Today feels like it’s been two or three days. 🙃
I like being back out on the road. I love the freedom and adventure of going wherever I want to go whenever I want to go there.
Having stopped earlier than normal last night, I had a little bit longer of a drive this morning to get to Casper. Usually I’m only about 15 minutes away, but I think I was more like 45 to an hour today, as I hadn’t even gotten to Douglas when I stopped for the night.
Anyway, picked up some trash at my parking area to try to leave the place a little better than I found it and then headed on into Casper.
I hadn’t made any reservations at the temple. When I checked last night, there were plenty of open appointments, so I didn’t worry about it, but when I checked the app this morning, there was nothing available. 😬
I decided to head on into the temple anyway just to see if by chance there was an opening.
I wanted light, and the temple is an incredible source of light for me. 🤍🙏🤍
Gratefully, when I got there, they said they could get me into the 10:00 endowment session, which was perfect because it was 9:30ish, I think?
🙏
It was so nice to be in the temple. 🥰
It was so nice to get the light back. 🙏
The super old lady in the wheelchair with the portable oxygen pack was in the session with me today, and after a lovely session, I waited until we were the last two people in the celestial room after the everything and then knelt down by her wheelchair, asked her name, and told her that I had first seen her last year when I came, and that seeing her each week was one of the highlights of coming to the temple each week for me.
Upon hearing that, she lit up.🥰
🥰🥰🥰
Makes the heart happy. 🥰
After leaving the temple, all the darkness was gone, and I was once again basking in peace and light. 🙏
I stopped off to fill up on gas at I think the cheapest gas station in town, paying in cash to get the extra 15 cents/gallon off. 🙏
Then I headed down the highway toward Martin’s Cove.
Along the way, I stopped off at Independence Rock, which reminded me of playing Oregon Trail. 🙃
Philip had dysentery.
Philip had died.
😅
After Independence Rock, I stopped over at the same little perch that I stopped at last time looking down on the little Valley where the Sweetwater River snakes around between the bluff on one side and Martin’s Cove on the other.
I think this is the first time that I’ve been in summertime?
I don’t know that for sure. Maybe I was there during summertime back in 2010, but it was definitely the first time that I’ve been there and seen Trek groups pulling their handcarts around.
That was cool. 😊
I hung out in my van for a good little while waiting for the Trek groups to pass, and once passed, I walked down the dirt access road to where the handcart trail crosses the Sweetwater River.
I took similar pictures in October last year, after the sun had gone down… the same trip where I caught up with the pregnant raccoon. 🙃
Because it was a hot day, I decided to take a little dip in the river, lying down and just letting the water run over me for a little while before getting out and walking back to the van, dripping all the way.
Excellent air conditioning. 😊
Since I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, and I think with all the emotional energy expended yesterday, I was pretty hammered, and I found myself both super sleepy 🥱 and dealing with a nice little headache. 🤕
I was sleepy enough to start nodding off, even before I got to i-80, and then after getting to i-80 heading west, I continued nodding off and decided I needed to pull over.
I had been contemplating taking a more scenic route to Utah just like I took a scenic route to South Dakota back in April.
I was also tired of driving directly against winds that were something 40 mph.
Not so great for the gas mileage, and my last fill up showed me at better than 18 miles to the gallon! 🤯
Anyway, so the drive on the i-80 West through Wyoming is just so barren, and looking at the map, I realized that I would be skirting Flaming Gorge for the gazillionth time in my life without ever having stopped, and I was also relatively nearby Dinosaur National Monument (my mom said we went when I was a tiny little thing, but I have no memories of it whatsoever), so I took the off ramp on the road that would head toward Dinosaur National Monument hoping that the bridge under the freeway would have a shoulder I could pull over on to be able to park in some shade, as there aren’t two trees between Rawlins and Colorado to the south and Utah to the west. 😅
No such luck.
Gratefully, the dirt parking lot across from a fireworks store that was in the middle of nowhere had a huge billboard, and with the later evening Sun, the billboard cast a pretty good-sized shadow, so I parked my van in the shadow of the billboard. 🙏
And there I stayed for hours.
To be honest, I veged on mostly world news to catch up what’s been going on lately. I was also paying attention to how SpaceX stock has been doing. I don’t think I mentioned that in my post for yesterday, but that was also one of the other things that’s been discouraging.
I was pretty confident that SpaceX stock was going to go up, that it was a great buy, but I wasn’t prepared for it like I could and should have been, and it did exactly what I was expecting it would do, and continued yesterday and today to just skyrocket.
So that was also an added discouragement yesterday, recognizing that I could have made tens of thousands of dollars in just a couple days had I properly prepared myself for the IPO instead of hemming and hawing because of my fears from my previous stock stumbles.
While chilling in the van in the shadow of the billboard, I also got myself some food and some migraine pills and managed to catch up on my journal entries from yesterday. 🙏
May definitely haven’t been perfect in my journaling routine, but I’m also definitely making solid, positive progress. 🙏
I stayed there in that dirt parking lot until the sun itself had dipped below the horizon and the clouds were beginning to turn orange, and as I drove South toward Colorado, I stopped a few times to snap some sunset pictures.
I started heading south, because I had made up my mind for sure to head south. Dinosaur National Monument, Flaming Gorge, another Temple visit to the temple in Vernal, Utah, and perhaps a little adventure over to 5th Water Hot Springs (also known as the Spanish Fork Hot Springs or the Spanish Fork hot pots).
I don’t think I’ve been to them since… 2009?
Memories.
Anyway, on my drive south, I just about ran over this little guy.
I swerved to miss him and then did a u-turn because I was worried that he (or she) was going to get flattened by another vehicle, so I positioned my van such that I could be rolling down the road with my hazards on toward the snake so that the vehicle that was heading toward the snake in the same lane could then get over before I reached the snake with my own van again.
Gratefully, those efforts worked, and I was able to keep the snake safe until I managed to shew it off the road toward the side it was trying to get to initially.
Little guy was super quick to coil up and rattle. 😅
Unfortunately, my efforts to save the next one I saw trying to cross successful. 😞
Probably the last six inches of the little rattler were squished by a semi. 😞
I managed to carry it (with a microphone stand) across to the other side of the road, hoping that maybe somehow it would survive like worms are able to survive those kinds of things.
Unfortunately, I learned a little bit later that the poor snake was almost certainly going to die, and not only that, but die a really horrible death. 😞
I should have just euthanized it while I was still there. 😞
[sigh]
Managed to get some things done for my to-do list today. Got the ammo listed for sale for while I’m in Utah again. Found out that the guy selling the Corolla I was planning on going to look at today wasn’t negotiable with the price, so that ended that.
Lots of stuff going on, and I’ve got plenty I want to do to improve my choices, but today has been a heck of a lot better than yesterday.
🤍🙏🤍
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 