Driving West, Again!

July 13, 2010

Today we drove from Cheyenne, WY to Wendover, UT. Wyoming proved to be as windy as ever. At a rest area I found a sign saying the winds can get up to 70mph.

I've done this drive many times now and there isn't much to look at but this time there were a few surprises. We saw this HUGE crane. It is amazingly big and my guess it is used for mining but I'm not sure. I can't even imagine how they got such a big piece of equipment to the middle of nowhere Wyoming. During this drive I decided to try and count the FedEx trucks that we saw. In February when we made the drive I noticed several FedEx trucks and this time I wanted to try and get a number. We came up with 68! I'm sure we missed a few. I think FedEx rules I-80.

A couple of other "interesting" things that happened today. ..
We got another rock chip in the windshield. This one is pretty big. It is Y shaped and I'm sure when the weather gets cold this chip will spread. Luckily it is in the middle of the windshield so it isn't in the line of sight, yet.

I pulled a muscle in my neck, doing basically nothing. I went into the back of the truck from the front seat because I was installing software and needed to put the CD in another computer and sure enough something shifted...ouch! If feels like I slept on my neck wrong, which I didn't but that is what it feel like.

Anyway, we made our way across the border into Utah. We drove across the Salt Flats and I took a couple of pictures this time. I think this is at least the 6th time I've driven across the Salt Flats going from one place to another for work. I don't remember seeing this "tree" before. It must have been there because wikipedia says it has been there since the 80s, maybe I was sleeping (or blinked) when the truck passed it before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Utah

In the air and on the road

July 12, 2010

Today I flew from VA to Denver. While at the Dulles airport I was taking the bus to the terminal and a little boy about 3 years old was really excited. He stood up and said "mommy, look at that rocket!" What he was looking at was a smaller United Express airplane. I guess it looked like a rocket to him and his eyes were really big.

I wasn't able to get a direct flight for a decent price so I had to have a short layover in Chicago. I've never been to Chicago without a delay of some kind. I had a short 20 minute delay leaving Virginia due to heavy air traffic in Chicago. Once in Chicago I had about a 45 minute delay because the airplane was late arriving. I arrived in Denver about 15 minutes before my traveling partner so even with the delays it worked out.

While at the Denver airport I noticed that they added a new statue to the airport grounds. It is a big statue of King Tut. I found an article about it online.

http://cbs4denver.com/local/Tutankhamen.exhibit.museum.2.1729692.html

I was surprised to see another statue after the blue horse statue caused such a "stir" around Denver. I guess this new statue is related to an exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.

After we gathered our bags we drove 2 hours North of Denver and spent the night in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is good to be back in the midwest but windy as always!

Around Sterling

July 4, 2010

Today my mom and I decided to hang around Sterling. There are several parks around the area so we decided to check out two of them. We went to Algonkian Park where there are several picnic areas and a few trails. One trail is a 2-mile loop, we decided to walk part of it. It was a nice hike in the trees. It was hot so the shade was a welcome relief. While on the hike we saw several daddy long-leg spiders and other little creatures. Virginia definitely has more bugs than Colorado! It will take some time to get used to it again. All of the bugs remind me of Minnesota. The second park we went to was Claude Moore Park. It has several more trails but most of them are closed due to snow storm damage...which happened LAST winter! I guess they are very short staffed or don't have enough chain saws! There is a trail that leads to a Civil War lookout post...but the trail was closed. That was a bummer. It was about 4:30pm and pretty hot out when we went to this park so we only spent about 1/2 an hour there an were on our way back to the comfort of air conditioning.

Washington DC for the Day

July 3, 2010

My mom flew into town on Friday to keep me company over the holiday weekend. The East coast finally had a few days of nice weather (below 90 and low humidity) so we decided to go down to the National Mall. We spent a good part of the day down there...we got down there around 10:00am and left around 4:00pm. It was warm out but we brought plenty of water. We didn't go into any museums, we spent most of the time walking around the southern half of the mall. We didn't make it to the northern end...it is a pretty big area with lots to see. We were able to visit these memorials: F.D.R., Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, WWII (where we saw & heard some bagpipe players), & Korean War. We also took a walk over to see the front of the White House. It was a full morning and our feet started to hurt so we took a break for lunch. We found a really good restaurant at a Holiday Inn hotel.After lunch we headed over to Arlington National Cemetery. We walked to President Taft's grave site, took a quick walk through tour of Robert E. Lee's house, saw the JFK grave site and saw some of the "changing of the guards" at the tomb of the unknown soldiers.

Thoughts for the day

July 1, 2010

The truck is still out of commission because of the camera issue so I'm not on the road yet. I'm not sure how much longer it will be. I'm filling the days working at the office.

The weather has gotten much, much nicer here. There is little to no humidity and I've been able to have my windows open rather than the AC blasting. It is nice!

Here are a couple of thoughts for the day.

• When you get a massage and they massage your head why does it sound like sand paper? Why does something that feels so good have to sound so bad???
• When you got to turn off a computer why do you have to tell it to "shut down" twice? Start - Shut down - then you have to hit another shut down button.