Westward Ho

 John and I just completed a 5,000 mile road trip across the western half of our country.  This was planned for last year, but the pandemic took care of that.  We have been vaccinated, but still Covid-19 remained a bit of concern for us, especially with the new variant of the virus picking up speed.  I was a bit relived, when  after returning home, we passed the twelfth day and showed no symptoms.  We are not so concerned for ourselves because we are well covered by the vaccine, but we want to be careful for our grandchildren.  Anyway, we left home on July 12 with our first goal to attend John's 50th college reunion at Concordia University located in Seward Nebraska.  We spent a couple of days there attending a few planned activities which culminated with a banquet the last evening.  I can only say one thing on that experience, and that is that the school has changed a lot over those 50 years, and has been quite successful in that growth!

Our next goal, after leaving Seward was the Lohrmann family reunion in the state of Washington.  We had about 4 days to travel through 5 states.  Our first scenic stop was in the Pine Bluffs area of Wyoming.  An interpretive sign explained that the beautiful ridges and draws of the bluffs had been created over millions of years of weathering.  Their capstone of sandstone and clay stone slowly collapsed over the years because of the soft clay underneath.

The picture above gives you an idea of what we saw looking down from one of the rock precipices of the bluff area.  The interpretive sign indicated that the forests here were of mountain mahogany, as well as ponderosa and limber pine.

After that stop we encountered a bit of a rain storm which included bits of hail.  Hearing the hail on the car roof made us fearful of what kind of damage it was causing- but the hail only made very small indentations on the car roof fortunately.  It was fascinating watching the storm clouds roll in and to see rain off in the distance as it slowly moved toward us.  The sun peeped in and out of the clouds and created splotches of light over the rolling hills.  Soon we were out of the rain and in the Sawtooth National forests. Here we had our first awesome views of the mountains for which western parts of our United States are noted for.

We drove through the town of Ketchum Idaho, known for its ski slopes.

Roadside signs reminded us that "Idaho is too beautiful to litter" and also that an extreme drought was present in the state and to conserve water.  We now had two days to make it to the reunion on time, more on our travels in the next posting.