The West

Once again I’m drifting like a tumbleweed, and once again I find amusement in the hotel postings. This time it’s a laminated note placed on my pillow. It’s so juicy I’ll quote the whole thing:

Important Notice To Guest

For your convenience and protection, this room has been inventoried prior to your arrival. Should there be any items missing from this room or damaged you will be charged for them. This includes smoking in a non-smoking room, burning holes in the bedding, carpet, or furniture, using motel towels to clean motorcycle boots or guns, cleaning birds in the sink or tub, or smuggling a pet into the motel.

I’ll let this note set the tone of where I am… “The West”.

The purpose of this trip is to inspect some towers for work. I have about ten tasks spread out over three states, but the details aren’t important to readers. I’d like to share some of the cool things I’ve encountered along the way.

In a deep, heavily forested canyon in Idaho, an exciting road greeted me. The newly paved black highway twisted along the Lochsa River, matching its every turbulent eddy and winding bend. Like a snake I followed it down and down and down for a hundred miles.

Near the bottom, I saw a very large footbridge from the road. When I pulled over to investigate, I learned that a two mile hike leads across the bridge to a hot spring! I crossed the bridge and enthusiastically jogged the two miles to reach the warm water before nightfall. As I arrived, there were three families already bathing, two human families, and one deer family.

Next came a few days of work in some very remote and very beautiful places, and some long drives.

On one of these long drives, I found myself passing through gigantic sand dunes. It was pitch black all of the stars were turned on (even the little ones that usually hibernate). I took off my shoes and ran around in the dunes, sinking up to my ankles in the warm dry sand. Little white animal skulls emerged from their graves to watch. I made myself a sandy pillow and stared at the sky.

There is a big meteor shower on the way, so I was expecting to see some falling stars. Then at last I did. A bright orange fireball emerged and burned so bright it lit up the clouds! I was so amazed I jumped to my feet and made some sort of animal grunt. After it burned out I turned around a few times hoping somebody else was nearby and had seen it also. But of course not, I’m several hundred miles from any people.

I got comfortable again in my reclined position, and returned to my task of watching the sky. Again, the same type of fireball lit up the clouds! And another! There were two orange fireballs traveling extremely slowly and falling for at least ten seconds! I’ve never seen shooting stars like this before, I think perhaps they are coming directly toward me (instead of the typical glancing angle). Again a third time, the same intensely bright orange ball lit up the whole sky. This time I watched closely and after the orange fireball stopped burning, I could still see a tiny ember traveling along the same trajectory. It was so faint, I couldn’t even be sure it was real. I had to watch from the edge of my vision. The tiny ember got closer and closer to the ground, and then started curving in a giant “J” shape! I am completely floored.

Well, this went on until I discovered what was really going on. There were four or five military jets in some kind of excersize. The bright orange lights were their flares for distracting heat-seeking missiles. I watched as they chased each other across the whole sky in only a few seconds. They would climb straight up until they were out of sight, then dip below the clouds somewhere else and deploy more flares to light up the sky. It was a really exciting and impressive performance.

I went back during the day to take some pictures of the sand dunes, enjoy.