August 8, 2019

Sitting in Cycle North waiting for a new rear tire to be mounted.  I'll try to catch up on some scribbled notes before everything fades from memory.

Somewhere north of Reno last Thursday I saw a couple of magnificent dust devils. One was just a dozen feet off the opposite side of the road.  Maybe thirty feet high and spinning like mad. It reminded me of the Tasmanian Devil in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons  (Sorry, couldn't resist that link.) I braced for turbulence but felt nothing as I passed. The other was maybe a mile away and looked to be more than 100 feet high.  It was so big that at first I thought it was just a light brown feature of the dark hills in the background.  It was a hot windy day. Maybe that drives dust devil development.

On the Termo Grasshopper Road leaving the campground on August 2 there were signs warning of "open range."  Mindful of a friend's 60 mph encounter with a cow, I paid close attention to the road ahead.  Much of the landscape is unspectacular but pleasant to motor through.  Flat land, distant low mountains, rocky outcroppings, clean air scented with sage and pine.

Today's ride could be summarized as farmland, forest, wooden fences, odd little churches, distant rounded mountains, ponds, streams, blue sky with grey bottomed clouds, some fields in deep shadow, others sunlit in a kaleidoscope of colors.

Smithers is packed with motels.  Can there be that many people passing through?  Or do vacationers use this as a base for activities in the area. I suppose I could ask someone, but speculation is much more fun.

There's a craggy mountain hanging over the town giving it a slightly Bavarian feel in my imagination.  That mountain also suggests that the terrain is about to change heading west.  All of today the distant mountains had size and contours almost identical to those surrounding my home town in Pennsylvania.  So, I came all this way to be reminded of where I grew up?  It's getting a little tiresome.