The Road Trip, part 14

Day 13 -- Bedrock and Paradox

A slow, quiet, laid-back day. Jenny was down the valley, hired out to swath a field. The swather looks like what many would think of as a harvester, but it doesn't collect anything, just cuts the hay and swaths it into rows, where it dries before being collected and baled. Jenny took Val along to help drive it (the swather has a passenger seat, air conditioned cab, and FM radio, though out here there's only one station). So the kids and I relaxed all morning.

After a late lunch, Val came back and gathered us up -- Jenny wanted us all to try the swather. Okay. About five miles down the valley, almost to the end, is the town of Paradox -- technically a bit bigger than Bedrock, but set back from the main road so you'd never know it. Jenny was swathing half of a circular field, cutting huge C's back and forth, and had completed about half the diameter -- the longer, outside arcs take forever, but things speed up just a bit as the C's get smaller.

I climbed aboard and took lessons for two swaths, then took the helm. The steering is very sensitive, and cutting semicircles means no driving in a straight line. But, other than watching for prairie dog holes (and briefly lifting the cutting blade over them), it's pretty much the same as cutting a lawn, just on a much larger scale. It is a time-consuming and somewhat tedious job that takes a full day, but it needs doing.

While waiting their turns, the kids built a river fort in the dirt, with bridges and reservoirs and mountains and so forth. Val ran a one-woman bucket chain to a nearby creek to keep the fort in running water.

The sun was falling and the kids were getting hungry, and the field still not finished, so I drove us back to the ranch, dropped off the family, and then headed back to Paradox to pick up Jenny. She was finishing up the last two or three, very small C's just as I pulled up. Five minutes later, we were on the way home, and ten minutes after that, on our way to dinner.

Jenny and Dickie Joe's neighbor, Muffin, had invited us over, wanting to show off her new solar oven and cooking skills. She was very sweet, as was her dog Houdina, and the meal was excellent, all the cooking done in the solar oven. Roast bison, potatoes, whole beets, homemade pickles, and mesquite bean bread. This was amazing stuff, rolls made with flour from ground mesquite beans, chewy like a brownie without clotting in the mouth, not at all dry. I'll have to get some of this flour and try a few recipes.

As always happens around sunset, the mosquito forces attacked. Muffin had some Deepwoods Off, and I have no hesitation using chemical warfare on the little twerps, so a quick spray-down and I was clear. Val, however, opted to keep up the hand-to-bug combat; I don't know how she can take it. Dinner over, we snacked on watermelon slices and then bade our good-byes.