Wyoming

I drove east from Sheridan this morning, thinking mainly of good views of the Big Horns in the early eastern light.  What I found, all within a few miles of the Interstate, were pronghorn, coal trains, and lots of hay - rolled, stacked, and baled.  You see some of this stuff from the highway, but it just isn't the same.

We heard trains in Sheridan during the night, but I suspect most of the rail traffic these days is these unit coal trains east of town, heading out of the Powder River Basin with fuel for northwestern power plants (or is this stuff getting shipped overseas?).  Most of the coal that comes out of northeastern Wyoming is probably headed south and east, not up this way.  We drove through Gillette later this morning and the trains were lined up, waiting to take their fossil carbon to power plants back east.