Driving

I drove out to Arch Springs last night.  It was among the best two hours I’ve spent anytime recently.  I didn’t take my camera, because it was nighttime (after midnight, no less), so of course I came across a really awesome overlook of some towns and lights while driving over this one mountain.

I love to drive, I love to drive and listen to music, and I especially love to do both around here.  There are so many neat little villages with neat little houses in the country.  And so often you find yourself surrounded on all sides by fields, and just beyond them, completely surrounded by mountains.  And it’s often about pitch black at night, because of how sparsely populated it is out here.  The sky, even on starless cloudy nights, is brighter than the black mountains below, and that’s so neat to see.

One of the albums that my stereo picked for me to listen to was No Need to Argue, by the Cranberries.  What a spectacular album this is.  It’s one of those albums that came out while "alternative" was really big, and that managed to completely avoid that kind of sound, thank goodness.  Here’s a bit of it.

It’s also lots of fun to have straight, empty backroads that have stretches covered by patches of snowdrifts.  Since the patches are followed by dry road, you can slide around a little without much risk.  It’s neat to see how the car reacts to turning into a spin as opposed to turning away, etc.  They say that you’re always supposed to turn into the spin, and it’s true that that causes the spin to eventually stop and puts you back in control, but you’re also going off the road at that point... if you turn against the spin, you lose your traction and slide, but you’re sliding forward at least.  And if you take your foot off the gas and the brake (which you probably should have done long ago), then the tires actually regain traction fairly quickly.

Of course, it’s easy to say all that when you’re driving slow on empty backroads.

I also saw some interestingly-named things: Baby Boomer Celebration Hall, Sickles Corner Back Road, and Skelp village.  I saw a Limekiln Road too, which reminded me of home since we have one of them there.

So anyway, drive=love and the country out here definitely =love.  I could drive around forever and never get tired of it.  Sometimes I think I’m easily amused.  Then I think, shut up.