Killer Travel Quiz

Our family has travelled a lot in the last eight months. Each of these pictures depicts a place that one or more of us has seen in those travels [Disclaimer: In most cases, we did not take the photos ourselves]. Your task? Identify the places! Helpful hint: each of these pictures was taken in a different American state. However, it would be good if you did not just identify the states. Be as specific as you can!

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This is Getting Old

This is not the second raccoon I trapped. He would not have stood still long enough to be photographed this way. Also, his teeth were pointier and not so white.

I was just about to stop the project. I thought I had cleared my property of these nasty things. Then, on the last day I was to set the trap, I got another.

I think I got the alpha male. When I got near him, he hissed, growled, and bit the cage. He backed himself to one end of the trap and tried to explode through the other like a charging ram. He tried to scratch me through the cage and succeeded a couple of times, though he never broke the skin. He was big and mean.

He should have been grateful to me, since I hauled him to within a mile of his relative, the one I trapped just under four weeks ago. Unfortunately, he wasn't. The hardest thing about the traps is hooking them open. Hooking this one open when its contents were trying to bite my fingers off took me a good five minutes. I finally had to shake the trap and twist it so violently that its contents were disoriented. This gave me roughly three seconds to work before the beast came to its senses and could aim its teeth and claws effectively again. If I ever catch another one like that one, I will leave him in the cage until his ribs show through his chest. I am not interested in rabies shots.

Maybe I need a new trap:

At least with this one, I would only have to keep an eye on three claws.

I think I am developing a healthy hatred of certain mammals. Add an acre to my carbon footprint.

To Idaho Falls and beyond!

Our car had a water pump problem right before we were to leave. We rented another and abandoned ours in the garage.

The drive to Idaho Falls was uneventful. We stayed there a couple of days with friends. Then we picked up R in Rexburg after he arrived back from a whirlwind tour of the near Midwest! He and friends crammed into cars and drove through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah (where they stopped to see A), and back to Rexburg. There was a friend's wedding in Omaha. The rest was just fun!

Back to our trip:

This sign is actually by a roadside in Idaho Falls. Given the high number of concealed weapons permits issued there, I took it seriously!

This is a picture of downtown Idaho Falls. The place looks like 1955, except for the cars. Most of eastern Idaho is like that!

By the way, Vancouver to Rexburg is about 785 miles each way. Lots of beautiful country and lots of boring country. Very little city. Very nice.

Quiz

(1) Where was this picture taken?
(2) Why is it in my blog?