Driving for long stretches of highway makes you notice certain things. Little monuments for the traveler to notice along the way. Some of these are more obvious, like historical markers and tourist traps, but many are happenstance or out of the way or even unintended to draw the eye. Here in Wyoming they have road signs telling drivers the type and approximate age of the rock careening past the window. The first time I saw one of these signs I thought "How great is Wyoming to provide me with such fascinating geological information," or something to that effect. In the mountain states, signs will tell me what range of peaks I'm staring at. I love all of the signs informing me what river I'm crossing, what county I'm in, what type of rock surrounds me.

As you might expect, roadkill is plentiful. I always try to identify what kind of animal it is, which can be difficult at 75 mph. Occasionally no carcass is to be seen, only a gruesome red smear on the road. A grim reminder of last night's battle: car 1, deer 0. A little further off the road small handcrafted crosses with wilting flowers stand in honor of more tragic losses.

I took a short drive today up Sinks Canyon. The canyon is named for a natural phenomenon on the Popo Agie (pronounced po-po-shuh) River where the river plunges into a cave and reappears about a quarter mile downstream. It's really quite bizarre. It just vanishes into the cave at the "Sinks" and bubbles up a bit later at the "Rise." You can see where it disappears in the picture above. I continued up the canyon road to its terminus and hiked about a mile and a half along the river to Popo Agie Falls. The river plunges about 150 feet in a series of falls in a couple of locations. Unfortunately, I had hiked high enough to be right at the cloud line so the fog was obscuring my view a bit. Still, it was great to get out in the mountain air. Cold air, which sounds obvious, but since the last few days have been hovering around 65-70 midday, cold was surprising.

We're heading back to Missoula next week to work in the home office. There will be another tour team there as well and I'm looking forward to getting to spend some time with them, as well as the home staff. Hopefully on our drive back we'll be able to drive through Teton and Yellowstone, weather permitting.