An Uneventful Drive To Lander and an Earthquake Greeting

 

We left Star Valley and started on our winter journey. The first leg was to Lander, Wyoming where we plan to do some jade hunting as we wait for my cardiologist appointment.  Lander is really a nice place and so stopping here is always a pleasure.

Hooking up the fifth wheel, I had to scrape a heavy frost off the windows. Now that in itself was a problem as we got rid of our ice scrappers and snow shovels years ago. No problem as I had a plastic rv leveler that worked to rid the windshield of the hated frozen ice.

The truck worked fine as we crossed the Salt River Pass and the new truck brakes made a very noticeable difference as I applied them on the downhill sections. They worked so well that we decided to cross the Wing River Mountains at South Pass, thereby saving us a bunch of miles and fuel and more importantly a full day of travel time.

So we checked in and the first order of business was to order a pizza from Dominoes! My favorite is the Philly Cheese and Steak and it’s been three months since I last had one. Relaxing we went to bed not expecting the surprise the morning had for us.

A little after seven am the whole fifth wheel shook. My first thought was that Renita had fell out of bed, but she’s really not that massive and I quickly discounted that idea.  It felt like someone had run into our RV, but before I could run outside it shook again. I next thought that maybe we had been hit by a blast of wind but the trees were still.

Going outside I walked around and didn’t find anything, so I kind of forgot about it till our neighbor asked us if we had felt the earthquake.  It turned out we had a shallow earthquake about forty miles away. It was rated at a 4.9 and had an epicenter about three miles under the east flank of the Wind River Mountain Range.

Renita never woke up as she does sleep sound. Texting our son, he lives north of Pinedale, he said that he hadn’t felt it but his three dogs had became excited and had woke him up earlier than normal. So we have now had two earthquakes in two years. The first was a small one in Valdez and now a Wyoming event.

Perhaps I should add some graphics to our states visited map. Maybe I could draw a fallen building or a shaking tree? Of course if I start adding graphics should I put a tornado on the map for the one we saw in eastern Wyoming? Oh and what about the plumes of smoke from the Alaskan Volcanoes, do they deserve a symbol? Nah, I think I will just stick with the blog. Clear skies