DAY NUMBER 21
09.07.2007
Blaine, where do you want to put the bourbon balls?
Tom packs after an interesting nights stay...
It was different.
The Wyoming king of the hill at 80MPH.
These power producing windmills are being set up on the WY plains.
Up close the vanes of the windmills are gigantic...
We took this pic earlier in Nebraska not knowing we would later find out where they were headed.
Caption under construction.
OK, got to follow the rules.........Don't walk on grass.
Park City, Utah............Site of the Winter Olympics.
Just like driving thru the snow only without the cold and wet.
We happened to see a California locomotive passing thru the flats.
No Blaine it is not the headquarters for Pablo Iscobar Inc.....
Salt Flat art....
Lunch stop in Wendover, NV..................no, not a gambling stop!.
Gambling is evil......particularly when you lose.
Blaine has this recurring dream...............
How come every time Blaine wakes up Tom is stuffing him down a tunnel?
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THE END
DAY NUMBER 22
09.08.2007
Well the last posting comes from the ole Clark kitchen on the banks of the Rogue River.
The day started at the beginning of the Winnemucca to the Sea Highway.
Tom Hansen or is that Hanson, strikes a pose while we search for the Tupperware Museum, our Holy Grail of road side attractions.
No Tom I don't think this road will lead us there!
You can allways tell a Dane, you just can't tell him much.
While gassing up the 4 we met Marion "the" classy clown aka GigglZ.
Marion was in Winnemucca pimping her line of designer clothing, no clowning around this time......
She was less than happy when I suggested she might want to step up to a real car.
Museum? Nope, the Shone House Hotel built in 1901.
Museum? Nope, but considering the part of town it's in perfect location.
Hey we're here! Wait a second..... no Tupperware here... But plenty of truck parking....
We thought maybe next year we might step up our lodging for the West Coast Convoy.
Simone de Paris would be more of an international theme...
Neither of us speak French, but Tom said he was willing to learn....
After that little stop, we were escorted out of town by our friends from the Nevada Highway Patrol.
Once Tom hit the open road it was see ya wouldn't want to be ya!
I don't know how it happened but he was able to turn a 9 hour drive into six.
What part of "LAST WARNING 8% GRADE AHEAD" did you not understand?
One of the most striking features of the NW Great Basin region is the widespread distribution of late Miocene-to-Recent high-alumina olivine tholeiite basalt (HAOT). Few feeder dikes, however, have been described for this significant group of lavas. Upon examination of the field characteristics of the HAOT dike at Blizzard Gap, Tom and Blaine try to unravel its petrogenetic history through the examination of the major- and trace-element geochemistry. The dike strikes N64°W, which is parallel to the overall strike of most normal faults in the region. However, the dike is also offset along a NE-trending normal fault suggesting a change in the orientation of maximum tensional stress after dike emplacement. The dike outcrop is ~ 0.5 km long, well-exposed, with large outcrops varying from 20 m in width and 30 m in height to rubble on the earth's surface. Truncated at the base of Blizzard Gap summit, the dike crosses HWY 140 as it winds its way SE to the summit. Here, it feeds the uppermost HAOT lava on the adjacent plateau surface. Two main joint patterns delineated, with each differing in joint direction and spacing. Cooling joints are spaced ~19 cm apart, perpendicular to the dike margins, whereas platy joints are spaced ~3 cm apart, parallel to the dike margins due to flow-alignment and subsequent shear. The behavior of incompatible elements demonstrates that the dike magma had been modified by fractional crystallization, and the specific behavior of CaO, Sr and Al2O3 indicates that plagioclase was a crystallizing phase. Crystal fractionation, however, was not the sole petrologic process responsible for modifying the basalt chemistry. Crustal contamination was also a controlling factor, as indicated by the relative variability of incompatible element pairs like Ba and Zr. Oh, this was done at 55MPH! btw, as we are in Oregon after all.
Our last lunch together...
What better place than downtown Adel, Oregon?
The jewel of The Great Basin.
Updated modern communication system is a must.....
Nothing says fine dining like dead critters everywhere.
Not all the critters were dead though.... This is a minature Aussie Shepherd...
His owner says he is one heck of a cat herder....
This guy works here...
He's not lazy, Marci, the boss, told him to do that.
This is Marci head everything and owner ta boot. Blaine tried to work a deal as she is selling the place.....
Tom is all for it.... To bad we're not married, as RoadsterLes says.... "Have fun living in Eastern Oregon and write often."
Tom's looking a little horny in the picture.... well technically he looks a little antlery.
As we were heading out of downtown Adel, this little paint takes off down the road....
Blaine wants to leave as he plays cowboy at home, but Tom says we have to go cowboy'n to save Marci's horse from sure doom.
This little guy wants nothing to do with cowboys in a little red car and in fact he had a real adversion to the Z4.
So we left the cowboy stuff to the real cowboys
and
we did the last leg of our trip post haste as a home cooked meal of left overs was just over the horizon.
Thanks to all who have traveled along with us on our last
Homecoming Convoy.
Tom and Blaine out........
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