The Written Word

August has been a very enjoyable month.  For the first time in 20 years or so, I didn't go back to work in August.  Yeah, school used to start in September, but it's been opening up in August for quite a number of years.  In fact, today is my youngest's 24th birthday.  His due date was September 12th.  I was concerned at the time, because that was the first day of school for me.  Now, school begins the first week in August.  But as many of my friends know, it's not my circus, not my monkeys anymore because I retired at the end of the last school year in May.

P.J. has his monthly blog challenge and this month's challenge, for the month of August was The Written Word.  At first, I thought I wouldn't be able to put anything together, photographically for this particular month, but when I look back over my photos I took this month, I realized that I have quite a selection from which to choose.  And so it goes.

August, as noted above, was very different this year.  I actually spent time in five different states, so I've decided that each photo this month, not only should convey the theme of the written word, but should also represent each one of the different states that I spent time in this month.  I've posted on Facebook photos of signs leading into National Park sites that I visited and said, "I'm a National Park Geek."  And someone joshingly pointed out that maybe I was a sign geek.  Well, that's possible.  I love how signs sometimes give you so much information with very little words.

1.  Hiking

I like to hike, always have, always will.  I spent the month hiking a lot.  In fact, I spent a large portion of the summer hiking. One of my favorite hikes is a 5 mile loop in the Claremont Wilderness Park, a park that I didn't know even existed back in 2001.  That was the park that started me on geocaching, mainly because when I discovered geocaching, this park was where the closest geocache was hidden from my house at the time.  It was literally 7 miles away and a half mile hike.  I bought a GPS, took the boys out that Saturday and we found the cache.  We didn't walk the entire loop that time and there have been many times in the past I have not hiked the loop, mainly because I was out of shape at the time.  I'm not sure I'm in great shape now, but I do know that I'm in much better shape than I was back in 2001.  This is a good thing because I want to enjoy my retirement for as long as possible and being in good shape will help me achieve this goal.  So the written word on the sign post either tells me how far I've gone, or how far I still need to go to complete the loop.  In this case, I took it after I'd already hiked 4 and a half miles.  This was taken in California.

2.  Road trip

In the middle of the month, I took a week-long road trip through four states, just so I could feel that my routine was a little bit different for this month as opposed to most Augusts over the past years.  I grabbed Interstate 15 and took it north, traveling through Nevada and then into Arizona where the second photo was taken.  I love the color in this photo and amount of information.  

At least 7 different signs tell you a bunch of information that you need to know as you barrel your way into Arizona at 75 mph.  And no, I didn't take this photo while flying down the Interstate.  I actually did pull over and take the shot, although now that I look at it, I wonder if that would be considered emergency parking?

3.  The Golden Spike
That first day, I eventually ended up in Utah.  A couple of days later, I decided that my next point of destination would be Golden Spike National Historic Site, the site where the trans-continental railroad joined the country together in May, 1869.  The country would never be the same.  Promontory, Utah was a boom town, which grew up at the site of the Golden Spike, but soon died when the railroads moved operations to a more profitable route.  I spent time time at the site watching the engines move up and down the tracks and I also got a nice hike in along the old railroad rights of way.  I say ways, because the two railroad companies literally created grades for the two lines that went by each other for 230 miles or so, mainly because they hadn't agreed upon a meeting place and they were getting paid by the mile by the United States Government.  When they finally agreed upon a meeting place that at Promontory, the grading stopped and they worked toward that point.  I also learned that the original golden spike is nowhere near Utah anymore.  

Because the Union Pacific Railroad abandoned these lines first, the Central Pacific ended up taking over this part of the rail lines and so ended up in possession of the golden spike, which is now located at Stanford University.  I guess I need to go to Stanford to complete this trip.

4. Atomic Power
After Golden Spike, I ended up in Idaho for my next adventure.  I was going to be camping at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Taking back roads to the northeast of the monument, I ended up driving through the small town of Arco, Idaho. Now, when you think of Idaho, do you think of atomic power?  Probably not and although I was peripherally aware of Idaho's contribution to atomic power, I was not aware that Arco was the first city lit by electricity via atomic power, something that the town, obviously, is very proud of. This is one of the reasons I love road trips like this.  You stumble upon all sorts of interesting tidbits of information that you might have missed if you just flew into an area with one destination in mind. 

5. Extra Terrestrials

After camping at Craters of the Moon and also Great Basin National Park, I decided to come home. But, as a geocacher, I had to stop here.  This last shot I found at a gift shop at the beginning of the E.T. Highway which runs along SR-375 in Nevada just east of Hwy 93. It's become somewhat of a Mecca for geocachers around the world, because it's one of the major "Power Trails" in existence.  A power trail is a route set up by geocachers where there are a lot of geocaches along a specific route. Geocaches are not supposed to be closer than 528 feet apart, so a power trail typically has one every 10th of a mile for a long distance, in this case, the E.T. Highway has a geocache hidden every tenth of a mile for 200 miles.  Yeah, the math works out to 2000 geocaches.  I found the first one in the series and then turned around and continued on my way home.  At least now I can say I've geocached on the E.T. Highway.  Whether I ever get back to it or not is an entirely different story.  I have, however, signed a challenge cache near the beginning of the E.T. Highway, which challenges me to find 1000 geocaches in the state of Nevada.  With only 76 finds in the state, I have a ways to go and this power trail would help me complete that challenge.

So that completes my interpretation of P.J.'s month blog challenge, the Written Word.  Please click on the link and check out other bloggers' interpretations of the theme for this month.