Western Travels and A Story of Devoted Friendship



in Illinois on Monday

 I snapped that picture just as we were leaving Illinois on our way west. Funny how sometimes my "quick snap it and cross your fingers" pictures turn out to be my favorites.

Right after that we crossed the mighty Mississippi River...

...and entered a very famous and historic town in Missouri.

Do you recognize the name of this town and why it's famous? Hannibal is the boyhood home of author Mark Twain, as well as the setting for two of his most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn! We didn't get to see much of the town, because it's not right on the main highway that we passed through on, but it was still neat to be in the area, and we did get a glimpse of town as we crossed the river.

We drove all night and all the next day and reached Reno by midnight Tuesday to deliver.

The next morning, we headed south into Nevada's vast and rustic wilderness. For a while we were on the main highway that cuts between Reno and Las Vegas, where we were traveling with other trucks and tourists, though not too many.

 After a hundred miles or so, we cut off onto a more obscure road and headed over towards a little place called Silver Peak.

Silver Peak is one of the oldest mining towns in Nevada. Silver was discovered in the area in 1863 and the town was established the following year. We didn't get to actually see the town, or what there may be of one still, because we had to leave the main road just north of town to go out to the Heart of Nature mine where we picked up a load of gypsum.

Of all the types of trucking you can do, I think maybe this one gives you the most diverse experiences and takes us to the most exotic places.

The mine wasn't an underground one. It was a big pit, with just two men there working.

They had a pile of pick axes and other debris they had gathered as they ran across it. The mine had been in operation since the 1800's so they were coming across lots of old and interesting things.

The gypsum went to Idaho, taking me on a long drive diagonally across Nevada's outback on highway 6. It was an awesome way to spend the day. I think I only passed 15-20 vehicles the entire day, and it was about 250 mile across there! I love driving around in Nevada's empty spaces!

love this! It's the never ending road!

We delivered in Soda Springs, ID the next morning,



I always admire this old homestead lost in a vast wheat field. Everytime we drive by it draws my attention.

 and from there we went to Pocatello and reloaded fertilizer. Then we headed north to Fort Benton, MT. We stopped last night in Great Falls and had dinner with Malcolm's sister and her husband. We hadn't seen them in almost a year and it was so much fun to get to catch up over pizza with lots of laughs and stories to share. Hope we can do that again soon.

After dinner, we drove the last 40 miles to Fort Benton, where we are unloading now.

The fertilizer place is up on one of the hills overlooking the town, so I've been enjoying the view, the cloudy weather (hope it rains for them!), and the cool breeze. It's in the mid-70's which is just comfortable enough to have the truck turned off and the windows open.

We are parked along the rail road tracks here...

 ...and across the tracks, as we pulled in last night, we noticed an odd monument on the hill, all lit up by spot lights and over looking the town.


it's over on the tip of the hill to the right



Malcolm asked about it this morning, while we were waiting our turn to unload, and then came back to tell me the story and have me look it up. Turns out the monument is the grave of a locally famous sheep dog.

a picture of Shep, from the website linked to below

I know many of my blog friends are animal loves, and there are many dog enthusiasts among you. I had to share this story with you because I was so touched by it. You simply must take the time to go read Shep's story here. There is also a statue in the town square that I would love to see, but we won't be able to. This truck enables me to see so many sights, and also restricts me in my touring. It's a bitter sweet thing for me! But maybe one day I can come back and go to the square so I can see the wonderful tribute this town has made to a good and faithful dog, as well as many others. And if you still have time, you also need to go read the Eulogy on the Dog that is on the website. I found it very touching and even almost teared up a bit, thinking of how every word of it is so true. God did an amazing thing when he created dogs and gave them a love for us. I think He knew there would be times when we would need a friendship that another human just couldn't provide.

We're reloading south of here. Another load of barley headed to Minnesota for the weekend. We're thinking we'll just take a lazy weekend to get across. A few miles one day, a few more the next, a trip to get groceries and supplies, and maybe dinner with Malcolm's other sister in Bismarck.

