Good Morning!

      Good morning!  I really wanted to get a bit of Exploring in yesterday---but just really did not feel good all day long.  I am in hopes that since today is my Monday at work, I got the sickness done and out of my system.  Because it is such a joy to work even perfectly healthy!  ;)  I did however manage to post another Exploring blog post from my recent trip back home.  I took so many pictures I believe it is going to turn into a three or four part series.  Please check the newer and old posts out at this other great page of mine!  
http://exarizonagobensonbobcats.blogspot.com/

Where are you Exploring today??

 

Look at all the lights!

Near the Golden Nugget I believe--old town Vegas.

Many more pictures to come in my Exploring blog page. 

Different type of light show. 

The huge covered roof over Fremont Street has a light/music show every hour. 

   About a week ago someone got hit by a train in Benson.  I was not aware in this day and age--you could still get hit by a train, unless you were really trying to, like you jumped in front of the locomotive.  Two things I really enjoy in the heat of the summer is  a long and twisty dirt road.  And walking on train tracks.  But one can hear a train coming for something like five miles, and when it gets really close the tracks make a definite sizzling almost electrifying set of sounds.  I would say this isn't so with out foul play, but two things stop me from saying this   this early morning.  1.}  when we lived in Washington state, a man robbed a bank, another thing I didn't know was still a possiablility in this century ---robbed the bank and got away on his bicycle.  Got away -as in did not get caught.  In fact a week or two later he robbed the exact same bank and branch, and again got away on his bike.  Although probably a different bike.   No lie!   And because just now--literally I had to stop typing to fix the issue--a fly flew up my nose and would not come back out.   Strange things still do happen.   
   They are still checking to see if the  train guy was intoxicated, but apparently he was nearing the main crossing down town Benson, and was aware of a train very close---probably because of the 500 times they blow there whistles at this crossing.  And maybe because of the loud train noises he heard.   But he was not aware of an even closer train coming the other direction.   All I know is this is very sad.  And a little disturbing.  And that when I came home from work --- police were everywhere.  And the trains did not move for a very long time that night.   I at  first thought they had caught some Mexicans stowed away on the train, when passing through town that night.   
   Some what on the same topic---have talked alot about just hopping a train some day and seeing were the train goes.   Of course there are a lot of factors to this.  Like being prepared to be dropped off in Kansas or something.  Or being caught on the train.   My buddy suggested this again on our last hike---and than said with our luck we would probably end up on one of those trains were they drop the old cars in the middle of the desert on some highly deserted tracks in the middle of no where.   I had never thought of that one before.  Lots of water if we ever take this trip!   


            **"I hate the person I become when I drink, because that A Hole drinks all my beer!"**

  **"I don't do perky --you want perky get a coffee maker!--Garfield

  **"I am not a glass half empty type of person.  I am a where the hell did I put my glass type of person!"**
Zombies eat brains---- you're safe!! 😊. My wife used to give me encouragement while eating ice cream because if one gets a brain freeze, they must have a brain. Lol


I think people should daily do as many good deeds as bad just to keep Karma on it's toes



     **Did. You know when your mad at someone you don't owe them $ anymore. Happened several times before with several people so it must be true. Why won't the bill collectors cancel my debit cause I'm mad at them.**

Hi all !!!!! We have some AMAZING news, we are EXPECTING!!!!!!! 12 weeks!!!!!! I know I'm in shock too! I can't believe it myself!!!!! We weren't even sure it was possible. But boy are we ready! We weren't going to put it on Facebook but wanted to make it official! :) I mean who would have guessed that we're expecting!!!!! We Are So EXCITED!!!!! .......

Yup it's official...we are expecting Santa in just 12 weeks!!! Re-post if you have any sense of humor!!!!!

   Up to early to be up this early. Just another day in Paradise. So y does Starbucks keep changing the cup colors? Are they trying to piss everyone off like with the evil Christmas cups.   Little place I work at on my last Monday.  Deciding if I should go inside or run away tires squealing.   

Failing Asleep At The Wheel PT I --Into Billings MT

                    So I try to keep this page as updated and fresh as possible.  But work, my family, and just plain life seem to always be keeping me more than busy.  This is also an Arizona Exploring blog sight for the most part, but every once in awhile I wander and Explore further down the dusty trail and wish to share.  I hope you enjoy the posts--from wherever they may start even half as much as I enjoy taking the pictures and the Exploring.   My long running personal blog page usually gets updated more than this here page---Also full of my pictures and Exploring, but maybe not for the faint of heart, easily offended, any type of snowflake, or those in California who now have a third sex option to put on there drivers licences.  Anyways please also check out that page  at 
   www.wyomingjack.blogspot.com      
     
    I recently had the joy of taking eleven days off work and traveling a few great and amazing places.   The first part of the trip was going back home to Wyoming, a place I have not been in 6 or 7 years.  But first it was easier and cheaper to fly into Billings Montana, get a rental car, and drive to Sheridan Wyoming.   About a two hour drive-if I wasn't known to stop a lot and Explore and get pictures.  And get pictures I did---I am going to break this trip into several blog posts because of the amount of pictures I did take along the whole way.  I have older posts from Wyoming and Montana you should also check out---full of Exploring and pictures of course, they can be found on both of my blog sights by using key words in the search.   

