Graffiti or Art?

 As we've travelled around the country, we're big railroad-watching people. Just love the sound of the train whistles at night, love to watch them as they go down the tracks (some of them quite long) and we like to take turns guessing what's in each car. Some are obvious...coal, cars, cattle, lumber. Others are just guesses.

When the trains are in the stations "at rest", you can see graffiti on almost every car, and we are usually amazed at the quality of the art involved. 

So, here are some examples of the trains we saw in the Greybull, Wyoming train yard.

See what you think.

I found a video where these guys spray paint a passenger car in minutes. It's pretty remarkable.

"Somewhere on Berlin’s U3 line, a metro train stops for a matter of minutes, allowing five graffiti writers to paint an entire car before it moves along to the next station. They scamper off down the tracks as soon they finish, leaving their work to circulate the city for the next 48 hours, before it’s buffed and disappears forever."

https://youtu.be/mO2WvEk1zLA?si=NRyYnLksDkd1Eobi

Here's the entire article.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-is-how-to-graffiti-a-train-334/

I'm kind of in awe of the art, the details, the imagination but, at the same time, it's vandalism that is going to continue. So, we're "on the fence" as to what we believe. We just observe it as we travel.

Until next blog....

Devil's Tower, and more Wyoming sites

Rather than a blog entry for each stop, this is an entry with LOTS of photos from our travels over the previous months.

DEVIL'S TOWER, WYOMING

Amazing lava dome in NE Wyoming that is left over after years and years of erosion of the topsoil around it.

WYOMING COAL TRAINS

Four tracks with coal cars loaded with coal from the Wyoming coal mines. Two going in each direction. One loaded, one returning empty. All day and night. Over 100 cars each. Amazing production.

AYERS NATURAL BRIDGES

Sweet little park with a natural bridge over a stream and small lake. 

SACAGAWEA GRAVE SITE

When we planned this summer's route, I thought it would be interesting to visit this gravesite. Over the years, we've visited a few memorable grave sites like Shoeless Joe Jackson, Hank Williams Sr., Steve Prefontaine. All of them very moving.

FANTASTIC WYOMING CLOUDS

Every day we had clouds like this....stunning.

WIND RIVER CANYON

We've gone through this canyon before in years past. It's about 25 miles long. But each time we've done it, we're in the motorhome and it's very difficult to pull over to take it all in as well as to take any photos. This time, we travelled in our pickup and took our time. It's really an amazing canyon between Shoshoni and Thermopolis, Wyoming. 

You can see the semi-truck and cars in the distance for scale. 

Some of the rocks here are over a billion years old. This whole area got lifted up around 75 million years ago. Same time as the Rockies were formed. 

We'll try to keep our travels more up to date as we've been to the Big Horn Mountain, Big Horn Canyon, the city of Cody, the Chief Joseph Byway, the Beartooth Highway, Heart Mountain and Yellowstone already. In the meantime, please enjoy this one.

Steve/Kim/Katie

Having a ball. Over 15 years of travel and not tired of it yet.