A Few Favorites



sunset in Malta, MT on June 29



We've covered too much ground to catch you up on where we've been and what we've been doing for the past few weeks, at least in any great detail. So I thought I'd just share some of my favorite pictures from that time period and then we'll all be up to speed.

descending out of the Bull Mountains south of Roundup, MT. Billings is down there on the horizon somewhere.

We've driven through a number of the states out here, our first two trips going through Montana. From there we headed to California and then Utah. We've also been to Arkansas and Missouri,  passing through Nebraska on July 4th. They were combining grain there, about two weeks earlier than usual according to a friend who lives there, because it's so dry.

Storm clouds were gathering over Sidney, NE as we entered the western side of the state on I-80.

Those clouds didn't really produce anything, but later in the evening, over east of North Platte I drove through a really nasty storm with strobe light effect lightning and literally horizontal rain. It was really intense there for a few moments.

After delivering in Arkansas and reloading in Missouri, we headed to Washington. Wyoming was the picturesque state on that tour. It was a good day to be in Wyoming with a camera!

the hills between Cheyenne and Laramie

Elk Mountain hiding it's tip in the clouds

a storm moving in near Rock Springs

in northwestern Wyoming near the ID state line on US30

From Washington we went to Oregon and loaded corn which went to California. I always enjoy the drive down US97 through Oregon, passing along the eastern edge of the Cascade Mountains.

north of Madras, OR

 And then back up to Utah, crossing the Salt Flats at sunrise. After two weeks of cloudy air, the haze was starting to clear, which was a big help for pictures.

After delivering in Utah, we loaded wheat in Idaho and went to Montana where we loaded barley. And that brings you up to date. The barley load scenery was shared in my last post, Crossing the Midwest.

Today we're in Nevada about to load gypsum. Then we'll head to Idaho. Don't know where we're headed after that, but glad we're moving along at a nice pace, and hope the loads keep rolling in like this.

Crossing the Mid-West

Today is 2 1/2 weeks since we went back to work from our break. That means, if we stay out our usual 5-6 weeks, then technically, we're at our half way mark! Kind of...

Last Thursday afternoon we loaded barley in Carter, MT. That is north of Great Falls.

 That morning had been rough. Malcolm had had a bad cold for several days preceding this, and Wednesday I started feeling puny. By Wednesday night I was all sniffy and I woke up Thursday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. So when we found out the receiver in Minnesota didn't want their barley till Monday, we had no complaints, as Malcolm was still feeling drained and I was on my way to becoming a plague victim. We loaded up and headed east through Montana's northern plains, expecting to be home by late evening, where I planned to pass out on the couch and not move till I had to.

I love these vast rolling grasslands.
And I hate that speck on my camera lens.
I've reached my limit of tolerance and think I'm going to have to mail me camera off to be fixed. But in the mean time, we'll try to keep looking past the dark smudges on my pictures.


By late afternoon, we'd passed through Roundup and were well into the plains of eastern Montana, which were visibly dryer than those of the western side.

Quite a dramatic difference, and a depressing sight.
On a good note though, by this point in the day I was feeling much better and it was looking like I was going to have a 2 day version of Malcolm's week long illness. Lucky me! I had expected to be camped out on the couch at home, recovering, but instead by Friday morning, when we woke up in our bedroom at home with the sound of silence (specifically no traffic or rumbling motors), I was feeling energized and happy, ready to start my day with a cup of coffee in my favorite mug while organizing my time and ideas.

Malcolm worked with his dad on Friday and Saturday he worked on the truck. Friday I did house chores and laundry (sounds dull I know but I enjoyed every minute of it) and Saturday I camped on the couch with my girls, not because I was sick, but because we thought an afternoon lounging on the couch with a good book sounded really nice. So that's what we did.

