Trip to Seattle

Trip to Seattle

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As I headed south on Missouri State Highway just south of Goldsberry I noticed a field that had been burned. That is a simpler way of controlling weeds (and the way it happened when farmers weren't maintaining the natural pastures), though it can be a little hazardous when it is dry out (the fire can get out of hand). However, they got plenty of rain while I was visiting (and the ponds went from very low to mostly full) so this was a good time to burn a field. On US Route 36 headed West I passed Nathan's school in New Cambria, MO.		Full size picture was not retrievable from diskette.
I continued on US Route 36 through Kansas and it got really flat in places with even fewer people than in Missouri. I made the best time I have so far as two lane highways are almost as fast as interstates when there is no traffic and hardly any towns.
Kansas was a lot drier than Missouri as well and in places where they didn't irrigate, it got really dry. Here is unirrigated pasture which looks very desert like. Right next to such pastures could be very green fields of alfalfa or whatever (irrigated, of course). Here is a field off Route 36 in Colorado which is being irrigated.
Much to my surprise, much of Colorado is even flatter than Kansas. Here is pasture land along U.S. Route 36 in Kansas. Very flat and very dry with even less people. The farms are really large complexes (it seems) with large numbers of tractors (rows and rows shown here). You can also see a field which has been burnt on the right. That surpised me as I imagine an out of control fire could do a lot of damage around there with it being so dry.
I arrived in Denver just as the sun was setting and it was a surprisingly pretty sunset. However, you should note that the lower grey line on the left are mountains, not clouds (with clouds above the mountains). While Kansas and Colorado seemed very flat, I must have been going up hill as Denver is at the foot of some real mountains and quite high itself (over a mile above sea level I seem to have read).
I spent the night of May 5 in an unlit parking lot in front of an Office Depot across from Bally's. I parked next to a black pickup, but at 2:30AM a tractor trailer met the pickup and they must of unloaded some cargo and gone on. I mostly slept through it without incident, but it did seem odd. I took U.S. Route 40 West out of Denver to Salt Lake City. Just out of Denver you get some really steep mountains and quite impressive roadways, but there was no place to stop and get nice pictures. Here are some pictures of Berthoud Pass on U.S. Route 40.