{"id":15808,"date":"2025-12-17T11:49:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T17:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/?p=15808"},"modified":"2025-12-17T11:49:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T17:49:44","slug":"dirty-window-cross-country-road-tripping-skywatching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/?p=15808","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Window Cross Country Road Tripping Skywatching"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We drove from Tulsa to Colorado Springs last week. The drive takes all day. My wife and I take turns with the driving. When I’m driving, I just drive. When she is driving, I google all the small towns we pass and give her interesting (to me its interesting) tidbits about the town’s history, attractions, or culture. When I’m not doing that, I take photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The entire trip is across the Great Plains of the Midwest. To many they are very boring. I love them. I look for things. Is the land grassland or crops? I’m on the lookout for pipeline infrastructure and try and guess if it is for liquids or natural gas. I also look for wind farms. About 11% of our electrical needs come from wind. Think about all the carbon dioxide not being put into the air because of windfarms. That number is from 2022. I bet it is more than that now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I love grain elevators. They are so photogenic. When you are up close and have good light. Not so much when you are shooting through a dirty window. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I love hay bales as well. There are hay bale enthusiasts that regard them out the field as an art form. I guess I can see that. Back when I was building pipelines I talked to a lot of farmers about all sorts of things and cutting and baling hay was fascinating. If you don’t let the hay dry out enough before baling it, it will have spontaneous combustion and start on fire where it is. Hopefully in a field, if you are unlucky it will be on your trailer or truck. Just one of the many useless little farming tips I picked up while buying pipeline right of way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most of the drive was in Kansas. I love Kansas, especially the work I did there. The thing about Kansas and business is that Kansas likes to protect Kansas based businesses and everybody can look out after themselves. That’s why I called Kansas, the People’s Republic of Kansas. Sometimes I think they took their protectionism a little too far. It’s a nice state though and the people are great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And cows, there are lots of cows in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. I’ll give you a fun fact about cows that I bet you didn’t know. They only cows that fall into open pipeline ditches and die are prize breeding stock. At least that was what ranchers would tell me when I was trying to settle damages. Yep, they drove all the way to Maine to buy the animal, paid $50,000 dollars for it. For some reason though the cow on the bill of sale is a different color than the cow in the ditch. Ranchers tell me that can happen though. (Actually, 99,9% of ranchers are honest and just want to be treated fairly, but every once in a while you get “that guy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And trucks, freeways have lots of truck traffic. I have lots of stories about truckers from back when I was working. Most of them are pretty boring so I’ll spare you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And then the sun started going down. Sunset lasted a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I like road trips. The wife not so much. I get it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am linking with Skywatch Friday<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We drove from Tulsa to Colorado Springs last week. The drive takes all day. My wife and I take turns with the driving. When I’m driving, I just drive. When she is driving, I google all the small towns we pass and give her interesting (to me its interesting) tidbits about the town’s history, attractions, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3583,3982,2342,1296,1246,1271],"class_list":["post-15808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-skywatch-friday","tag-colorado-springs","tag-dirty-windows","tag-kansas","tag-oklahoma","tag-road-trip","tag-skywatch-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15809,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15808\/revisions\/15809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}