Rollin' Along Through Utah

 Cows can act strangely around mountain bikes.  They started running along the dirt road ahead of my bike, instead of running off perpendicularly.  And they kept at it, going uphill for a couple hundred feet!  When were they going to get sensible?  I smiled thinking about the "Rollin', rollin', rollin" theme music of the old TV western, "Rawhide."

 

I got some better photos of my 'pet' balanced rock:

The next morning a bull walked slowly down the road, bellowing loudly and repeatedly.  Then a cattle truck came and gave him an 'uber' ride down the mountain.  At the foot of the mountain, a man was riding a horse.  What a tall and proud beast!  His wife was also on a horse and had a toddler sitting on the saddle, ahead of her.  The little guy managed to drop one of his size 2 cowboy boots on the ground.  I picked it up so that the mother didn't have to dismount.

I asked if the ranching business was doing well, now that beef was 6 or 7 dollars per pound at the grocery store.  But he said that the ranchers only saw 1 of those dollars.  And they were getting burned for high fuel prices, of course.

Ranchers tended to pay retail prices for most things -- even for calves and young cows.  When mature, the ranchers then sell them wholesale.  'Well, that's a heck of a business model," I told him.  He said that he and other ranchers were learning how to sell online,  direct to consumers.  The ranchers team up with a local abattoir.  Of course, this works best for a consumer who has a giant freezer in the garage that can hold a very large slab of meat.

I find it so refreshing to talk to someone who actually does something useful and productive in these gawdawful, barren western states.  Something besides tourism and retirement housing.  The sterility of such an economy is a type of 'desert'.  

Onward to the next location in central Utah, and another balanced rock.  I camped here years ago and thought I saw a red fox, which seemed unlikely and strange.