Steve and Judy's Travels!

A new baby. Conner Thomas Alexander. Born at 6:14 am, Tuesday, July 6th. 6 pounds, 14 ounces. 19 inches long. Mom, Dad, Baby, and family doing fine. It’s all good.

Friday. Simple day. Las Vegas to Mesquite. Passed Highway 93, Brother bill’s
favorite Highway. St. George, Cedar City, Beaver, turn right at Cove Fort.
Cross the steep mountains, up the Sevier Valley, through Richfield and
Salina, cross the badlands (San Rafael Swell), and cruise into Green River.
Stayed at the Shady Acres RV Park this time. Cooling down into the
eighties. Found some more rough cement road. Drove in the left lane for a while.
That helped. Judy was being silly tonight. We went to the edge of a field to show Annie
the cows that were grazing on the other side. Annie loves cows. But they
were on the other side of the field. Judy started calling them. That was the silly part. Cows don’t come when
you call them. Besides, she was making the same noise she makes when she’s
calling horses. She wasn’t calling cows, which don’t come when you call
them, she was calling horses. Just as I was gathering momentum in sorting
this all out for her, there was this random shuffling movement on the other
side of the field. All those cows started moving for no apparent reason.
Our direction. Judy called again, and they broke out into a run. They all
ran straight over to our side of the field, and stood there at the fence
waiting expectantly. Maybe it was feeding time and they mistook us for hay. New Mexico. I don’t really want to work there much. Only during the months
it’s cold in the Colorado high country. After that, given a choice between
more work in Colorado, and new work in New Mexico, I’ll take Colorado.
Maybe it’s not fair to sign up clients there if I only want to be there
during two or three months a year.
A four hundred mile day. Tomorrow, cross the high country.

Saturday. An easy day from Green River into Colorado, through Grand Junction, third
gear over Vail Pass, third gear up to the Eisenhower tunnel, down into
Denver in the rain. Driving over mountain passes, it’s not unusual to see signs at the top
warning truckers to stop and check their brakes. So I wonder: how do
truckers check their brakes. They pull over and what? Touch the wheels to
see if they’re hot? Reach around and pinch the disk? Really, what to
truckers do to check their brakes at the top of a mountain? And why? I understand that they will need their brakes going down the other side, but
they just came up the front side. Did they have to use their brakes to get
up? Unlikely. What is there about driving uphill for about an hour without
using your brakes that would make it necessary to stop and check them to
make sure they’re okay? In Barstow, on Thursday, we pulled up at the RV island to fuel. Both lanes
were occupied, so we picked one and waited. In front of us was a new white
pickup truck with flames painted on it, towing a big white fast boat. In
the other lane was a new white motorhome with flames painted on it, towing
the white jet skis. We wondered if they might be together. Judy got out to
check. It turns out they were together. He and she. A couple, with three
kids. They had been out playing and were headed home. She is a
schoolteacher. He is retired. He’s pretty young to be retired. 35. 35
years old, retired, three young kids, and playing with toys like that?
Retired from what? Football. Pat something. Played with the Raiders and Patriots. Tall
skinny guy. Must have been a wide receiver or db. At Susie’s house on the river, we sat out at night and watched the bats.
John would get out his 5 million candlepower hand held light, and shine it
into the sky until he spotted a flying bug. He’d hold the light on the
flying bug until a bat swooped through the beam to snatch it up. We saw a
lot of bats. We saw nighthawks, called riverhawks there, and stars and
satellites. We listened to the screaming moans coming from the other side
of the river at night. Screaming moaning frogs in the desert. A three hundred fifty mile day. The trip is over. We saw lots of good stuff. Picked up some new birds.
Made it to 300. Didn’t get to see the purple martins in Kansas. Didn’t get
to see the black swifts in Ouray. Didn’t get to see the giant condors
flying free in the Grand Canyon. Guess we just didn’t stay out long enough.

Thursday. We want to be closer to Colorado until Becky has her baby. Headed north.
North on 15, east on 70. Pretty simple. I was just thinking about those triggers for traffic lights. How do you
think they work? First you build the intersection, then you make those cuts
in the pavement where the first car stops. Then the traffic signal is
smart. It knows if there is a car there or not. But how does it know? It
can’t be a pressure button. That would be too tricky to manage. Is it a
metal detector? Is it a wire loop and a magnetic field? Who knows? Who do
we know that knows? Maybe I just want to expand into New Mexico to see if we can do it. That
would be a good enough reason, wouldn’t it? We’d probably need a physical
address to put on our letterhead, wouldn’t we? I wonder if we could get
anyone in New Mexico to hire us with just a Denver address. Spent the morning on the beach, had lunch, and headed out. Made it all the
way to Las Vegas. Didn’t stay at the fancy resort we stayed at last time.
Picked one closer to the freeway that would provide an easier in and out.
Good WiFi connection here. Works just like it’s supposed to. As soon as we left the coast, the air got crummy again. White and hard to
see through. Limited visibility through Riverside. It cleared up at
Barstow, 190 miles into the trip. Saw a sports car stretched into a limousine. The weather at the beach was mild. Seventy-five during the day, and
sixty-five at night. Now we’re back to the hundreds again for a couple
days. A three hundred mile day. Tomorrow. Green River, Utah.

The park next to the beach.