Picto Diary - 30, 31 August 2018 - Gilgal and Corner Monument

Above: KAT at Gilgal Sculpture Garden. Salt Lake City, UT 30 August 2018.

Out and about on the Duc.

KAT channels his inner Joseph Smith.

Prior: Motorcycle ride down Immigration Canyon (KAT- '09 BMW 1200RS; Mwah [sic] '15 Ducati Multistrada). Lunch at Trio. KAT, mussels. Mwah (sic), baked penne (I like fru fru food and deplorable food.... its all good!).

After a walk through Trolley Square...

GILGAL. One of my favorite SLC venues. Where spirituality meets kitsch, with neither over powering the other. A place to both be amused and to introspect.. 'Swhy (sic) I return frequently. — at Gilgal Sculpture Garden.

Above: Kat and TWO3 at San Francisco Steps. Old Kimball Arts Center. Park City, UT. 31 August 2018.

LSDM WALKERS

PI Attorney KAT points to his hoped for new office space at renovation of old Kimball Arts Center. KAT says he'll have no shortage of customers who will fall down the new, precarious San Francisco steps just outside his new office. — in Park City, Utah.

Note: Are these steps at code? Walking geezers beware.

Above: Bishop, Duc, and WY SW corner monument. 31 August 2018.

The weather was great. I had some time. TIMDT was at the gym. I went for a ride on the Duc that included two of my favorite, nearby destinations. The WY SW corner monument via Chalk Creek Road. And, Don Pedro's Mexican Restaurant, in Evanston, WY, via Yellow Creek Road, taken from the Corner Monument.

Image:
Out and about on the Duc.
Wyoming SW Corner Monument.
Duc straddles UT/WY line.
Image looks NNE. Direction Kemmerer, LaBarge, Daniel, Alpine, Old Faithful.

I love coming to this place. I stand at the very corner of the state of Wyoming and survey the 90 degrees to the northeast. I muse. I try to imagine the various locales of the state. Yellowstone, the Wind Rivers, The Big Horns, Devils Tower, Saratoga, almost due east. I've been to all these places many times. I know how far away they are... how long it takes to ride a motorcycle to each one of them. Understanding the distances, as I look beyond the horizon, humbles me as I think how immense the state is. One thing leads to the other... in my mind, as I look, I fit the Wyoming piece of the puzzle into the lower 48 and the immensity of the whole US, or better yet, North American, territory. I try to "box" the terrain... its contours, its road system, its ranges, its deserts, in my mind, and my head splits. Forget about he world, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe.

The corner monument head splitting experience also reminds me of the brain exploding sensation I have when I try to contemplate geologic time and pre-history. I'm currently reading "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs," by Steve Brusatte. The reading supplements recent visits to three national monuments, Hagerman Fossil Beds, John Day, and Fossil Butte. The three fossil national monuments cover a recent era, the Cenozoic, after the dinosaurs had become extinct, and the Cenozoic era started 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic Era.

As I try to understand pre-history, each million years, back to the beginning of the Cambrian, 550 million years ago, seems like a short interval. The super continent Pangaea started to break up at the end of the Triassic, 201 million years ago. Then, during a period of six hundred thousand years there were four serious volcanic pulses that engendered the Triassic extinction (massive climate changes), the third of the five major extinctions that have affected the earth over its 4.6 billion year history. 90% of all life extant before the start of the Pangaea break up (the Triassic Extinction), was exterminated from the earth.

T-Rex wasn't dominant until two million years before the end of the Cretaceous, sixty six million years ago, when all the land dwelling dinosaurs were rendered extinct by a super comet striking the Yucatan. So, T-Rex was only around for less than 1% of the time that the dinosaurs existed on the earth. Very short time, right! What? Two million years a short time?!! Bishop brain bursting.

Incidentally, trying to link, if only a little bit, the two disparate ideas I raise above, T-Rex roamed the territory seen (and imagined) in the above image. T-Rex's turf was limited to what is now the western United States.

Three years ago my primary interest was birds, two years ago WWI, and now, its paleontology! Ain't retirement great?!!

Above: Duc at Don Pedros. Evanston, WY.

A modern variation of "I'd walk a mile for a Camel" is, "'I'd ride 70 miles for Don Pedro's steak tacos."
Riding back to Park City via I-80 I had the wind at my back. At 85 mph, no buffeting, smooth riding, and the sweet purr of the Multistrada twin.

Addendum:

When I was a little girl, we were in Southern Arizona where Papa was building the highway. While there, we lived in a rented house in Willcox AZ next to the RR which paralleled the Main Street. The engines were the old fashioned steam engines and it was such fun waving at the engineer and getting a wave back and a toot of the horn. This was before WW2.

Aunt Joyce,
Ashland, OR

The peaches look great. Fresh peaches are nothing like the cardboard things you find in the grocery store. I remember the best ones off the trees on Phil’s mother’s farm in N.C.

Bridge,
Palm Beach, FL

The maternal side of my family, Leishman< had a reunion last Saturday at the VFW in Ronan, Montana. Four of the younger generation of Wm and Isabelle Leishman's progeny are train engineers for Montana Rail Link operating on trackage originally used by Northern Pacific. They haul freight between Helena and Spokane connecting with BNSF at both ends. The largest volume of commodities they haul is coal followed by grain.

Spook,
Reston, VA

Steve

You have a great story about trains. When I was 3 years old, I stayed with a great aunt in Southern England while my parents were touring through France. Each day, she would take me to a pond where I would sail a small boat. The pond overlooked a train track. She always made sure I was at the pond to watch the Golden Arrow train go by. It went from London to Dover where passengers got on a ferry to France.

That was a fun memory.

Thank you.

The Pope,

Ho Chi Minh City,
Viet Nam

Great review; the book [The Great Revolt] provides lots of insights. Thanks.

Nathans,
Massapeaqua, NY