Still in Arizona with time to kill.

Plane was delayed

Airport coffee

Gate to Billings

    Originally I had planned on just driving right to see my parents  --Originally I had a lot of plans that did not actually happen on this trip.  But it was an adventure for sure.  In the first place, I was supposed to stay in a guest cabin near my parents-but that also fell through.  After hearing this news---something that actually did not turn out to bad at all,  and after the pilot announced that it was 45 outside when we were flying into Billings, I decided to splurge a little bit and stay at Motel Six.  In my travels this is usually my go to place to stay.   And I have tons of pictures of myself in there mirrors.   I spanned out in this shot to show the silly ashtrays.   They are supposed to be no smoking rooms, but have ashtrays with no smoking signs on the bottom of them.  I am still not exactly sure how I would read all that.   I don't smoke I just find it amusing.   This room was not very good for a Motel Six--but the bed was comfy and check out time was noon.   Some time during the night it turned to rain outside -so I was glad that I had dug out my hoodie jacket before coming home and that I had stayed the night in Billings.  

   In all my travels  this is the ONLY Motel Six I know of -where you can stand on the porch of your motel and see another Motel Six.   

   I had planned on sleeping in a little bit--not much and than doing it my way---and hitting the highway.   Stopping at Custer Battlefield-or whatever they call it now.  That's what it was while growing up -so that's what it is to me!    Although that is one of the few protests for a name change I can understand---Custer and his men got beyond slaughtered here, quickly  -probably should not have been named after the poor scalpless white boys.  

    I had also planned on getting to the motel much sooner the night before.   Billings used to be our party town, when we were bored.   Bored in Wyoming---that almost never happened.  Billings was the big city it had a mall!   Anyways, I have not been in the town for a long while.  Especially at night.   And soon after getting the rental car----another very difficult part of this trip, I was soon lost in the town.  From the airport I quickly got to the downtown area, but it was not familiar enough anymore to help me navigate.  Thank goodness for online maps!   But this was not even helpful at first, because after typing in "Wal Mart" to help get me near the two Motel Sixes-I soon leaned there were now multiple Wal Marts in the area.   After several attempts  I just typed in the mall----and very quickly had the lay of that part of town. 

Waiting for my luggage.

Very small airport to Explore

              I only share a picture of the mall   because it is exactly how I recall from my teen years.  Inside and out.  Even the vendors in the food court seem to be lost in time here. 

Speaking of lost in time

I found an open Shopko here too!

The following morning I soon decided I needed lots of coffee.

A very good place to enjoy a brew or five!

   I work in a very large casino.   So it always amuses me what is considered a casino in Montana.    The only thing really neat about these places---is when you sit down  you can get free beer.   Even at the very ritzy gas station casinos!   I can't say that I did not hit any of these ---and come out a lil ahead during this part of the trip.  ;)    Inside there is usually mostly bar.   And a few dozen old school slot machines with a lot of Keno games over regular slots.  

    Much later than I had figured, I made it on the open road.   And it is wide open!  I had forgot how boring a drive this is  and soon wondered how I used to drive this all the time in my youth---like it was nothing.  Usually at night.  This whole area is definitely a whole new world.  And when I lived --grew up in the area I was used to it.    

    Speaking of wide open, I was not used to the 80 MPH speed limit signs on the highway.  In Arizona they top out at 75---and I kept looking down to see I was driving in that range speed wise.  Montana used to have no posted speed limit on highways in the day time.  The signs said simply "reasonable and prudent."  This however could be greatly interpreted differently between the driver and the officer involved.  At some point to many people died --although I am not sure what the hell they hit---and the government stepped in.  Basically telling the powers that be of the state, that if they did not lower the speed limits, they would loose tons of big government funding.  The signs soon changed.  

   I probably would not even have recalled it was fall time  if I had not drove this part of the trip.  Not to many trees in Arizona, and cactus do not change color much.   Maybe before dying.  Although the best fall colors were still about a week away.

I always enjoy an abandoned building in my travels. 

    Here I had just excited the highway on the Crow reservation.  I like to say Crow's are angry natives because they have casinos like the one I pictured above.  I like to say a lot of things that later cause me trouble.  At any rate at this spot I took several pictures and a native that was waiting for his ride, offered to take my picture here.   I probably should have took him up on the kind offer.   I was attempting to see the Custer Battlefield at this exit.  

