Charlotte and I decided to take a road trip west...a time "to bond" given that this fall will see her on the East Coast for extended periods of grandmothering. We called friends in California, planned a short stay, and headed northwest to Wyoming, then west on I-80.
Day one we came to Green River...the place where John Wesley Powell started down river in his 1869 exploration of the Colorado. He rode out from Chicago on the just finished Union Pacific railroad whose tracks still carry the weight of rail cars. In the picture above, a line of cars can be seen just on the far side of the river. The interstate runs parallel to the railroad in most places. Where rivers run, the railroad rides its banks...skirting the deeper canyons where necessary. The railroad follows earlier wagon wheel roads...pioneer wagon trains needed water to survive. Railroad engines needed water to create the steam to pull the passenger and cargo cars. So the trip is one of geography and history...even if automobile drivers, tuned into their Sirius satellite radios fail to notice.
