Rumpled Satin

I began this road trip in early June, visiting New Mexico then Colorado.  Here in Wyoming, three weeks later, I'm finally through the technical challenges of getting this blog moving.  So I'll be shuttling back and forth in time, weaving the journey together.

We had the folded layer cake of the first two posts, and now, as I sit on a promontory with my morning tea, these smoothly rolling hills and valleys remind me of rumpled satin.

I asked the BLM staff in Casper about these low hills.  After having me guess, "The wind? ... Ice age glaciers?" he pointed me to the Western Interior Seaway and its tidal actions.  Wow!  So I'm sitting on what was the seafloor imagining 59' plesiosaurs and mosasaurs gliding by above me! And down below a six foot clam.   Up above the surface,  pterodactyls flew around on wingspans over 30'.

In the afternoon I almost felt at sea as a squall brought wind and rain so intense I began wondering if it could topple my rig like a schooner in an ocean storm.  I understood how prairie schooners got their name!  These monsoonal dramas move in and on in under an hour, followed by rainbows and the sweet fragrance of sage.

The sun returns and the birds go berserk with ecstasy till sunset when the crickets take over the serenade.