3-29

SUSAN
Hi,
        Barry and I have had two good days of traveling. We left Boise Sunday morning with no traffic on the freeway. It was great.(He jokingly said he hoped he could squeeze into the lane ok.) There was some road construction coming into Boise on the freeway, but none as we left town.
        There was lots of sage brush, rolling hills and wheat hills as we traveled through Idaho into Utah. There had been a big snow storm a couple of days ago, and some still on the hills. Nice to look at, and makes me glad I have a great heater and warm rig.
        We stayed at Willard Bay, outside of Ogden Utah last night. It is a great park that we have stayed at before. It has two campgrounds, lots of picnic areas, a boat parking area and marina. Barry spent some time riding his bike while I did some serious reading and watching the Mariners. Unfortunately they lost another spring training game, glad these games don't count.    Oh well. The park is a large bird sanctuary, so brush and willow trees everywhere.
        Today we traveled through more of Utah and into the southern part of Wyoming. We followed a beautiful river and valley, lots of farming. I was impressed by the rocks and all of the different shapes and colors. Lots of reds. Barry commented that we were finally headed east, rather than southeast.
        We have seen lots of the wind farms in Oregon and Utah. One of the stops today had a display showing the sizes. The structure is 260ft tall and 14 feet in diameter, and the propeller blades are 125 feet. The farm they were talking about provided power to 43,000 homes in the area. Amazing!!!!! And as we were leaving the rest stop we spotted a herd of buffalo. They must have belonged to the park system, as they were following a truck that was pushing out feed.
        We are in Rawlins Wyoming now, and it is rather windy. I think that is part of the nature of the area. The weather channel says tomorrow things will warm up some. YEA!!!
        I have seen two cowboys herding the cattle, the buffalos mentioned above and then this afternoon some prairie dogs going crazy. A lady was feeding them something at one of the rest stops, and they were up and down, in and out and all over the place. Fun to watch.
        Barry says we have traveled 1310 miles so far, and are averaging about 9.97 miles to the gallon. That is pretty good. We have had great traveling weather, high overcast clouds, and rain only a couple of times. And the rain was near Olympia, of course.
        Time to get dinner ready- more in a day or two.

3/30/2010
BARRY

Wind very strong. Weather radio says gusts over 50. Decided to stay in Rawlins rather than fight the wind.

Wind remained high all afternoon, WX radio sys gsts to 50MPH. Forecast looks ok for tomorrow.

Went to the Carbon County museum in the PM. Well presented objects, documents, etc, from 19th and early 20th centuries. Photos and memorabilia from early sheep ranchers, miners, cowboys, and outlaws. There is also quite a good collection of old sheep wagons, saddles, etc. I enjoyed the collection of Edison items. He spent some time in Rawlins so the museum has collected quite a few of his inventions. The docent even played on of the old wind up machines that plays wax cylinders. I had never heard the real thing . It was quite astounding to hear this old machine able to play, and even more to hear the actual wax cylinder still able to be played.