• 8 : 40 P.M. PST
  Cattle are pretty stupid

Today starts with a continental breakfast consisting of donuts, a bowl of "Frosted mini-wheats", and the smallest muffin I have ever seen. The clerk at the counter here in Rock Springs has cleopatra-style eye makeup, which resembles magic marker lines, 2 cm long, at the corner of each eye. They have eggs at the breakfast counter, too, but they're just sitting there in their shells, so I'm not sure if they're hard boiled, or if I'm supposed to take them and scramble them myself. This is a small town, so you never know.

Montana has an even more aggressive restaurant chain than "Claim Jumper".

Then we drive off into the distance. Camera zooms to keep up, and we are heading east once more, into Colorado. "Colorful Colorado," according to the "Welcome to" sign. We pass through lots of mountain passes and copses of aspens. Aspens are the best looking tree in the world, of course. They have nearly straight, vertical trunks with pale white bark and black spots, and at this time of year, they are topped with a cloud of golden leaves. They look like petrified lightning bolts. These are the kinds of tree that

Oh yeah! Driving out of the Tetons we passed, gathered on the side of the road at irregular intervals, herds of nature photographers. Bracing their enormous telescopic lens arrays with equally massive tripedal infrastructure, they each strive to take the ultimate photo of an elk. Yes, truly a wonder of nature, these ponderous beasts.

Right. So, aspens: inspiring nature photographers since the camera was invented. After those, we go through lots of fascinating scenery etc etc and wind up in Dinosaur, CO. for as long as it takes to snap this picture:

I hate dinosaurs

One of the things I found out from Helen is that the metal corrugated grates that occasionally interrupt the paved road are called "cattle guards", and they prevent cows from walking through that point. They are usually used to bridge gaps in a fence which intersects the road. They work because the bars in the grating are spaced such that cow hooves get caught in them and hamper cow navigation (steering, I guess), and the cows know this so they don't even try to cross. Cows: smarter than you thought? Nope. It also works if you just paint a pattern of stripes on the road to look like a cattle guard, and I saw many of these, too. I wondered why there were a few real ones, but I guess it is possible that certain breeds of cows aren't stupid enough to fall for the ol' "fake cattle guard painted on the street" trick. It goes to show that you can lower your ranch overhead if your herd is the bovine equivalent of Wile E Coyote.

Pilots over Colorado practice their HTML

The terrain got rockier, redder, and more hat-shaped. Moutain peaks became mesas, which gave way to buttes. We re-entered Utah and made our way to Arches National Park

Arches is probably the most histrionic park I've seen yet. The scenery conveys a sense of hugeness unrivaled by any other location I've been in. You can't take a snapshot of hugeness, of course. Attempts to do so are artistic interpretations at best and pathetic failures more commonly. Being in yellowstone among weird, angular terrain made me feel like I was standing on the planet Mars. Being in arches, next to a red rock bigger than windward mall made me feel like I was standing next to the planet Mars, hanging out in Marses HOUSE with a bunch of his pals

As you can see in this picture, Arches is just a room sized diorama of teeny tiny geological features. All those postcards are faked. There's me smashing a few puny geoliths and years worth of cryptobiotic crust as well. Smash smash

an example of why pictures of hugeness do not work

I didn't mention it earlier, but this morning Helen woke up and said "I hope my grandma doesn't die while I'm on this road trip". Then she started returning her voice mail while I sat across the table eating toast. Then she made a sound like she had been punched in the chest, "ohh." A few moments later she said, "Andrew..." and I looked up and her eyes were glistening and I knew g-ma was gone. I'm sorry for her, and I'll miss her too. She had a subtle sense of humor and could beat me at scrabble.