Ive been riding more or less West for a couple of days now and there aint that much here!
Most of that time has been in Wyoming and its big and empty.
I have noticed a couple of things of interest though:
1) There are quite a lot of sheep being raised/farmed in the USA these days.
I am a bit surprised at this since its the first time Ive really noticed it. In the past I have been through these areas before and pretty much all Ive seen is cattle ranching. This trip however I have seen quite a few flocks in Oregon, Wyoming, and now in Colorado too. Either the Americans are getting to like Lamb in their diets, or the sheep are being exported to the Middle East (where most Australian sheep export goes I believe). Anyways, its not what I was expecting.
2) There is a lot of oil production here in southern Wyoming and northern Colorado. In some places the oil wells are almost as far as the eye can see. They usually consist of a couple of large oil tanks, a couple of enclosed pumps, and a control box with antennas. They are all automatic and connected up with underground pipes; And on the whole not too obtrusive (painted muted colours to match the earth). In some places they are very dense with wells located every 500m or so on a more or less grid pattern.
Other than that, there is just lotsa Sage brush, lotsa wind (same as last time I rode through), and lots a "pronghorn" antelope around the place (usually in groups of five or six - one male and a few females).
I also happened upon a "rocket display" in northern Utah. There is a very large para-military "compound" out here in the desert near Salt Lake City where apparently most of the solid fuel rockets are made for most of the western world (civilian and military).
This is where they make the rocket boosters for the space shuttle, and where they used to make the less sociable Trident and Minuteman missiles for the US Nuclear arsenals.
I however just stopped by and had a look at their display of old hardware...
They control the thrust from the solid rocket engine by breaking it into four streams and controlling a single axis on each nozzle... they get pitch, yaw, and roll that way... I thought it was quite interesting anyway.
But I am an engineer so not too surprising I guess :)
