Goodbye Montana and Hello Wyoming

I started my morning off by writing my blog I should have written the night before. David had brought me breakfast, so I could get it done before I had a couple of adorable little girls come to visit their Oma.

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They were both very concerned about the clock that was blinking. I would have set it but I wasn’t sure what time it was with the Day Light Savings. I now have all our electronics at the right time, including my fitbit which has been wrong since we left Alaska time zone.

We were heading to Buffalo, Wyoming 383 miles away. We were supposed to leave at 9, so we left at 9:45. We drove across the street to get gas while the other were still loading up.

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I took some more of my moving pictures. No not like a video but I was actually the one that was moving while I shot a photo. It was a little over cast but not to cold.

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The Flat Ole Hippies were enjoying the scenery.

We traveled through the high plain of Montana I thought how cold and windy the winters must be here.

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I have to take some photos of the cows for the girls. Heather tells me when we stop that the girls had seen the cows and Kate is going moo and Bekka is going Baa. Heather tells Bekka the cow goes moo she shakes her head no and says Baa.

As we travel on making good time I think I shoot some more shots. These were just some interesting buildings I saw.

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Then I take this photo.

This makes me think why are barns painted red. This is what I found:

The image of a quaint red barn against green grass is as American as apple pie, but where does the tradition come from? Although there are many myths about their rusty hue, early-day barns were painted red out of convenience and frugality.

One belief is that barns are red so a farmer’s cows can find their way home, but if so, that’s a failed strategy cattle are colorblind to the colors red and green .

Others believe the popularity of red barns came from copying Scandinavian farmers, who painted their properties in rusty hues so that they would appear to be made of brick, a material they considered to be a sign of wealth.

But barns weren’t originally red in fact, they weren’t painted at all. The early farmers that settled in New England didn’t have much extra money to spend on paint , so most of their barns remained unpainted. By the late 1700s, farmers looking to shield their barns’ wood from the elements began experimenting with ways to make their own protective paint.

A recipe consisting of skimmed milk, lime and red iron oxide created a rusty-colored mixture that became popular among farmers because it was cheap to make and lasted for years. Farmers were able to easily obtain iron oxide the compound that lends natural red clay its coppery color from soil. Linseed oil derived from flax plants was also used to seal bare wood against rotting, and it stained the wood a dark coral hue.

Farmers also noticed that painting their barns with the homemade paint kept the buildings warmer during the wintertime, since the darker color absorbs the sun’s rays more than plain, tan wood. So red paint spread in popularity due to its functionality and convenience, becoming an American tradition that continues to this day.

Original article on Live Science.

I thought this was interesting. As I stare out the window as we drive by all kind of weird questions pop into my head.

Then I started to take some more photos.

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Then I see this pointy mountain in the distance I had read or heard a long time ago that if the mountain is pointy it is because it is a young one. It has not been around long enough to be worn down.

Yes another question pops into my head. Is this true?

There is one answer:

Mountains are not always pointy: The most pointed mountains are those that are high enough to be subject to ice erosion. It depends very much on the type and attitude of the rocks forming the mountain what shape they are.

No uplifted area is completely smooth, so any rain will run down gullies, erodiing the gullies further, and eating backwards into the flanks of the mountain, so only the pointed peak remains. However, if the rocks forming the uplift are flat-lying and hard, then weathering and erosion will tend to form flat topped mountains or Mesas.

Also, not all mountains are the result of collision tectonics, some result from regional uplift followed by erosion (example – the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa) and some form from extension tectonics – like the Basin and Range Province in the USA.

Now this answer is more what I had heard:

usually the younger the mountain range, the more pointy it is. The Appalachians in the US and the great dividing range are very old mountain ranges so they are quite eroded and not very pointy.

They are pointy in the first place because they were originally horizontal sedimentary rock, and when pushed up the rock tends to break either horizontal or perpendicular to the bedding plane. On a large scale this makes them blocky, and blocks have points. sometimes recent glaciers have a ‘sharpening’ effect, steepening up the lower slopes by it’s gouging action

What do you think? Let me know.

We continued until we got to Loco Creek Grill in Harlowton, Montana. It was a pretty neat place. The food was good and the waitress friendly. We got there at 1 and were back on the road by 1:45.

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We started to get into the rain after lunch. When we stopped for gas it was noticeable that the trailers were cleaner.

We stopped in Billings, Montana to gas up about 3:30. Gas was $2.66 a gallon. We bought 8.2 gallons for $22.04. I went in with Heather to change the girls. When we came out I was walking around the store with them and Bekka saw this little stuffed animal you put on a backpack. She showed it to me and I told her she had to give it to Grandpa to pay for it. She went running back down the aisle to where the bathroom was just as Grandpa came out. Bekka handed David the stuffed sloth and I told him now he had to buy it for her because I told her he had the money. Kate got one too. She got a unicorn. Heather told me later that Bekka was kissing hers in the car. We were back on the road by 3:55.

Next stop was supposed to be at Buffalo, Wyoming at the Quality Inn but no we had to make one more pee stop. We were making pretty good time for us. We got to the hotel at 7. Heather had a couple of starving little girls who were sick of being in the car. She said the last hour had not been too fun. While everyone else unloaded David walked over to McDonald’s to get food for our starving little girls.

As Heather came over to tell us we were planning on leaving at 7:30 which meant we would be lucky to get out by 8 it started to snow. What a nice end to the day.

Thanks for stopping by!