Blood Oranges

A.M. Pleasure Assassins are really good guys. They let me stay in their house for a month while I was living in Fort Collins; and we made a music video! This is the second video. We only made it halfway through the first one before some Colorado redneck drove up next to us in his truck, cocked and pointed a shotgun at all of us screaming something about private property; Boy, was that exciting!

Blood Oranges from Clarke Howell on Vimeo.

A.M. Pleasure Assassins also just finished an album. I spoke to Jared and Mitch about the new release.

How long did it take to make the album?

Jared: um golly

Mitch: about a year in half

Jared: yeah

Mitch: start to finish

Jared: 18 months

How many albums or releases has A.M. Pleasure Assassins made?

Jared: This is our second formal album along with four eps and now a split tape.

What's good about it?

Jared: What's good about it?

Yeah

Jared:  a lot of the songs on the other stuff is like jams and stuff that we went back and overdubbed things to make it sound like a song, when maybe there was nothing resembling a song to begin with. Whereas with this one, all the songs were very premeditated and we had them nailed down before we went in and recorded; and we just took a lot more time mixing and we got it mastered, so that's a little bit of a fidelity boost.

Mitch: and the packaging is top notch.

Jared: and top notch packaging to top it all off.

How's the music scene in Fort Collins?

Jared: It's pretty rad, we've got a lot of diversity. No one's really like trying to snake each other steeze or anything. Everyone kind of - we all work well together, we all play shows together and there's not much drama or crappy attitudes, everyone's really positive.

What's next for A.M. Pleasure Assassins?

Jared: touring

Mitch: touring

Jared: many many tours

Jared: that and we do have another album that we're, an album and an ep that we're formulating in our minds. We have the songs, we just need to figure them out in our heads, before we go along with the rest of the project of it.

When are going on tour?

Jared: we just got back from Nebraska, did like a, just a mini little one weekend hurrah out there. next tour we have planned would be out to Boise and west coast for Treefort, Boise for Treefort , west coast for elsewhere's shows,

Mitch: in march

Jared: yeah in march, and after that

Mitch: or before that

Jared: yeah, east coast, we want to hit the east coast. you know, eventually as soon as possible take it over sea's.

Mitch: japan here we come.

that's pretty sweet.

: yeah

ok, those are all my questions. 

                                            AMPA Music - http://ampa.bandcamp.com/

Where the Buffalo Roam

    I had never been to Yellowstone or to any national park. Growing up in Idaho the woods were plentiful and there was numerous chances to experience that moment, surrounded by wilderness to get to that spot where you know that nobody else is; to find yourself alone in an area untouched by civilization.
    I headed to montana, drove the six in a half hours past west yellowstone to the buffalo field campaign to meet up with friend and cohort Demmi Netson and to volunteer for a couple of weeks. Around the last stretch, a huge thunderstorm passed over, giant globs of rain hit the windshield reducing visibility to 10 or 15 feet in front of me while huge thunderbolts struck the ground 100 yards away from the road. Just before hebgen lake the storm cleared up and a double rainbow formed in the sky; I arrived at the BFC headquarters safe and sound, met up with Demmi and met the folks at the cabin. The summer is the slowest season at the BFC, volunteers typically coming around mostly for hazing season. The summer was about public outreach to the park's visitors.

The first night I slept sound with wild dreams and the next morning Demmi and I headed into Yellowstone National Park.

I was there to see the buffalo, the last remaining wild herd in America. The buffalo Field campaign is non-profit volunteer run group dedicated to stopping the slaughter of these animals. It was summertime and most of the buffalo were located back in the park. On our way to the campsite we saw a large bull being escorted off the road by a park ranger. 

The Buffalo (bison bison) is the largest land mammal in north america; fullly grown they are typically the size of your average vehicle.  

