3-26-04

I pulled out of Kinsley this morning and headed east on 50. There was a steady stream of cattle trucks on the road last night and I really should have gotten up and moved.

Between the cattle and grain trucks there is hardly room for anyone else on the road. Along the highway is a huge IBP (Tyson) cattle-processing plant. There must have been close to two thousand cars parked in the lot and ten cattle trucks waiting to unload. I thought I would see if I could get in to see the plant. The receptionist said no tours anymore but I insisted and went up the food chain until I came to the person who could approve it, and found out he was gone but would be back next week. Oh well, it is probably just as well. I did get to look at some photos that were on the wall in the employment office. I found it interesting that they skin the carcass right down including the head. A cow with a skinned head with no lips is something you don’t see everyday. It appears that they process their own skins here as well. Almost all the photos with people looked like they were Mexicans. There was a big poster in the employment office saying something about how they don’t hire illegals. There were a couple of Mexican gals in there at the time and one was helping the other sign up for a job, as she could speak some English.

The humidity makes the air dense and there is a haze in the sky. For some reason a high humidity day is different in the desert, I wonder why that is. Last night it was extremely humid (I was stuck to the sheet all night) and when I checked this morning before leaving town, the temperature was 54 and the humidity was 94. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. I cranked up the air conditioner in the truck and when I stop it pukes out a stream of water that it is removing from the air. Aint it great that these people out here don’t mind it, other wise they would all be out in the desert.

Insert here the post 3-27-04 from Cheyenne.

I took highway 85 north out of Cheyenne and  it is a really nice road. It goes through Torrington, which has a large sugar beet processing plant as well as a big cattle sales yard. There are other small towns on the way but the land is very open and mostly flat. There is a lot of wheat grown here as well as vast stretches of grasslands. I went by a large herd of buffalo with a sign advertising hunt or meat call xxx xxxx. They sure do look good on grass.

I had to push wind and it is really sucking down the mileage. I have been getting around sixteen but now I am about fifteen. On one stretch the wind was coming straight across the road and a huge tumbleweed timed it just right for the pickup in front of me. It was an old rancher guy and he never flinched. It exploded when he hit it, into a big brown cloud.

3-28-04

I stopped at a convenience store here at Edgemont SD to get a quart of milk for my breakfast cereal. I have been eating and watching a heard of turkeys trying to cross a field across the road. There are too many to count but it is close to 100 of them. They seem to be in two major groups of 30 and 70. The smaller group almost made it across the field when they got scared and the whole bunch had to run and fly back to the river.

They have finally made it across and I see that it must have been a new calf that scared them. I’m on my way up the black hills and first stop will be Hot Springs. I should have gone on up hwy 85, which would be quicker, but I really like the drive up through the black hills and this time of year there should not be too much traffic.

It was as I expected, there was almost no traffic. I did get into a couple of squalls in the black hills but they didn’t last long or build up much snow on the road.  There were a lot of clouds and they were just rolling along and making a wonderful show to watch along the way.

I got back in the early afternoon and after taking a short nap I cleaned out the back of the truck and moved some of my cooking stuff out of the pod and into Vern (the Avion trailer I have up here next to the storage building). It is very windy up here on the hill today and I went around and collected the stuff that wasn’t tied down well enough before I left. There is just a hint of green up here, so I guess my timing was about right although a week hiking and riding my bike around canyon lands in Utah would have probably been a good idea.