Our yard is so birdy. This time of year, the nesting work is done, birds
give up their territorial nature, and are more social as they gather into
flocks. Nobody has begun the long trip south. We wake up to a hundred
birds in our yard every morning. It is a joyful noise.
But off we go to deliver the family bassinette to Jacob and Yousun. Becky
reluctantly parted with it, and put Conner to sleep in the crib. This will
be the 24th baby to sleep in the bassinette since 1937. We can take our
time. The baby is not due for another month. We started the trip Friday
afternoon with a one hundred fifty mile drive to Wheatland Wyoming. An
afternoon and evening visit with Bill and Marge. They have since escaped to
Wyoming, but they are our first Colorado friends, the first people to come
see Becky when she was born. Longtime friends. While we are there, we get
our farm fix. Warm windy Wyoming weather. Cattle pens. Chickens. A
guinea fowl. Blue sky and cumulus. We reacquaint with Shania, the farm
dog. Bill has a calf to bottle feed. The dog waits. I can't say the dog
waits patiently. The dog is a border collie, australian shepherd cross.
Patience is not a part of this bloodline. The dog waits obediently, though,
until Bill finally relents and says "Okay Shania, go get the sheep." The
dog is gone in a flash. One full speed swoop around to the back of the pack
of sheep in a nearby pasture, and in comes the entire flock of twenty
through the gate, down the alley, into the pen, and milling around in the
back with the dog lying dead center in the opening until Bill comes to shut
the gate. No sheep are going to leave this pen. One swoop. Twenty seconds
at most. No stragglers. After, the dog patrols the fence and a few sheep
come up to the other side to get their faces licked. They're all just doing
their job.
They haven't had any rain. Wells have gone dry. They haven't had any rain
all summer, so we brought some with us from Colorado. While we were
there, it started raining after dinner and rained off and on all night. The
next morning, they had six tenths by the time we left. It was still
raining. We left the rain with them, and headed west.
We have a lot of ground to cover. Back to Cheyenne and Interstate 80. Past
the rocky outcroppings at Chugwater. Chugwater chili. They make it there.
We've never stopped to try it, but we'd like to. Railroad tracks. River
bottom. Scrub forest just starting to show some color. Fall is on the way.
Rivers of the old west. The Laramie. The North Platte. The Medicine Bow.
We crossed the southern edge of the state to Evanston.
The freeway has concrete joiners. New concrete freeways can be pretty good.
Not smooth and quiet like an asphalt freeway, but pretty good. But old
concrete freeways... well, Nevermind. I've already ranted enough about how
rough old concrete freeways are. Old concrete freeways are bad, until they
retrofit them with those concrete joiners. Every joint gets several
joiners. But what does a joiner do, really? What can you do with giant
slabs of concrete? If they've warped, you can't bend them back into shape,
can you? If they've shrunk and separated, you can't pull them back together
without making an even bigger gap in the next joint. Old concrete freeways
with joiners are definitely smoother than old freeways without them. Why is
that? What do they do, really?