Saturday evening I noticed some stormy weather moving in so I went out to see if Malcolm needed help putting things away. When I got out there he'd just finished so I stood around waiting for him to be ready to go in, and just before we headed to the house I glanced out towards the southwest and I think my heart literally stopped for a few moments.

There was a brown column of smoke quickly rising  into the air on the horizon.

Fast tracks made to the house and the phone. Malcolm's mom called neighbors while we watched the smoke and listened to the conversations. Someone had already spotted it and been on the phone. The fire was several ranches away from us and people were in route to take care of it. The wind had been blowing good all day, but now it was turning ferocious, which never helps. We were debating whether to go down there or not, when the smoke disappeared. We heard later that rain had come in and put the fire out just before people arrived. Thank goodness! Thank God!

Sunday morning we left the house and headed towards Minnesota. Seven miles from home we hit the North Dakota state line, and four miles later crossed into South Dakota.

We're on 2 lanes for a couple hours or so before we hit I-90.

Hadn't been in South Dakota for a while. It was a beautiful day! And it was clear that South Dakota is suffering from drought too. I'm beginning to wonder if there is any state in the country that's not withering.

We hit Minnesota near dusk and I went to bed. Our delivery was on the very eastern edge of the state, in Winona. And when I say eastern edge, I mean if we'd rolled a few feet to far, we'd have fallen in the river and drifted across to Wisconsin. Malcolm got there around midnight or so and they were open and ready to unload us. That was a nice surprise. Worked in our favor.

Because we had a phone message from our broker to head to Decatur, IL as soon as we got unloaded and that was a 400 mile bounce! Malcolm woke me up around 4:00am and I took over. We were in Wisconsin and the sun had just gotten well into it's morning rise.

Wisconsin is a pretty state. I like to look at all the farms. But for some reason, neither of us really cares to drive in Wisconsin. I can't pin point the reason. But if I have to drive through Wisconsin, I like mornings. There is something about morning light and farms that feels good.

Madison traffic cooperated and then it was south on to northern Illinois. I was hoping I'd not have to deal with heavy traffic. In that part of Illinois, even though it's still relatively distant from Chicago, the traffic can still be bothersome. I had a good morning. Everything kept flowing smoothly.

Illinois......Land of Lincoln!
Illinois....Land of corn and soy beans!

No pathetic corn here. The fields are so lush that mostly it's just the rooftops of the farm houses and barns that are visible from the highway, though the roadsides do look a tad dry. Irrigation.....a marvelous invention!

We got about 50 miles from our destination when we found out we'd been told the wrong town, and so now we're hot footing it over to Quincy, another 180 miles back west! Yeah, you could say we were a bit miffed with that one. Four hundred miles was a long bounce to start with, but now we've gone quite a bit out of route, and then the real destination told us they had wanted us there at 7:30 this morning, but they'll try and get us loaded anyway.  This was a high paying load, but that's diminishing with each added mile and the extra fuel we're burning to make up lost time. Fortunately these mistakes hardly ever happen. It will still be a nice paying load and, provided we actually get loaded, we'll be heading west by this afternoon and in Reno, NV by tomorrow evening.
In the mean time, I'm going to enjoy all the green in Illinois for a few more minutes, and then go stretch out in bed, read a chapter or two (or three or four or...you know how that works) in my current book, and then try and catch a little sleep so I can drive this afternoon and give Malcolm a break.

Up In Smoke

The last fond farewell. I was so happy to see it go! This was Tuesday, June 26, early in the morning. The tail end of our home time. We left for Billings at the crack of dawn...

and made fast tracks for town. It's probably in poor taste to say this, considering all the fires of late, but once I'd gotten all our stuff out of the truck, I kept hoping for a random electrical fire or maybe a well aimed bolt of lightening. I'd love for that truck to go up in smoke and be done with it!

Alas, no such luck. So it's sitting on the lot in Billings where Kenworth is trying to sell it for us on consignment. Fingers crossed that someone falls in love with it.

