Peace On The Road
Traveling With Spiders
August 24, 2013
Now this may sound a
little crazy to some of you, and you might be right. It seems that
in the almost nine years that we have been traveling around the USA
we have almost always had a spider that traveled with us also. Not
the same one but several different ones. They have also been in
different locations outside the motor home. One built a web from the
right front fender to the ground every time we stopped, one lived
inside the right mirror of the Jeep. We would see it duck inside the
mirror housing. Another would build a web from the Vectra's left
mirror back to the window. That one got huge. We currently have one
that has built a web on the windshield wiper of the Vectra. We may
have gotten it before we left Mission this spring, so it has been
with us about five months, and it too has grown in size a great deal.
There is space in the wiper arm that it runs to when we start to
travel, but if a fly gets in the web as we drive out it comes to eat.
The spiders that we find inside we carefully transfer outside, but
if they want to travel on the outside of the Vectra, they are
welcome.
NOT ONLY IS THIS ONE LARGE
BUT I WOULD CALL A CLOSEUP RATHER UGLY
The spiders that live on
the Jeep get to see more places but I don't think they care as long
as the gnats and flies keep them fed. Our current one did not get to
see the coastal lighthouses or Seattle. We visited the Seattle
Public Market and that was quite a place. More shops than you could
shake a branched stick at. One shop has become famous because the
workers throw fish that the customers have bought. The story is that
in 1986 they were on the verge of bankruptcy and throwing the fish
and other games with customers worked to turn the business around.
They have an audience of up to 10,000 people on a typical day.
Another place they did not get to see was the Seattle Space Needle.
The Needle was built for the World's Fair in 1962. It stands 605
foot in the air, but has a center of balance just five foot above the
ground due to a base made of 9,550 tons of concrete. At the top is a
revolving restaurant that is rotated 3600 every 43 minutes
by a 1.5 HP motor. The building of the Needle was completed in only
a year and was completed the day before the Worlds Fair opened. When
it was originally built it cost $21 million, and in 2000 renovations
cost around $100 million. The two original restaurants were
converted into one as part of the work. The worlds first
commercially operated monorail in the world was built at the same
time and is still operating with a terminal a quarter block from the
needle. We also had a great time watching salmon going upstream at
the Ballard Locks and fish ladder. Pictures have never conveyed a
true idea of the size of some salmon. They are big.
A GREAT VIEW OF THE
SEATTLE SPACE NEEDLE FROM KERRY PARK
No matter how many things
that we missed in Seattle we had to move on. If for no other reason
because the park we staying at did not have additional days we could
stay. If fact the morning we left another motor home pulled into the
spot we were staying before I drove fifty yards. The people had been
setting nearby watching for us to leave.
We spent a few days in
Missoula, Montana and visited the Smoke Jumpers Visitors Center and
Museum. One thing that struck me as funny was the fact that they
consider a good year to be one with lots of fires, and most people
consider a good year with few fires or even none at all. It is only
one of several Smoke Jumpers operation centers mostly in the western
USA. There are 85 men and women that work out of this facility.
When they are on duty they have ten minutes to quit what they are
doing and be on a plane ready to jump with full gear and food for
three days. An unexpected duty that they have is to sew all their
clothing and cloth gear on one of several sewing machines that are
set up for them. There are not enough smoke jumpers for any
commercial manufacturers to want to make their specialized equipment
needs. They have a rigorous qualification to pass to be accepted as
a jumper.
Back in 1966 we went to
Yellowstone National park and spent about a week. I suppose by the
time we drove there and back to Denver we were actually there about
five days. We had four full days this time. It was enough time for
us. We saw a lot and felt that we were seeing certain places for the
first time and we photographed them. Then upon looking at pictures
taken in 1966 we discovered our memories had gaps and we had been
there before. This trip we have seen antelope, elk, deer, two bear
(it seems that in 1966 there were a lot of bears), and a lot of
bison. It is no wonder that the Native American thought the bison
were so important. Not only did the bison provide for most of their
needs they are a magnificent animal just to see within the Park. Old
Faithful puts on a very special show about every 90 minutes. It gave
us a thrill just a few minutes from the predicted time. Old Faithful
was named in 1870 and was the first geyser to receive a name. It
also is the most predictable geographical feature on earth.
Yellowstone has over 10,000 geothermal features, which is roughly
half of the number in the world. Two thirds of the geysers of the
world or 300 are found within the Park. While waiting for Old
Faithful to erupt we had an extra bonus of seeing Lion geyser just
beyond it that also put on a good show. Lion geyser shot up over
half the height of Old Faithful and lasted nearly the same length of
time. We were lucky to see the two erupt within a twenty minute time
period
A ERUPTION OF OLD FAITHFUL
IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
From here we will head
across Montana to North Dakota an then we will have visited all of
the contiguous original forty eight states of the USA. Then we will
slowly (never in a hurry) work our way down to South Texas to spend
the winter season out of the snow and the cold.
Till later this is Doug of
PEACE ON THE ROAD
