Texas Here We Come!

We (Jeff and moi) left our home in Vancouver BC traveling by motorcycle on a clear sunny, but not hot, morning in early September.
The first few days I am a bit apprehensive on the back of the bike, but I soon settle comfortably, confident in Jeff's supurb driving skill!
We keep to secondary roads and a decent speed, that is moderate. Traveling through small town America one really gets a sense of the country, the economy and the people. As the passenger my "job" is to observe and enjoy the ride. Every town has a Main Street and here you sense the life or not of each place.  One of the first things I notice is flags, a good percentage of homes have one. Next are the verandas or front porches, also a design staple. You can tell a towns prosperity .....it's not if there are businesses that are closed, boarded up, run down,....... it is if the paint is fresh, the garden is cared for and there are people attending.
Main Street America in the rural towns is cookie cutter similar, the homes lining the Main Street remind me of Vancouver Specials, same architecture design only smaller. They look so brave all lined up in a row.
In Idaho Falls we spent 2 nights, necessary to have the oil changed in the Harley. The Snake river runs through it, 4th longest river in the USA. The Falls are a man made creation for hydro electic power and they at a beautiful sight on the river, right in the middle of the town. While there we visited an art gallery with a water colour exhibition, and were lucky to also visit the artist studios and speak with one artist who was just moving himself in. This is a highlight for me as I like nothing better than learning something about how each artist works.
We moved on to Alpine Wyoming and stayed at the home of a friend, on a private airstrip, beautiful, cold, crisp, green, and very quiet, you could not even hear the airplanes as the taxied past the kitchen window on their way to their garage hangers! Truly beautiful landscape with the most glorious red foliage, which I was to find out were bush maple trees. We rode pedal bikes and read our books in sunny corners away from the wind, but travel on we must and after two restful days we were off on the road again.
Next stop was Cody Wyoming, stopping in Jackson Hole for breakfast on the way. Cody Wyoming is home to the magnificent Buffalo Bill Museum. What a treasure, we spent 6 hours taking it all in, and could have spent longer if we hadn't given into fatigue.
We had a fun evening and the best hamburgers ever sitting at the bar in a restaurant called The Proud Cut Saloon. I had buffalo and Jeff had angus beef......mmmmmm delicious! Sitting at the bar you meet other people at the bar! And the bartender and the bar girls! Jeff and I have plenty of talk time so it is entertaining to meet others. Sitting next to us were Susan and Ernie from Newcastle England. It was a little hard to decifer their speech patterns but somehow  we managed. They had flown to Denver and rented a car for a western trip. They regaled us with the mishaps ......getting stopped for speeding, they immediately got out of the car and approached the highway patrol cop......NOT the right thing do do in the USA but quite the norm in England.  We left the restaurant and proceeded to a nearby bar with the , exchanging email and all the rest.
Life is definitely a bowl of cherries.