After dropping off the truck at the dealer, we ran around town finishing up some errands, and then hit the road home. We weren't even out of Billings before I noticed some ominous looking storm clouds to the north.

 Within minutes my heart dropped into my feet as I realized these were not storm clouds! It was smoke! What we were viewing from the interstate was the smoke from what would become known as the Dahl fire. Started by lightening on Monday night, the fire had quickly taken off in Montana's dryness, and was burning strong through the Bull Mountains south of Roundup. I would follow the progress of this fire for the next few days because we had acquaintances in that area, and I was worried for them.

Further down the highway, nearing Rosebud, another eerie column appeared to the south.

The smoke in this one is harder to see, and that actually is a storm cloud behind it. It wasn't as dramatic as the smoke clouds at Roundup, but it was still depressing to see. I decided later on that we must have been looking at smoke from a fire down near Lame Deer. In the days to come, this one would turn into one of the state's most devastating wild fires in history. Started the night of Monday, June 25, by lightening, the Ash Creek fire was just recently, finally contained. It burned a devastating 249,000 acres of southeastern Montana land. About 109,000 acres of that were privately owned ranch lands. Needless to say, there are a lot of people hurting from that fire. If you are familiar with "Feral Woman" and her blog, then you have seen her pictures and heard her story. If not, you can visit it with this link. She and her husband saved their home by the skin of their teeth, and from the sounds of it, were in great danger themselves.

Our friends in Roundup were not so lucky. After returning to work a few days later, our second load took us south out of Roundup down towards Billings. The road had just reopened, having been closed when the fire started crossing it a few days prior.

The fire was still burning, but had moved on east of the highway. The only evidence at first was the smoke hanging in the air, and then we began to see scorched places and burned grass. Some structures had clearly had a close call.

And others were not so lucky. Initially, when we had heard the fire was crossing US87, I'd had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, worried for a trucker that we used to haul cattle with. As we neared his place, our fears were confirmed.

Those whitish spots on the ground, seen through the haze of smoke, used to be a home and barns. Pretty much everything was burned to the ground. My heart is broken for him and his wife. I was so worried that he had been out on the road and that she had had to deal with the emergency on her own, but through a conversation with another acquaintance, we learned that in fact he had been home before the fire came and they were even able to remove their animals from the property. The cattle, horses, goats and llamas were all safe and accounted for. All that had been lost were a few geese and chickens. Such a relief to hear, though a small blessing in such a horrible experience.

During the last weeks of June and beginning of July it seemed like the west was going up in smoke! Only on the road for a week, it seemed like each new day exposed another fire to our view through the windshield.
We watched this smoke rising into the sky as we loaded in Nephi, UT on July 3.

And later that afternoon as we approached the outskirts of the Salt Lake City region, we couldn't help but notice these clouds. We'd just driven south through this area a few hours earlier and hadn't seen a thing. It was hard to believe that a fire had started and grown so much space in that short of a time, but it seems to have been the case.

The way smoke drifts on wind currents, you want to let yourself believe the fires aren't as big as they at first appear. But the closer you get, the harder it is to convince yourself.

And if you get close enough, you just can't stay in your imaginary safe world any more.

We left the house on a Thursday and spent 7 days running through at least 7 states, all of which had scenery hidden behind a cloud of smoky haze. Even on that last day at home, the smoke was so thick in the air we couldn't see many of the hills that surround us. And home was at least 100 miles as the crow flies from the closest fire, at least as far as I'm aware of.

The second week out things have remained extremely hot and dry, but the air had been a lot clearer. I'm hoping that means a lot of the fires have been subdued.

