Random items from October 14th.

My mother, Mary Madden, like my Mary Madden, always claimed that travel was better with lunch packed in the car. She was right. See above, best burger I ever ate....cooked before I left, fresh beef from Joe and Kate, frozen, vacuum sealed. Truly it can be done. Drive as long as you want, stop, eat good food, relax, drive a little more, sleep.

I was going to take a hike today on a random trail and this rattlesnake sign jumped out at me, continuing my dilemma with animals on this trip.

On the detour route around the snowed in pass I came across this abandoned mine. It was impressive enough that I wondered what in the hell happened. Then, lo and behold, a sign marker appeared. It was faded and not kept, but it explained that this was the sight of the worst mine fire in Montana history, in 1943. 74 workers were trapped and died. It is not on any route or map, but for some reason they have left the remains there on a quiet hillside. Given that we know about mine disasters in our part of the world I thought it was appropriate that I mention this one, and add photo, on my trivial little blog site. Oh, and I am not making light of this at all because this photo was about other peoples lives and losses and that is real, but did you notice that cows are taking over the site. What the hell.

Ok, and look very closely at the top photo again. That is a McCain sign. I estimate that I was approximately 1 million miles from any civilization when I saw it. At first, when I saw a blue speck on the horizon, I figured it was a baited trap laid by the afore-and-often-mentioned now infamous eagle with wild horses or scorpions or some other critter waiting out there to get me. Then, it was too blue so I hoped it was a remnant from the erstwhile comet that caused this whole journey. Then, I got close enough to focus with the camera and there it was, on a hillside somewhere in Wyoming, in the middle of, really, nowhere, a McCain sign. I don't know what it means, but there it was.