   I say attempting  because some where down the line this turned into a national park--and the entrance fee was way to steep for me.  I took many a school field trip here---and could only recall mainly staring over empty fields and being told if we did find any artifacts we could not keep them.       So I turned around and hit the tourist trap across the street from the park entrance.  

And got a whole group of pictures roaming around here. 

As I said  a  whole different world!

Few of my friends can identify wildlife I used to see on a daily bases

So I am also betting they do not know what these are above. 

Towards town.

Sadly closed  but the name amused me.

This casino is large   and no the church is not the casino building

just odd sign placing.  

This is the old entrance to the casino past. 

I was actually going to visit this large building  but I missed the exit and it was getting towards afternoon already some how. 

Just across from the grand entrance

Notice the bullet holes in the windows.

Just a little further down a tribute to fallen native solders. 

One last shot before jumping back on the highway.

I did still have at least an hours worth of driving to do. 

A very welcome sign because I was close to home!

Some where along the years they have changed to this new sign.  

This is not the one I recall from my youth.  

They also added a pull over area on the side of the highway   

so you can get pictures and stop and be safe.

Although I really wish there had been a restroom here. 

Next picture filled post---Sheridan Wyoming!

And don't forget Big Horn

were I actually grew up   and beyond.

As always 

HAPPY TRAILS!!

October 17th---Spooky

                  Good morning Sunshines!  Welcome back to my lil page here on this new place called the Internets.  Speaking of sunshine, it is full on sunshine again today here in the desert.  Where -even though it is now fall-it has been in the 90,s again every day for the last week.  Our truck is more than a little bit dirty, and I have not had time to wash it---so really wish it would just cloud up and pour some rain--I would stand in it   not because I also need washing, but because it feels so good after it has been so warm for awhile again.  Sadly I know the true fire way to get it to rain, for a day or two straight, and that is to break down and actually take our truck to a car wash.  ;)    
     Today finds me on my daze off work.  And I have big plans of accomplishing things, but am still stuck on the drinking lots of coffee stage.  Hopefully tonight I will get another Exploring blog post up---from my recent trip to the West and beyond.  I have so many pictures and thoughts on the trip, I kind of am having a hard time figuring out where to start.  I did post once   so far-from late in the Exploring -on MT Zion.  Although it was a great trip and hike, I have to say it was one of those places, that no picture can give it justice.  The rocks and everything are just so breathtaking and at such an enormous scale---you just really have to be there to understand.   Maybe my recent post --will encourage some of you to check it out.   This was the first time I have ever been to the park.   Please check out this new post, and all my Exploring Arizona picture filled posts at
   http://exarizonagobensonbobcats.blogspot.com/ 

Sheridan Wyoming

Kendrick Park by the now closed pool

Found this amazing poster while having lunch with my folks at Bear Lodge 

in the Big Horn Mountains. 

I always joke about how sheep are safe

apparently the sheep dogs are not!

      **"Is it hard to be on a power trip when one has no real power??   Asking for a friend--  So this post might have been for someone at work---a low end manager for sure.   Long story that I will not get into yet---but they were deff. on a power trip on that night.   I don't deal with power trips well, and try to get answers and my work course through logic instead.   Logic confuses such managers, so I just go back to doing my job, which sadly I have been serving tables longer than this manager has had a job.   Life total.  We had two separate run ins on this night a few nights back.   And as I said I wont share it all right now, but the ending resulted in being threatened of a write up for job abandondedment.   I had to laugh in that phrasing, because it was a long stretch.   And must have dealt in hours of looking through the work manual to even come up with that one.  Deff. quality time spent looking that one up.   And than I laugh even more, because I had a strong case ready for the main manager ---starting with how I was not going to sign the write up   because it wasn't even valued.   And than I never even had a meeting in the office about all this.   Because --yes I do what I want----at least at work, never at home.  But I also cover my butt with each move.  

Mmmmm coffee!

Billings Montana

   So I don't understand this holiday , much but Canada also has Columbus Day, on another day. Y??? Columbus deff never discovered Canada, Aye!----  So a few daze back we had this holiday.   I would not even have noticed except the banks were closed.  Because our nation is losing it's mind---people protested all across the United States.  Because he was apparently a very evil man to the natives.   A few thoughts on this from me   

   Soooooooo at some point some one would and did discover America. Yes I get that natives we're here first and such but stop changing our history. A nation that forgets is doomed to repeat and easier to control. Hell people said we would never forget 9 11.

  And a long thought on all this I found online------it's long but written very well--please read the whole thing.   Especially if you were defacing a statue of Columbus down the street from your house:

Matt Walsh

9 October at 08:30 · 

It's Columbus Day, everyone.

