So California, then Nevada. Memorable stop at Thunder Mountain National Monument, a folk art creation of bottles, cement, old cars and other things, reminiscent of th Watts Towers. When I saw Seymour Rosen's name on the pamphlet, I knew this was the real deal and we backtracked a few miles and went in to explore and take pictures. We managed to time things really well and ended up at the Bonneville Salt Flats at sunset and the colors were amazing! This was a long day on the road...lots of driving but we didn't find the Nevada landscape desolate at all.
Strange anecdote: At the Bonneville rest stop there was a man from Kansas who drives for a company in Wisconsin. Turns out the Wisconsin dairy owns dairy cows (or the rights to them) in California. California is less stressful for the cows and they produce more. So he was trucking a tanker of cream from California, back to Wisconsin to be turned into butter. Wow!
We managed to drive all the way thru that small corner of Utah and NOT STOP. Didn't want to give them any money. And there were not motels. So we ended up just over the border in Idaho, in Malad, where we had a fabulous breakfast. And hit the road and on through Idaho to Wyoming.
The mountains really are amazing. There is a lot of snow still there. We stopped at a lovely lava field with interpretive signs. Only 4100 years old. Weather today was in the high 70's, much cooler than the 110 degrees (!!!!) that I understand it was in San Jose. OMG
We spent the day as tourists in Jackson WY (aka Jackson Hole) which was much less pretentious than we had feared. Think Carmel in a mountain setting: nice galleries, lots of art and amazing clothing. Imagine a $550 belt with lots of glitz and glitter used by cowgirls in competitions. Lot of leather (Linda would have loved that part). We did (obviously) find lodging with wireless access, so here I am.
Tomorrow night we will stay with the McLartys...Margarita is formerly Rita Bates, my up the hill nieghbor when I was 4 years old on Morton Avenue in Los Angeles. She is a former guide in Yellowstone and gave us the one day version, custom for us! They live 1/2 hour north of the park, in Montana. Linda and I saw her and her sister Rosa at the reunion of Elysian Heights Elementary School held maybe 5 years ago in Santa Barbara, hosted by the Atwater girls, Aleta and Tanya. It will be nice to see her again and meet Charles, in their relatively new home.