In my brief time living and driving in the west, I've learned that summer time and fires go hand in hand. But this year seems so extreme. I read in a news report last week that in an average year, 80% of fires in Montana are started by lightening. But this year, of the 300 fires so far, 85% of them have been human-caused. How can people be so careless when it is so obviously and horribly dry? Most of southeast Montana is just a tinder box waiting for the right spark. In fact, having finally gotten back to work and driven around these western states, I can tell you nearly every acre out in these western states is just waiting for the right conditions to go up in smoke! Let's pray that doesn't happen!

northwest of Forsyth, MT on July 12

Other than the fires, and a broken air conditioner (that's thankfully fixed now) and a few bumps and bruises as I adjust to maneuvering around the new truck, things are going great! We have been back to work for two weeks now. I have lots of pictures to share, but made the mistake of getting involved in a couple of really good books. As a result, everything else has been neglected, including my sleep. But I do want to catch you up to date. We have a couple days lay over at home this weekend because Minnesota doesn't want their barley till Monday, so maybe I can get some posts written during that time. For now, Paris is in the living room crying because she wants me to come sit on the couch with her. I think I might just take her up on her request. She thinks we ought to cuddle on the couch and start the next book in that series we're reading. She loves our reading time. I think she has a good idea!

Jeep Rides

Malcolm's first "car" was a jeep. He still has it though we haven't had it out in a long time, and I think it's in need of some work. But when we met, that was his vehicle and we used it to get around the ranch during my visit. It was lots of fun!

Malcolm loves jeeps! So when my dad shared with him that he was getting rid of his, Malcolm asked to buy it. And a year and a half ago we hauled it home to Montana. If you really need to know details like year, model, etc, ask me in comments and I'll find out for you. But he's out of the truck right now, and I don't know anything about it other than it's red.

He loves to take the jeep out. So when we need to go somewhere on the ranch that's distant, he often opts to take the jeep instead of going on a four wheeler. And one evening while we were home, he came to the house and asked if I wanted to ride along with him to check a water tank and pump that he and his Dad had been working on. My answer is almost always yes. I enjoy getting out, and I enjoy the jeep rides with him, as does Lucy.

she loves to go anywhere as long as she's going!

 It is a windy, dusty ride. I honestly think I come back to the house with more dust on me than if I had been on a four wheeler. It just kind of circulates in there with us. But it's still a fun way to travel around the ranch and surrounding area.

nice hair, huh? You wouldnt' believe the tangled mess it is when we're done, even though it's pulled back.

He drives. Lucy and I take in the scenery...

...and admire the wildlife.

bull snake

prong horn antelope

This particular well pump was down the road a ways. This time of day is the perfect lighting for good pictures. The sun is especially at a nice angle for self portraits.

I have heard a lot of people say that they don't like this part of the country. That driving through Nebraska and Kansas and the Dakotas bores them out of their minds. How? I never get tired of looking at the open plains! There is always something to see and admire, even if your admiring the fact that there is nothing!

I could look at it all day long!

We arrived at the windmill, where the cows had gathered. Looked like a meeting of some sort going on.

This was our destination. He just had to check some things real quick. The cows wondered off upon our arrival, and went back to grazing, but this one gal came back to get a drink and stuck around to watch the show. They are such curious critters.

favorite picture of the evening

Just a few minutes, and Malcolm had the job done. On a hot day on the dry plains, the sound of running water is a sweet thing.

We stayed a few minutes to watch and enjoy the moment, and then headed back home to wrap up the days chores.

Antelope! They are funny creatures!

Unlike a deer that will leap over a fence, or dive through it, and veer off in a perpendicular direction to where a vehicle is going to get away, antelope race you. They are trying to get away, but rarely does it seem to occur to them to just turn left or right. They run with you, and try to get ahead of you before turning away. It really is something to watch and they can really run when they mean it! I snapped a few pictures of the race and then had the idea to video it just in time to catch the tail end of our race. This herd stayed with us for quite a while. So here's a short clip of these antelope racing us in the jeep. You might want to turn your sound down if your hearing is sensitive because the jeep is noisy.

We left the house Thursday and went back to work. This is the end of my home time posts. After this one, your back on the road with us.