I feel like my last blog entry was a bit too excited and rushed. I spent my last week and a half in the Wild West and because I took some serious back roads, it really WAS the WILD West. I can't decide which people are kinder: the Southerners in their hospitality, the Midwesterners in their amazing generosity, or the Westerners in their openness. In places like Wyoming and Nevada, you cannot just survive on your own. You have to stick together, even if its a small group of you. I don't think I there's any other place that I felt so much at home than in the mountains of Nevada. This has always been a place I've enjoyed to have an adventure, but waking up with the sun coming over the desert mountains and the world in complete quiet was just heaven.
Western men, despite completely living up to their rough stereotype (as I said in WY), are more open to emotions that I would have thought. I chatted with one rancher after discussing the problem of wild horses and roping cattle, about how he stopped hunting after his wife passed away. He said that they used to hunt geese. Geese mate for life. If you killed one, the mate comes back searching for its downed lover and after his own mate died of cancer, it kills him to think he could ever do that--even to a bird. Also, the way these men treat their dogs is just incredible. It's not the kind of care that a city guy might take care of his dog, but the affection for his loyal companion is verbalized nonetheless. "If a woman was as devoted to me as this wolf..." I heard one man say, "I wouldn't be alone today. I would treat her so well in return."
I've said before that everyday I feel like I'm going through culture shock and I haven't left the United States in two years. After my week in the West, I headed to the mountains of Idaho. I had forgotten about Idaho's reputation for skin heads til I got here. Oh yeah I remember!, I thought to myself as yet another old Ford littered in Dixie bumper stickers passed me with two bald white males sitting in front. In the south, having a confederate flag either means 1. Your a white supremest or 2, you're proud of your heritage. So far northwest, having a confederate flag hang over your front door only means the first. With this in mind, I should probably hide away my "Dixieland" license plate before someone assumes the worst.
Anyway, soon I will be home. I'll post state superlatives and final mileage statistics. I'm scraping by with just enough money to get through this trip. And I'm so thankful for this opportunity...despite the fact that I'm sitting in a Starbucks and I am not sure how I ended up smelling this bad even though my WONDERFUL coworker booked me a room in his timeshare resort two nights ago (Complete with a washing machine, a gas fire place, and a hot tub!!). Shower, I'm so sorry baby, I'll never take you for granted again. I swear. No more asking my roommate if I look clean enough to bypass you. It got old quickly having to scurry into a gas station with a broken backpack full of toiletries and scurry out 10 minutes later with a towel around my head. Sadly enough, I've looked cleaner after a Burger King shower than a real one. And no, to people who ask "Burger Kings have showers?" They don't.
And sorry, no more pictures (not even of watching two shepherds herd a flock of sheep out in the middle of the high desert or of the road sign "Beet Dump Rd") as I somehow lost my camera charger. Must have fallen out of that annoying broken backpack! :(
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