Made it to the Rockies!

I saw my first real cowboy today! With the stetson hat, hot chick, and driving a PINK Camaro! Yup, sure as shootin'! Dead nuts (maybe in more ways than one!). That was one man very confident in his masculinity - or perhaps very in touch with his feminine side... At any rate, that certainly broke up the monotony of driving in such a vast space while I burst out laughing!

About the time I was on visual sensory overload with the repetition of ever widening spaces and ever rolling and never-ceasing hills, they were assaulted anew with a different scene! All of a sudden, there before me lay my first view of the Rockies! It came just like that! One moment, it was the usual wide rolling spaces, and the next, I climbed a hill, and there they were~! It truly came as a shock. I knew they had to be close, based on my progress on the map, but it still shocked me when, still more than 35 miles away, I saw them, protruding above the flat expanse of farm and grazing land.

This trip has been such a wonderful experience! It's been filled with moments (hours, actually) of pure solitude, time in which I could reflect on my past blessings and struggles. Then, when I came into a little town, having to slow from 70mph down to 25 in far less time than just releasing the accelerator pedal would allow, I would be enamored and enthralled by another little town, trying to figure out what kept it going. Most showed all the signs of depreciated and dilapidated houses and buildings. I wondered what sort of future there was for those little towns. Really, they hardly passed as villages. Yet, all around them were huge expanses of farmland. Surely, that must be the only real vocation available to people who opted to stay there! Many had not even a single fuel station! Some had "rest areas" where even the toilet was nothing more than a pit latrine, much as I'd used in Nigeria - only with a seat...

The border crossing posed more time-consuming than I thought it would. I got flagged for further questioning after the initial drive-by. I'm not sure what I did, had, or said wrong, but I came to realize after about 30 minutes of questioning and sitting and waiting, that they were worried that I had come to Canada to seek a job! Little did they know my apprehension of cold weather! What would possess me to move to a place where the weather rarely gets hot enough to sweat with a tee-shirt on?? I think that when I answered his question, "Do you know the laws pertaining to employment in Canada?" with, "No, and I could care less what the laws are - I'm not interested in working there!" he was satisfied! Not that I had any place to get to in a hurry - he could have searched my car and made me sleep there! At least it would have been a warm place, and I would not have had to pay for another night in a hotel! :)

I'm now in a town called Cardston - 80% Mormon and 20% other, according to my waitress. She knew I was new to the town when I asked what types of beer they had... Apparently, this is a dry town! Ah well, I used the opportunity to talk to her and get to learn a little about this town. Only she's not from here, and is among the "other" - which one, I don't know... Her husband is a semi-pro hockey player, just back from New Jersey playing for a team there. It's neat to talk to people and find out a little about them - but I only talk to those who are open to it and want to share a bit of their life with me. I hate it when people ask me all sorts of questions.

And that reminds me of the little kid that walked into my hotel room yesterday and asked me what I was doing! It was really neat that he felt comfortable enough to talk to me and to go against the "don't talk to strangers" grain, but he asked so many questions that I really didn't know how to react! In the end, I picked up my clothes to wash, lead him outside, and locked the door behind me while he followed for a bit, then got tired of the silence in my answers...

By the way, if you click on the picture, you can see a higher resolution photo