Please be sure to ignore the historically illiterate know-it-alls who will spend today screaming about a fictional version of history where Europeans introduced rape, pillage, and slavery to the peaceful and noble inhabitants of the New World. It would of course be quite impossible for the Spanish to introduce rape, pillage and slavery to an Indian culture where rape, pillage, and slavery had been utterly commonplace for centuries.

Notice that these self-hating, white-guilt-ridden folks would never suggest that the nightmarish brutality of many Indian tribes outweighs whatever they accomplished. Even their propensity for cannibalism must be understood in context, we're told. Yet, somehow, the sins of some European settlers automatically negate what the European explorers achieved and discovered. Funny how that works.

"But," the modern critic responds with smarmy contempt, "Columbus didn't even MEAN to discover America! And he never set foot in North America! And the Vikings got here first!"

Yes, those are all nice little tidbits of information you acquired from Facebook memes, but how are they relevant? Of course Columbus didn't mean to discover America. Nobody knew that America existed. How could they know? If -- that's IF -- the Vikings did stumble upon Newfoundland at some point centuries prior, they didn't establish a lasting colony, they didn't continue their exploration, and they didn't understand the significance of their discovery or leave clear records of it. So, as far as Europe knew in 1492, the world consisted of one giant land mass and one huge ocean dotted with islands. Someone had to get in a ship and sail across it to find out what lay on the other side. Columbus answered that call.

They didn't have satellites, remember. Columbus navigated mostly with dead reckoning through completely uncharted waters. Over the course of his voyages, he discovered many Carribean islands and explored the coast of South America. He didn't make it to North America but he made it possible for future settlers to soon find it. That's quite an achievement, I would say. You'd think people who can't locate their local supermarket without GPS would be impressed with a guy who made it 9,000 miles from Spain to the Caribbean without so much as a map, and then repeated the feat three more times.

And what about the Indians Columbus encountered? Yes, some of them were peaceful, but we have taken this image of the peaceful Indian to ridiculous lengths. Bear in mind, a tribe called the Caribs reigned terror on the region where Columbus landed. These were a brutal and violent people who regularly feasted on human beings. Columbus heard stories of them on his first voyage and encountered them on his second.

Here's something they don't teach in schools: Columbus actually freed a number of Indian captives that the Caribs were preparing to eat. In one village, the Spaniards found a young boy tied up, being fattened for consumption like some kind of farm animal. This is the kind of depravity that existed in our hemisphere before Europeans showed up. Sure, the Spaniards committed their own evils, but nothing that can quite match the grotesque wickedness of eating children.

Keep in mind also that Columbus would have been relatively close to Aztec territory. He never encountered them (that run-in would occurred a couple of decades later) but the Aztecs were a bloodthirsty and savage civilization. This is a society that practiced human sacrifice on a scale impossible to comprehend. Most historians estimate that the Aztecs sacrificed around 50 thousand people a year. Every subjugated tribe had to pay yearly tribute to the Aztec emperor by offering up some of their women and children, who would then have their hearts ripped out and their limbs eaten.

Columbus never governed with the savagery of an Aztec king or even a Carib chieftain, but he was a pretty bad governor in his own right. And he took slaves, that's true. He was a man of his time in that way. Although the Spanish would soon outlaw the practice, and beat almost every other culture in the world by hundreds of years in doing so, they cannot be absolved of their role in the global and ubiquitous evil of slavery.

All in all, it must be said that Columbus was brilliant on the sea but not so brilliant on land. This is a common dynamic. Cortes was a great warrior when he conquered the Aztecs, but he was not a very good governor afterwards. Magellan was an incredible navigator who sailed the circumference of the globe (almost) but he got himself killed in an unnecessary battle with a tribe in the Philippines. Much of what made Columbus, Cortes, and Magellan great in their element is what caused problems when they were outside of that element. They did things nobody had ever done and went places places nobody had ever gone, but they didn't know what to do once they got there.

Some say that Columbus was only ever driven by a hunger for gold. But if all Columbus wanted was fame and riches, he could have retired after the first voyage and lived in a luxurious estate in the Spanish countryside, reaping all the profits that were due to him based on the agreement he signed with the King and Queen. But men like Columbus are never driven mainly by money. The money grubbers always come later, using the trails forged by men who sought greater things. And for Columbus those greater things included finding evidence that America was actually Asia, and establishing the seeds of a Christian civilization in the New World. He failed in the first goal but succeeded in the second and more important one.

Not bad, in my opinion.

Perhaps you could have done better, but probably not. You probably wouldn't have even tried. And that's why Columbus gets his own holiday. He earned it. You might complain about him, but I take note of the fact that you still remain in this country, living off the fat of its land and enjoying fruit from trees planted by men greater and more significant than yourself. So, go ahead and scoff at those men as you feast on the bounty they provided you. But pardon me while I dismiss your criticism and offer up a little toast to the great Christopher Columbus.

Thanks for your contributions, old man.

I, for one, appreciate it.

Happy Columbus Day.