Road Trip - Indiana Rock Springs, WY to Cedar City, UT 07-27-14

Rock Springs is infested with bulls!  They are made from plywood and have only four pieces - a horns, body with head, one pair of front legs and one pair of back legs.  Simple, but bull like.  I couldn't find out anything about them, but I had very little time in the town.   They are very colorful and add a little surprise to the streets.  I suspect they are a fund raiser where people bid on the different cows - maybe sponsored by the CofC.  But then, this weekend was the Fair and the bulls may have had  something to do with that.

 

The first view from the street that comes off the Interstate! 

From the other side with a more presentable visage.

Some of the bulls are identified with businesses, this JCPenney's bull has a glint in his eye.

Others don't seem to be identified with anything, but all are done by amateur painters.

Here you can clearly see the four pieces that make up each bull.

This one is Appleby's - clever.

Backsides all lined up.

Front sides all lined up - love the Appleby's teeth!

 

Other than this excitement I just drove - totaling exactly the miles of yesterday - 442 miles.

 

To "make my day" I met a blog friend for lunch in Orem, Utah.  Beverly Hart and I read each other's blogs and we had lunch together once before when I was driving through the Salt Lake area.  She is just a very nice lady with lots of talent - quilts and handmade soap that I have seen so far.  She once lived in and has friends in the area of Brea, Yorba Linda, Anaheim and Placentia, so she enjoys the images and info I sometimes post of those places.  We ate at Olive Garden and it was very good - I haven't been for years.  We had "small plates" AND a fabulous chocolate dessert, which we split.  I doubt that either of us could eat a whole piece, it is so rich.  And so delicious.  We had about a two hour visit before I was back on I-15 southbound.  I'm staying at HIE in Cedar City, Utah, tonight.  May make it home tomorrow, but I do want to stop at a few more Row by Row shops.  Many stores closed on Sunday in this very Mormon state, maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow. 

 

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2007 Driving across Kansas 05-19-09

On this day in 2007 I was driving east across Kansas on US Hwy 50 - at that time it was a part of the country I had not seen before. The weather was great with lots of fluffy white clouds and green pasture to each horizon. I was en route to Carbondale, KS, (near the eastern border) to pick up Ruth Powers for our trip to Ohio for the SAQA conference and the opening of Quilt National 2007. This entire trip was just perfect. Looking west across the last of the true bluegrass pasture which stretches four and a half million acres. It is cattle country and cow country. I took the picture above when I was standing on the other side of this marker. Nice image of cowboy/horse/cattle and the Kansas state flower.

I saw very little traffic on Hwy 50. This image looks forward....

....and this image shows the reflection of the roadway I have just traveled.

A tidy dairy farm - there was a modern one story milking barn nearby.

These are long horned (medium horned?) cattle rather than dairy cows. I always see lots of cattle when I drive across country. If I stop on the roadside to take pictures they usually come to the fence to stare at me. Guess they must get really bored out there in the middle of nowhere.

I had spent the previous night in Hutchinson, KA, would spend this evening and night with Ruth and Charlie Powers. I started looking at these pictures today because I thought the memory of that trip might get me out of the dumps over missing this year's trip. I'll have to wait and see!

More On-The-Road 09-09-08

The drive south from San Juan Bautista on Hwy 101 goes through prime agricultural land - very little of the flat land is not farmed. But housing developments are stretching out from the small farming towns, taking up more valuable farmland.

On the right (the west side) are coastal

mountains, so this valley does not have abundant rain. Notice the rain birds - a horizontal light grey line across the lower third of the picture. Crops are mainly vegetables - lots of lettuce.

And on the left side is the Diablo Range. Beyond those mountains is the San Joaquin Valley where I-5 runs along the foothills and the great inland valley stretches out to the haze. Crops are nuts, soft fruit, grapes, citrus - lots of almonds are grown there.

Further south on 101 north of Paso Robles there is a lot of cattle land. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you will see wavy horizontal lines. Those are cattle trails! This area has been cattle range for over 300 years - the cattle find the easiest way to go and every other cow follows that trail, creating corrugations in the soil.

Hwy 101 is pretty much the track of the missionaries up from Mexico, all along are bells on sort of shepherds' crooks indicating it is the Royal Road (the translation from the Spanish 'El Camino Real') or the King's Road. These bells were sponsored by women's clubs throughout the state at the beginning of the 20Th Century. This one in San Luis Obispo looks good, I imagine it is one of the concrete replacement bells, but some are not maintained and are very rusty. http://www.cahighways.orelg/camino.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino_Real_(California)

Another historic spot in San Luis Obispo is the "Motel Inn". The word motel originated here in 1925 to indicate that this was a motor court AND a hotel. So, the privacy of your own cabin or room and the amenities of a hotel. The word was never copyrighted and soon became a noun used to indicate any similar establishment.
http://www.jeffreysward.com/tributes/motelinn.htm

I show my van in pictures now and then because of my license plates - a statement that I was there, I guess.

These are the only two buildings remaining and they are under rerenovation. Who is doing the repairs and what the future might hold is something I could not determine. San Luis Obispo is a great college town with lots of places to explore, book shops, restaurants, entertainments. But it isn't on the water and in the summer the temperatures soar.

As Hwy 101 heads into Santa Barbara the center divider is a concrete barrier on each side with pink oleanders down the middle. I'll have to drive up Hwy 99 sometime soon and see how the dense oleander bushes of every color are doing there.

Around San Juan Bautista 08-31-08

San Juan Bautista is a very small town in the valley that grows most of the leafy greens in America. Spinach, lettuce, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, chard.... I can't even name them all. The next town north is Gilroy, garlic capitol of the world and Salinas. of John Steinbeck fame, is on the south. It is sad to see any of the land growing houses - where will our food come from then?

The road winding down from Mary and Joe's house to SJB levels out just before reaching this farm. The barn is in bad shape, the house roof is covered with plastic (for a long time) and there is only one remaining sister. There were two who spend their lives on this farm, they were very elderly and becoming increasingly frail. The other sister died this summer. I hope someone is keeping an eye on this lonely resident of the valley. By-the-way, that is not the moon, but a spot on my windshield. I'm still taking pictures on-the-fly.

Just before reaching the highway there is a fenced pasture occupied by sheep and one goat. Even though I actually stopped and got out of the car, I found it impossible to get a good shot. This one goat was cropped from a larger useless picture. Love that goaty beard!

Turning right on the last little farm road before the highway I parked and walked across the road to photograph this oh-so-green celery field. Highway 156 goes east/west where the utility pole is in the background on the right.

This is a field of different lettuces - the kind we buy in plastic bags as "Spring Greens" or some such name. The fields are striped light green, bronze, bright green, dark red, etc.. The lettuces are actually mowed and the plants left to grow some more leaves. The mowed crop is picked over on a conveyor belt, washed, packaged and sent all over the country - maybe all over the world, for all I know. The packaged salad idea originated with a produce processor near San Juan Bautista.

This is the 366th post on this blog - I'm starting another year! My laptop is probably DOA and I have my fingers crossed that the backup has actually backed up everything. My computer guru will check it out on Thursday, but he doesn't hold out much hope. Woe is I!