Today's CLASSIC Clip: Rainbows Are, Like, Awesome, Man

It's been a few days since the last post, I know; I've been trying to reintegrate myself into the daily routine of real life - with mixed results to be honest...

My last few days on the road were relatively uneventful - but, in truth, the best parts of the trip were those where time and space were abundant, giving a guy the opportunity to get lost in his thoughts with little chance of interruption - a concept not often possible in our fast paced everyday lives.

Wyoming is a great place to get lost in one's thoughts. It is the least populous state in the union (just over 500,000 people call it home), and 48% of the land in Wyoming is owned by the US government - with most of that being national forests, national grasslands and national parks - which means man-made intrusions are kept to a bear minimum.

For the vast majority of American's distrust in big government, they are in fact very proud of their national parks and monuments systems. I've had the opportunity to spend time in a few of these places over the years and can honestly say they are second to none in terms of conservation, service and natural beauty. Wyoming is the king of of the national park - with two of the US's most famous lying within its borders - Grand Teton and, of course, Yellowstone National Park.

I didn't venture quite that far west in the state this time out, but made it a point of seeing one of the state's most unique and bewildering national monuments - Devil's Tower.

Have you ever seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? You should - one of the best UFO/alien movies Hollywood has ever produced (E.T., Fire In The Sky and District 9 should also be on your list of must see alien encounter movies). Anyway, in the movie the aliens send a signal to earth that is eventually recognized by scientists as a set of geographical coordinates pointing to Devil's Tower (characters in the movie also inexplicably receive visions of the monument without knowing what it is or what it means). Being such a fan of the movie, I felt compelled (although not in quite the same way as Richard Dreyfuss) to check it out.



Devil's Tower is honestly one of the most bizarre and incredible things I have ever seen. Even geologists can not entirely agree on what created the formation, but it is widely known today as a volcanic neck (essentially a land form created when magma hardens within a vent of an active volcano - overtime the volcano mountain rock erodes leaving the hardened magma rock inside intact). It rises dramatically 1,267 feet above the surrounding countryside and you just have to see it to believe it:

Crazy! I hiked the approximate one and a half mile trail around its base, got a blister and a sore neck, ate a hamburger at the visitor centre and headed north into Montana (in the car, not on foot).

Montana is a nice place. It looks a lot like Alberta - actually it looks almost exactly like Alberta - as anyone whose seen Legends of the Fall can attest. As long as you steer clear of the crazy (and famed) militia type folks in the hills, you'll enjoy your drive through it en route to where ever it is you're going.

Being mountainous in the west and bald prairie in the central and eastern parts of the state, Montana is known for it's wild weather in the summer months. As fate would have it, one of my last memories of this trip will be of barreling headfirst into one of the craziest prairie thunderstorms I've ever encountered.

Montana is one of those places that you can see weather coming your way for two hours before it arrives. And knowing what I was up against, needles to say I way a little nervous. But it's at moments like this where you can either pull over and wait it out (and lose an hour or two in driving time) or, crank the Beastie Boys and giv'r hell. I chose the latter... obviously.

At one point in the height of the chaos - I heard a crackling come through my iPod (which was hooked up to the radio via a receiver). I paused the tunes just in time to hear: "from the weather center in Great Falls... this is a very dangerous storm... If you are in this storm's path, take immediate action to protect life and property... covers the following counties:... Custer, McCone, Garfield..." I couldn't be one hundred percent sure, cuz of the low visibility, but I was pretty sure that the sign I had passed about ten minutes before read "Welcome to beautiful Custer County."

Perfect. This is exactly where I want to be.

Well, everything worked out in the end. There was a convoy of about four or five cars that limped along through it, following just close enough to see the taillights of the car ahead - and though my steering wheel has permanent fingernail marks in it now - we all made it through unscathed.

I have always been a huge fan of that moment right after a storm passes that you can still feel the electricity in the air, the wind cold and crisp on your face and the ground begins to steam as the sun pokes through the clouds. It is absolutely beautiful - and it's at moments like that that you understand why people believe in God - it feels divine and otherworldly. I sat on the side of the road for a little while, smoked a cigarette, drank a beer and just watched the rainbows come and go as the storm disappeared in the distance. It was a neat moment:

And with that, it was all over... I stopped for the night in Great Falls, hit the local Albertson's before leaving town (to get Cherry Coke and breakfast cereal, of course), and before I knew it I was explaining the the border guard why I had driven all the way to Nashville if I wasn't even a musician.

I will need a bit more time to process it all, and we'll come back to moments and stories over the course of the coming months I'm sure. But, it was an amazing trip - I saw tons of amazing things, met tons of amazing people and I'll be glad to return to it all - someday.

For now, I'll leave you with a clip of a guy whose also really impressed with what he's seen and experienced... ('it's so intense'... lol... I need some of whatever he's on)...  talk soon - y'all.