On Thursday, August 3 – my colleague Enza and I drove from Big Sky, Montana to Boulder, Colorado. In total – an 11 hour drive. Enza did most of it. She took the first 8 hours, making the last 3 seem pretty easy for me.
We drove through some wide open spaces, with mountain ranges in the distance, and mostly flat open land (with some hills) and “a whole lot of nothing.” Then, sometimes we would just come upon something that just looked really cool. At one point Enza said to me, “we should be taking pictures! we could make a calendar.” Yes, these were picture perfect calendar scenes of natural wonders. At another point, Enza said, “How can people see this (natural beauty) and not believe in God.” I thought the same thing.
Being out on the road sometimes allows you to reflect, especially when you’re driving through a state like Wyoming. At the suggestion of a student, CJ from Seattle Pacific, we stopped in Casper, Wyoming (his hometown). It was a very beautiful, nicely laid out city right next to the mountains. We found the restaurant he told us about “Sanford’s” which was really cool. It was like TGI Fridays in the sense that there were memorablia all around, but it was way crazier looking then Friday’s. Much more hip.
After that one-hour stop, we poured it on to Boulder, Colorado… where we arrived on Thursday evening. We were welcomed into Boulder by the mountains, we just kept driving closer to them until you couldn’t drive much closer. A beautiful city where we would spend the next 3 days, in the middle of the 2-week long ISI Summer Institute for the teaching of America’s founding principles.