We're in Alpine

DAY NINE: We arrived in Alpine this evening at about 6pm. We had a lovely ride from Wheatland, Wy over to Casper, WY, then took the southern route on Rts. 220, 189 and 28 over to 191 at Farson, up to Pinedale, over to Hoback and down to Alpine. Over 400 miles of incredibly beautiful scenery. We made a stop at Split Rock S.H.S - another landmark on the Oregon/Mormon Trail, but less spectacular than Chimney Rock. Farther on we got a great view of the wonderful colors of geological layers. Much of the day was very pleasant, temperature-wise. It got hot later in the day.

At Split Rock

This is Split Rock - not terribly dramatic, but visible a long way

There's iron in them thar' hills!

We listened to the Teaching Company lectures on the Third Reich much of the way. We couldn't stop listening. It was utterly gripping. It is also a horrendous story. I'll try to reflect on what it means to me in these pages in the coming days. The combination of thinking again about John Brown, who took extreme and violent action against an evil system, then hearing about Hitler and how the German people just let him and the Nazis carry out their ideological fantasies until they brought disaster on everyone, and then reflecting on our National Security apparatus and what it's doing, and what we should be doing in response  - it's all pretty sobering.

We also covered another chapter in Crossan's The Birth of Christianity, about the extracanonical gospels (or what are often called the apocryphal gospels) and their relationship to what he calls the intracanonical gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John). Fascinating stuff.

Be sure to go back and look at the earlier blog - Our Trip Thus Far  - because I have brought it up to date now.

DAY 10: A quiet day.  Jenny and Paul are at work. Max is at day care. We had a nice supper last night, got caught up with Jenny and Paul's lives. Jenny and Paul are both exploring dietary regimens. Today, I've been blogging. Ellen has been doing cards, washing clothes. We ate breakfast on the front porch - very lovely; the gardens and lawn around the house are beautiful. Lots of lupine in bloom. Then we took a short walk down to the horse barn at the end of the road. Very pleasant.