O Ga La LLa, SSS BLOG

That’s where I am, after a long, long day of driving that started with on the very west side of Utah with a sunrise over the Great Salt Desert, and finished with a stop well inside Nebraska. Quite an effort, yet for some reason it seemed easier than yesterday (even though I woke up a 4 a.m. and wasn’t able to go back to sleep; hopefully tonight will be better).

Pictures are below in a gallery, some of them are quite nice. I have no overarching theme for this post, just some random observations/thoughts.

We have friends in France who absolutely love the western U.S., and for the first time today I understood why: It is so massive, so magnificent, so varied, still untamed and wild, unlike anything you see in Europe.
There was a fierce wind blowing today, as the video below attests. (This sign explains why it is so windy in this particular spot.) Fortunately for me, this fierce wind was coming from the west, pushing me along, which made driving at 85 mph a lot easier.

Wyoming and Nebraska are phenomenally green right now … for Wyoming and Nebraska, that is. The heavy rains have allowed lots of vegetation to grow, and in one fabulous stretch just inside the Nebraska border, there was an amazing wildflower bloom, miles and miles of subtle, colorful expanses of yellow and red. Beautiful.
What do you do with your mind while your sitting in a car for 13 hours? I used it as an occasion to listen to some new music; how often do you get so much uninterrupted time? Mostly I was listening to new French music. Some of it was ugh, but most of it I liked. My favorite was a group called Requin Chagrin (literally, Shark Sadness, I must be missing something) — melodic, mostly interesting songs, a unique but accessible style, creative. Only problem is the lyrics are very hard to hear. I also liked a female singer who performs under the name Vendredi sur Mer, her style is not one I typically listen to, but her songs are creative and catchy at the same time. The third favorite was a band called La Femme — again, not my usual style but interesting to listen to. So that took up part of the day. I also listened to the 7 am to 9 am radio broadcast from France Inter and a 50-minute lecture by a professor at the College de France about the impacts of digital technology on the world. I listened to some old favorite music of mine, and sometimes I just sat and listened to the sound of the engine and the wheels on the road.
I paid $2.93/gallon for diesel in Cheyenne. Last purchase in the Bay Area was $4.19/gallon. Quite a difference.
Cows? Yes, plenty of them. Mostly black and edible.
On I-80 you cross over the Continental Divide twice. I guess in the middle there must be a basin where water goes but never escapes. Like the Truckee River (which, bizarrely, doesn’t empty into anything, but rather just peters out in the desert someplace).
I’d forgotten how high the high plains are. Easy to forget when you are driving on land that seems more or less flat, until you pass something like, well, the Continental Divide, and the sign says “Elevation 7000 Feet.” Impressive.

Another not entirely impressive post. Chalk it up to fatigue. Did I mention the pictures? Click to see a larger version of any of them.