Prairie

D's parents took him to Vernal to see the dinosaur bones, when he and his brothers were kids. His memories of it were hazy, his passion for the monsters now lost along with the complicated names. I'd never really learned them, ugly brown/grey/greens, confusing toss of letters for names. Perhaps if I could have imagined them as covered with feathers, I'd have been more interested.

Still, that wall, once a muddy basin, a logjam of bones turned to stone, held power. And that is what I hadn't imagined, it's not just a lot of bones, it's mostly bone, deep layers of ancient corpses. Fossilized can of sardines, on a grand scale. A few fossils are available to touch, I held back. I wouldn't call it magic, neither would I mock a culture that did.

Titanic forces, as the gods played with the continents, tipping over mountains, sitting on sand dunes until they compacted into stones, pouring in oceans, tipping them back out again.

Three and a half hours driving, very little on freeway, much on two lane roads. Tailgated by impatient SUVs, toddling along behind lumbering trucks and tankers, long grades and turns, cow signs, deer crossings. A good score of animals killed by the side of the road, many deer, hare, a dog, raccoon, marmot. Spring kills. Until the last twenty miles, which had as many prairie dog remains on the shoulders. As well as living ones standing or taking their chances running across. In the park, with the very low speed limit, more prairie dogs, all over, all alive, peering at us, beyond us. D thought this standing stone on the top looked like one of them.




Some sort of swift little birds, swooping and flitting, now flapping now bulleting along, too fast for my meagre camera.



And small golden brown lizards beneath the sage and scrub. Probably Sceloporus graciosus. I would like to have sat down and let them come up to me for a photo-op. But the sun was high, and another group of people were parking, so left them to their own world, charmed enough to just watch them.

Coming toward Heber, I noticed what I guessed to be an outcropping on the mountainside. Once we got close, it had risen enough for me to see it was a black and gold balloon.



An extra 10,000' of elevation effected my ears, left us both dried and dusty. Stayed the night, nice hotel, nothing fancy, but clean and comfortable. The advantage of being early risers, on the road by 7, driving in the cooler part of the day, home before the heat hit.

Always before, when we've gone away overnight, Moby mopes and worries, greets us immediately, requiring reassurance. This time, well, we saw Eleanor first. She stares at me as if to say, "AK! Who are you?" and skitters away. Moby appears after several minutes, sauntering by, "Oh, hi. You're home. Good. Take me outside." This sounds bad, but this sort of normal secure cat behaviour is exactly what we hoped for. They kept each other from being anxious and lonely. Our neighbor was given a key in case we were late, make sure they had food and water. This was our first trip since moving into House, and since Eleanor came to us.

Driving that much wears me out, I slept long and hard last night. Glad I have today to recover.