what about the plastic animals?

On a Clear Day

While there are parts of Kansas and Nebraska that live up to their reputation for being flat, the landscape for much of each state consists of gently rolling hills.  The general lack of trees and buildings opens up the sky, making the land seem flatter than it actually is.  Southeastern Colorado, however, is flat.  I stopped to take one last panorama just north of Wiley. 

The flatness and lack of trees makes for good sky watching.  As I recall from one of Dr. Chermack's atmospheric physics lectures, the horizon is about 26 miles away with good visibility.  The clouds in this panorama (much larger photo) are the remains of the storm that I encountered in Garden City --at least 70-80 miles to the east.

From there it was a three-hour drive to Denver and the trip was done.

Pawnee National Grassland

Colorado Route 71 runs north-south in the High Plains from southern Colorado into the Nebraska panhandle.  I drove about 50 miles of the highway.  It was mostly rangeland and ranches.  The ground looked really dry so I took a short break to water the plants at the Pawnee National Grassland.  As with Alaska last year, there are many more photos on Flickr.

Weird Telephone Messages:  There were three messages on my answering machine when I got home last night.  All three were a recorded voice asking for someone named Roberto.  I am not Roberto. 

The phone rang this evening.

A recorded voice told me it was looking for Roberto.  The recorded voice gave me instructions.  If I was Roberto I was to press "1".  If Roberto was home but needed to be fetched I should press "2".  If this was Roberto's number but Roberto was not around I was told to press "3".  If the recorded voice reached the wrong number I should press "4".  Not wanting to get more phone calls for Roberto I pressed "4".  The recorded voice told me to please stand by while I was transferred to a real person.  Then I was put on hold.  After about ten seconds I began to sense that this was some sort of scam so I hung up. 

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

Colorado Sky

Flatirons, Boulder, Colorado

I-76, between Ft. Lupton and Ft. Morgan, Colorado

Last week I had a meeting in Boulder.  After the meeting I headed east for a short, but comprehensive, visit to  Nebraska and Kansas.  Among the sites seen and visited are:  Carhenge, the largest hand-planted forest in the country, the birthplace of Kool-Aid, the childhood home of Willa Cather, the geographic center of the contiguous United States, the world's largest ball of sisal twine, the Garden of Eden (but it was closed), the Czech capital of Kansas, the half-way point between New York and San Francisco, the world's deepest hand dug well (for the second time), saw the world's largest pallesite meteorite (for the second time) and much, much more.

But, before I can upload new photos I need to do some serious backing up and deleting of files on my computer.  The hard drive is nearly full.