Stuck In Traffic

Normally I have a never-explain, never-apologize policy on my extended absences from the blogosphere. But this time I have an excuse. I keep getting stuck in traffic. This year as part of our "see all the famous landmarks before the terrorists blow them up" strategy we are in the upper Great Plains furiously checking off boxes on the states we have never visited list. So far we've hit Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming with Montana and South Dakota still to go.

These states are HUGE. We are traveling several hundred miles a day just to get from place to place. At the end of the day rather than check e-mail or Facebook, I just collapse in bed from exhaustion.

Part of that is self-imposed. As the titular head of the family, I invoke the drive-as-much-I-want privilege only relinquishing the wheel to my wife when it looks like there is a particularly nasty flash flood inducing storm in the distance.

And what is contributing to my fatigue is the need to randomly slam on the breaks and wait for dimwitted herd animals to cross the street. For example, we had originally planned to stop for the night in Sheridan, Wyoming, but instead decided to press on to Cody. No sooner had we climbed Route 14 into the Big Horn Mountains that we encountered this:


As inclined as I am to just plow through, who can run over this face:



Instead I just took out my revenge at the next town by ordering a half-pound lamb-burger.

There are also roadblocks by aggressive panhandlers. While this guy's buddies stubbornly stood in the middle of the road, he came up to our window looking for a handout.



The concept of tourist trap is taken very literally. He does nothing all day except pace back and forth in front of the exit hoping for someone to give him an excuse to file a personal injury lawsuit.



There is a song about where the buffalo roam. It doesn't tell you they tend to roam into the middle of the road.



Trust me, when a few of these guys wander into the road, they ALWAYS have the right of way.



That same song talks about where the deer and antelope play. But nobody tells them not to play in traffic.



So when I get back from waiting for various critters to cross the road I will get back in the blogging groove. As long as I don't have any roadkill in the grooves of my tires.