca. I saw several tourists wearing t-shirts that say "Ithaca is Gorges". It's a good 
Besides a lot of buildings, there are several fun features to Cornell that I got to see today. A deep gorge cuts its way through campus, so there are lots of scenic vistas hidden between dorms and academic buildings. The outdoor education program set up a 
Cornell is New York’s land grant school. This means in addition to its engineering school there is also an agriculture school. The 
During the drive, we continued to listen to “What the Dog Saw” by Malcolm 
The campus is quite beautiful. The reunion won’t get going in full force until tomorrow. The one part of the campus that I did see this evening was the bell tower. Cornell 
I’m glad that I saw Niagara Falls today, and I would recommend it to other people. Still I feel the need to make a bit of a travel recommendation caveat. I spent about 3.5 hours a Niagara Falls today and I 
In addition to visiting nursing homes and waterfalls, I also continued to listen to Malcolm 
I haven’t seen the falls yet. That is on the agenda for tomorrow. But what I did see of western Upstate New York was very lovely. The terrain was nothing but rolling hills of deciduous trees, in both PA and NY. I imagine, in the fall, it would provide a view to rival New England (but don’t tell anyone from New Hampshire, I 
During the drive, I listened to the beginning of “What the Dog Saw” by Malcolm 
The other fun activity that we did today, was we headed into town and visited a fancy grocery store. Everyone was required to buy something that they had never eaten before. We then came home and cooked a big dinner using all our unusual ingredients. I wouldn't recommend yucca root. And prickly pear isn't all that great either. But I enjoyed the okra.
Tomorrow we'll head back out onto the road. I've enjoyed spending the last few days with family. But when loosing at croquet and eating okra are the highlights of ones day, it proves that you live in a very remote area.
I’m not sure I’d enjoy doing manual labor every weekend, but I did enjoy the day. My husband has nothing but fond memories of mucking around the property as a kid and I know he would LOVE to someday own a similar gentleman’s farm of his own.
So I spent a lot of today thinking about how I’d feel about turning today into a lifestyle, not just a visit with relatives. I tend to be a fairly lazy person, and I’m sure I would hate having 25 acres worth of chores to do. My husband on the other hand would be in heaven.
My husband’s siblings gave me the best insight into the prospect of growing up on a small farm. They all HATED it. My husband may have found endless delight tinkering with old broken down tractors in the barn, but his younger sisters would have much rather spent their childhood weekends at the mall.
I don’t have any kids yet, but know they are in my future. I could easily have kids just like my husband, who would loved a 20 acre playground in their backyard. But I could just as easily have kids that hate all forms of manual labor and 
We 
