I know, I haven’t had much going on here. Much of my blogging has been focused over on Wyoming Vote Tracker (see RSS Feed in the sidebar), which I am learning is quite a bit to keep up-to-date of all the political goings on of the Cowboy State.

Speaking of Cowboy State politics, I’ve recently been appointed Governor of Wyoming.

No, Freudenthal (free-den-thawl) didn’t resign and the rest of the state elected officials refuse the office, I’ve been appointed Grizzly Groundswell Governor of Wyoming.

I’m still single as a slice of cheese. It is odd, because I came across some stats that show Park County is populated with about 700 more women than men.

The weather is fluctuating downward. Right now, it’s lightly drizzling, but it will likely turn to snow overnight.

In some really great news, I have my Flickr page updated! Thanks to the Cody branch of the Park County Library, I was able to up load upwards to 600 pictures in just over two hours. Just uploading; I stil have some minor edits to do (tags, titles, descriptions). I think I have all the sets defined that I need (at least most of them anyway).

Soooooo, if you want to know what all I’ve seen over the past couple of months, check out these great pictures:

• My trip to Yellowstone National Park with Mom (mid-August )
• My Labor Day trip to Meeteetse with Grandma
• Did you know there is a dinosaur tracksite in Wyoming?
• An historic County Road north of Cody has been reopened
• National Public Lands Day recently allowed for free admission to the National Parks
• Presidential Politicing has come to Wyoming with the recent announcement that the WYGOP will hold it’s county conventions Jan. 5, 2008; at this point, first in the nation.

Lots to cover in this post. First the Photo of the Week. Since there were no votes, I decided to post what I want to post. I know, that’s a strange concept with this being my blog. Remember, next week, you can be part of determining the content of this blog on Saturday by voting on Friday

So, here’s the Photos of the Week. I figured since there have been no votes for a few weeks, which has prolonged edition 5 of the FPQ, having a few pics featured would be little harm. As you may recall, Mom and I recently trekked up to Yellowstone (up since we used the NE Gate). One feature we took in was the Mammoth Hot Springs.

As we were leaving, I saw something more peculiar than a buffalo that manages to not fall through the same piece of ground you and I are warned to not walk on.

Yes, these are employees of the National Park Service, and no, they aren’t adjusting the underground plumbing for the thermal feature show (though it is fun to see them en route to do so )

The Ghostbusters? No, they’re spraying weeds!

I don’t know why they’re spraying weeds, unless the weeds are not native to the Park, but then there are wolves that are not native to the Park and it was the NPS that imported them!

Now, normally, I would think nothing of someone spraying weeds, even a group of someones as seen above, but in this case, you can already tell that I thought much of it.

The turquoise spots are not vandalism, nor are they spots of grass that have endured the drought. It’s the dye from the weed spray.

You see the National Park Service, bless their hearts, has this thing about “being natural.” Need some wood for the campfire tonight? Better not touch that tree laying along the trail. It must remain. Granted, it’s not doing much other than rotting, and perhaps it is providing some nutritional value to the ground, but it (along with undergrowth and other dead/dieing/rotting trees is also providing ample fuel for the next bolt of lightning or tossed-out-of-a-car cigarette butt.

While fires do provide some health to the forest, uncontrolled conditions like this provide great risk, which is why I support the Healthy Forest Restoration act of 2003, an act inspired in part by forest fires in the Ponderosa pines of Arizona. I for one, would like to see this legislation expanded to include National Parks, not just forests.

If you’d like to see some impressive pics from a previously commented about fire in Idaho, check out the attached PDF sent in by our local military mom and nationally reported on laptop lady. Thanks, Laura!

As a side note, I just heard Wendy Corr announce that US 14-16-20 has been closed due to a mudslide just outside of Yellowstone. This is one tough way to end a summer in Cody Country.

UPDATE: WY Dot Crews Clear Mudslide, Road & Gate Open

Mom and I are taking a day trip to Yellowstone tomorrow, urrr, today. BTW, she has been doing exceptionally well. Most of last week she was on many pain meds that caused her to sleep quite well. For the prayer warriors in my audience, thank you for your prayers and continued prayers during her recovery are appreciated.

Anyway, this trip was actually slated for last Monday, but because of Mom’s medically induced desire to sleep (and my desire to meet our new Senator), we held off for today.

The other day I said that it might be nice to go in via the Northeast Gate (locals, please don’t run me through the ringer on that desire). My desire to go with the Northeast is that I’ve not been in through that gate and the journey would be a nice change (nothing against our beloved East Gate, even the opportunities to enjoy the beauty of the mountainside during the 30 minute delays).

Well, now the NPS is forcing us to through Cooke City, MT (called “Cooked City back in ‘88) due to the rapid growth of the Columbine fire south of Sylvan Pass (more info on InciWeb).

Now if I were a good conspiracy theorist, I would say that high-ranking Yellowstone officials are trying to tweak the attendance numbers at the East Gate seeing as the fire started after the increased traffic numbers were released. But that’s just the suspicious side of me. I plan to enjoy all the sights that we take in tomorrow and you can be sure that some of those sights will be seen on my Flickr page in the days to come.

The Global Warming Activists are beside themselves now. You have the traditional carpool/walk crowd, and now there’s the radically reformed stay-off-the-sidewalk-and-drive crowd:

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

What’s even better is the first comment on the site:

Maybe everyone should try reading the Bible, and you would see that the earth is God’s to destroy in His own time. People did not create this planet, and we can not destroy it. We are giving ourselves far too much credit if we believe that we can. God will destroy it, and we don’t know when that will be. Good thing for us the Bible also tells us how we can prepare for it! The answers have been there for thousands of years. People today are just too impatient to look for them.

Steve in Peru, Indiana is spot-on. The only thing I would add to his comment is that not only will the world be destroyed in God’s time, but He will restore it to it’s perfect original condition too.

I wonder what fellow Global Warming Deniers Brit and Grit have to say about this?

Yes, you read the title right. Thermopolis is the new home of a million dollar magpie (or at least something of a similar size):

The archaeopteryx specimen is second only to a specimen in Berlin in terms of completeness. Scientists say the specimen in Wyoming is easily worth more than $1 million.

It is one of 10 known archaeopteryx fossils in the world and is being called the “Thermopolis specimen,” after it was acquired by the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in December 2005.

Scott Hartman, science director at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, said the quality of the 150-million-year-old fossil puts the Wyoming museum in a league with much larger, more prestigious museums in London and Berlin, where two other archaeopteryx fossils are located.

The archaeopteryx, which was about the size of a magpie, lived during the Jurassic period and is the first animal whose fossil reveals feathers.

150 million years old and it’s only valued at “more than $1 million?” The real question is how do they know it’s 150 million years old? Oh, yea, it was found in a particular type of rock, and  they know how old the rock is because this fossil was there. So, now that the question remains unanswered, how about the possibility of the dino-bird only being 4,ooo years or so? Yea, I’m “one of those yahoos” that questions evolution and the timelines they produce.

Sure it’s pretty cool that Thermopolis is officially on the globe now, but I always thought Thermop was a pretty cool place anyway (ironic when you consider that thermopolis means “hot city”).

“It had wings with feathers that look like modern-day birds,” Hartman said in a statement released by the museum. “The wings are big enough that most say it could fly, but the feet are much more dinosaurlike.”

I think God created this critter just to get people scratching their heads (sorta like they do with the platypus).