Wild, Wild West

We had a really cool experience on the drive home from Boise on Saturday. Well, it was really cool to Jackson and me, at least. We had about two hours left on our drive, and as we approached a sharp curve in the road we passed a big truck pulling a horse trailer that had its hazard lights flashing. On the front of the truck was a homemade sign that said, "COWS AHEAD". We were very fortunate to have seen that sign, because both Phil and I were doing about 80 miles an hour and would have had a huge problem if we hadn't slowed down. As we rounded the bend, this is what we saw...


Pretty much the whole drive from Boise to KF is through open range cattle fields, but we usually don't see any cows too close to the road. When I saw this, I thought maybe some cows had just wandered out onto the highway, but as we got closer I saw that we were driving right through an actual cattle drive! I could just imagine myself wearing a bonnet and flowered cotton dress... sitting in a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail during Wild West times...


There were two cowboys (actually, a cowboy and a cowgirl) driving at least 100 head of cattle right down the middle of the highway! We didn't really have to stop for the cows - I just drove very slowly and most of them moved out of the way when they saw the car coming. I did have to steer around a few stubborn ones that might have been trying to end their life before they hit the slaughterhouse. I rolled down all of the windows in the car and the cows were walking right past us on both sides mooing like crazy. Jackson was sitting in the backseat mooing right along with them. I totally love cows, and this was so! neat! This group was especially good-looking, too. They had really think, shiny fur/hides/hair (What do you call cow hair? I should probably know this, seeing as I spent four years of high school smelling manure and cow feed festering in the early-morning and late-evening humidity... our high school was right across the street from a dairy and earned the nickname, "Cow Patty High") and were all pretty beefy (no pun intended) and nicely filled-out. You should have seen the size of the bull that passed us. He was absolutely HUGE! I tried to get a picture of him, but I missed him. He moseyed right past my driver's side door.

Can you see the real-life cowboy (or cowgirl, in this case) on the horse toward the right-hand side of this next picture? I tried to get a good shot of her, but my phone really stinks in the photo-taking department. As we passed the last cow I leaned out and told the cowboy that that had totally made my day. I'm sure he was very excited about that. Then we proceeded to speed back up and drive through two miles of cow manure. It makes quite a lovely splattering sound on the underside of the car at 70 mph.


P.S. If you're really interested and/or love cows like I do, you can click on the pictures to see the cows up close.