Spanish Fork to Bullhead City, AZ

Today was a very long drive.  It's not that much longer than yesterday, but it felt like forever.  

It was cold last night, so the air in the tires was showing less air pressure than there actually was.  It took a long time for the idiot light to go out.  It went out when we were in St. George.  Speaking of St. George, never go there.  If you do go there, do not go to the Maverick gas station that's right off the end of the off ramp.  It was packed.  We ended up leaving and going down the street a little to a Shell that wasn't busy.  St. George itself is ruined.  It used to be a charming little town, now they've planted houses everywhere, traffic is horrible, and we left in a hurry, never to return again.   That was our key learning for today. 

It was fairly windy today.  This was taken at a Flying J.  Jim wanted to put air in the tires.  Did you know that stations who still have air are charging for it?  The air station at Flying J was broken, so no air for us.  

Ultimately it did not matter, the tires warmed up, and the TPMS was happy.

The Virgin Rivet Gorge is on this route.  It was, as always, breath taking.  I love going through there.

We're staying at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites.  I think we may be looking for something else.  They're cost cutting by taking in room coffee makers away, and I think they've decreased the number of luggage carts.  When you travel with as much crap as we do, having a luggage cart is critical.  The guy at the front desk said that people were keeping them in their rooms.  I doubt it.  Also annoying is that when we reserved we asked for a 4th floor room away from the elevator.  We're on the 3rd floor close to the elevator.  I hate that because people tend to get off the elevator, congregate, and chat.  There used to be a coffee table in this room class, which is now gone.  So, my user experience is not great this trip.

Tomorrow we will be in Tucson, and I am heartily happy about that.

Butte, MT to Spanish Fork, UT

Today was Butte to Spanish Fork, Utah.  It was a complete and total shit drive until about ten miles north of Ogden Utah.  We had MANY miles of gusting sideways wind, rain, heavy rain, and mist.  It was gruesome.  The car seems very susceptible to winds from the side, we get pushed a lot.  Once we hit Salt Lake, the weather cleared and it was a nice day.  Traffic southbound was not terrible, there were a few rolling slowdowns but not bad.  Northbound sucked for them.  All driving was done on I15.

Most of Idaho and Montana are under construction.  New lanes, new bridges.  

I have photos.  This is how most of the day looked.

Last night we had a tragedy of first world epic proportions.  The hinge on Jim's Lenovo failed in spectacular fashion.  One side had already failed, but we got it to the PC guy in time and he screwed it back together.  This time was way worse.  Click on the photo to enlarge, and behold the beauty of the destruction from the hinge giving it up. 

We have the spare laptop with us, Jim will have to use it until we return to Spokane in the spring, or we buy something in Tucson.  The internet assures me that the data on the drive is recoverable.  This is good, because my beloved is not good at backing up files.  I'm not either, but he's worse.  So, that has been a bummer.

The heck of it is, we really like the Lenovos.  The keys are backlit which is very helpful for those of us with aging eyes.  The mouse pad is very nice, we like it a lot.  We just don't like the 5 year cycle of death for the hinge.  It's all over reddit and the internet, it's not like they don't know they have a design issue.  I wrote about this here. So, I say to you all, back up your files!

 

Spokane to Butte, MT

We are in Butte, MT.  The forecast still says it's not going to freeze.  We are happy about that.  The route from Spokane is get on I90 and stay there until you hit Butte.  Tomorrow we will back track to I15 and stay on that for awhile.  

I have a few photos.  It was not a good day for photography due to the bright sunshine and dead bugs on the wind shield.

Here we are in beautiful downtown Deer Lodge.  It used to be a thriving community until the Milwaukee Railroad pulled out.  Population dropped by 50%.  They will probably never recover from this.  It was an enormous payroll, they did the majority of the heavy maintenance for the Rocky Mountain division.  There were acres of shops to do this work.

The yellow trees are Larches.  They are a deciduous conifer.  In the spring they grow new needles.

This is a terrible photo what with the glare on the window.

These are trees with leaves.  There was a lot of fall color today.

We're at the Hampton Inn in Butte.  It's still a nice place to stay.   Tomorrow we are up and out to Spanish Fork, UT.  Friday and Saturday are the long driving days.  

Carry on and keep calm. 

That Man

This is 15 seconds, it's worth looking at.  You can really see the malice and crazy when he goes off on a reporter.  To play the video, click here, and then press the video button.  I still don't know how to imbed a working video from twitter into blogger. 

The car appears to be 90% loaded.  However, I'm still at the stage where little stuff keeps appearing that must be packed.  
 

A Short Post

Greetings Earthlings.  We're leaving Thursday.  Butte, Montana forced us to move departure to the left, because their temperatures are dropping.  Thursday it won't be so cold, so we don't have to schlep in the contact lenses and the drugs.  Anyway, it's been sort of a pain, to get it all done.

So that's what I have been doing.  We did get it down to four space saver bags, vs 6 or 7 last year.  That was good.  I guess if we don't have an item, we'll go buy one.

Clearly I have nothing interesting to say.  Here are a few paltry photos.

This was taken out the front door recently.  The clouds and the contrails were looking good.

Yet another turkey photo.  I like how his wattle is illuminated.  It's weird, last summer we had virtually zero sightings of turkeys, this year, they're everywhere.  What we don't have is rabbits.

The voter in chief.  We got it done, voted for all of the democrats.  The party here did a really good thing, they mailed out a list of democrat approved justices, so we voted for them.  It vastly simplified the process.

Other than France is burning, Russia is burning, Ukraine is burning, and 47 is a traitor, I have nothing much to say about anything.
 

Fall and Perfidy

It appears that 47 has caved to the pressure to not live stream the execution.  It's still on for December 3, but limited to victims and victims' families in person.  

Meanwhile, the US turned off Starshield for two days.  Reuters says the order came from within the White House.  They limited it to devices traveling less than 100 mph, so effectively it was turned off.  47 has lifted the sanctions on Russia, and is buying diesel from them.  He's trying to force Ukraine to stop fighting, because Putin wants him to.  Zelenskyy is furious, and has said so.  The Europeans are trying to get him to be less blunt about how he feels about this.  Ukraine plans on taking out all the refineries and the data centers.  Good.  

Every day, it's worse.  Every day I wonder what will it take for the republicans to discover they have a spine, and they could stop all of this.

It's cold now, ok, not really cold, but into the 30's at night.  

We've not been doing much of anything that's interesting.  It makes blogging difficult.  Here are three photos I have on offer.

This is a mama turkey and her two chicks.  We've been observing them for quite awhile.  They will not turn and face the camera.  Wretched birds.

I don't know how widely this brand is carried in the US.  If you see it, buy some.  It's not too hot (for I am a wimp) but it's really good.  Sodium level is tolerable.  They make good carnitas, but after reading the label, we had to quit eating them.  Too much saturated fat!

This is the mystery fungus growing on the rockery.  It has greened up considerably since the last photo.

 Other than this, I got nuthin'.