8 hour bus ride

 9/15/23.  Yesterday we rode all day from Denver, then Wyoming and then South Dakota.  If I could send mental pictures I would, for photos do not begin to see the beauty of this great country!  Not many trees at all.  Just mile after mile of mountains in the background, and rolling hills in the foreground. Not much green grass, mainly dried grass.  We would see cows, but never could figure out how they got fed, got water, or shelter.  We saw pronghorn sheep but I could never get a photo of them. In Colorado we saw oil wells and natural gas wells.  We even saw a fracking well at one place.  If I remember correctly, Biden stopped fracking.  As we got out of CO, we saw no mountains but still rolling hills and land that stretched for miles into the distance.  Because we were at a very high elevation and there were no trees blocking the view, the sky and clouds are spectacular.  The blue sky is gorgeous.  The clouds are very low and look like you could throw a rope and pull them down.  We passed thru many small towns.  There are weird looking fences spaced along the roads.  If not fences, there would be lines of trees strategically planted.  The purpose is for catching snow drifts. They are called snow breaks.   We saw lots of hay bales.  In GA our hay is rolled into big round rolls.  Here it is put into the little rectangular bales like you’d see at Tractor Supply.  There would be hundreds of them in thee fields. We traveled along the pony express route.  Pony express riders couldn’t weigh over 120 lbs.  The riders were eventually replaced by the trains.  All along the highway are wild black eye susans.  I collected some seeds and plan on having some flowers next year!  As we moved into SD, we saw the Black Hills.  Although the dirt here is black, the hills are called that because of the sun shadows on the hills.  We stayed last night in Rapid City, SD.  I had Buffalo steak for supper.  Doesn’t taste like beef at all, but very good!  

I have photos but gotta figure out how to add!