In the summertime most of the buffalo are located back in the park; you see them by the side of the road with eager tourists from all over America and the world waiting to snap a photo of any they happen to see.
   We headed to the tabling site. After hazing season, the summer volunteers at the BFC do public outreach by tabling inside the park. I asked Demmi what tabling was, "basically it's public outreach to let people know what's going on about the buffalo and the buffalo issue, like getting donations, spreading the word meeting people, trying to you know.. cause a lot of people have no idea about this issue, especially people who are locals or like that  cattle veteran we met that could swing either way that just have no fucking idea what's going on."
    We arrived at the General Store, a common place in yellowstone - a giant parking lot pull out with a big store selling ice cream, chili dogs, souvernirs, shot glass's, hats, cameras, stuffed animals, native american jewerly, soda pop, candy bars, an a whole lot of cheap items that the tourists of the park can consume.
    I met Jim and Amelia, who had been out from the previous day, both sitting behind a table full of information under the hot sun of the yellowstone sky. I bummed jim a cigarrette and sat down behind the table. A old veteran with a chicago bears hat had been staring at us for a considerable ammount of time, before long he walked up to the table.
                          "what are you people doing?"
    "we're with the buffalo field campaign, advocating for america's last wild bison population to be able to reach their natural migratory habitats outside of yellowstone."
       "they're diseased, they spread it to the cattle. They don't belong outside of the park."
"well they can't survive here in the wintertime, there's no food and it's not the environment they want to have there calves. They go outside of the park instinctually every year and get hazed back while there's plenty of public forest land for them to inhabit."
       "you people don't know what you're doing."
"well what would you suggest as a solution?"
      "We should kill them. Thin out their numbers. There's too many in the park."
"well there wouldn't be if they were allowed to go elsewhere."

A Brief History of the Yellowstone Bison: 
    In 1901, after the great buffalo slaughter of the previous century, there was only 23 wild bison left; a small herd found hiding in the safe haven of Yellowstone national park. Once discovered a great effort was made to restore and protect this last heard of the wild buffalo that used to roam America. Today there is an estimated population of 3700 buffalo grazing and wallowing on the grasses and shrubs of Yellowstone national park. Living peacefully in the protected shelters of the park while humbly admired by the millions of tourists that travel there to see them each year.
     Buffalo by nature are a migratory species. Some say 60 million of them used to travel all over north America. The last buffalo, the Yellowstone herd likes to migrate like the rest of them. In the winter and spring they leave the park to find food at lower elevations and migrate to their calving grounds, each spring bringing new members to the ancient herd. They'll typically travel north into Montana, either through west Yellowstone to Horse Butte or through Gardner, a small town at the top entrance of the park.

This is generally how the state of Montana handles the Buffalo that have roamed out of the park.

The Interagency Bison Management plan is made up of five different agencies, the National Park Service, USDA-Forest Service, USDA-Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, Montana Department of Livestock and Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks. Their goal is the management of Bison and Brucellosis in and around Yellowstone park.
 Brucellosis was first detected in the Yellowstone Buffalo herd in 1917. They were exposed to it by domestic cattle that were grazed in the park and held in confinement with the buffalo. The IBMP exists to eradicate brucellosis from the Yellowstone herd and make sure no buffalo transfers it to any cattle outside of the park. This is why when the Buffalo leave Yellowstone and enter national forest or public land they are either hazed back into the park using atv's, horses, and helicopters; rounded up quaranteened and sent to slaughter, or just killed on the spot. Since 1985, there has been 6,927 buffalo killed out of the Yellowstone herd. Most of their bodies either thrown in the dump or given as government commodities to the Food Bank.
 All this is being done to ensure that the buffalo do not transfer bruscellosis to the cattle who graze the lands outside of the park. The problem is that there has never been a single documented case of a buffalo transferring bruscellosis to a cow. Most studies suggest the possibility is "extremely low". All four legged undulants can carry bruscellosis, elks, bears, coyotes, dear, etc who are all allowed to leave the park as they please. The cost to vaccinate cattle from bruscellosis is $1 per head, the cost of the IMBP is 3 million dollars a year, all payed for by us tax dollars.

We continued tabling, which above anything else is probably the best people watching experience I've ever had. The General Store is a pretty large complex, for my best estimate more than 3,000 people stopped by there everyday. So much so, that they were carving away part of the woods to make room for a new parking lot.

Towards the end of the day, Demmi and I took a drive to Mammoth to renew the camping permit. On our way there was a traffic jam, which is commonplace Yellowstone whenever somebody see's something they like, they'll typically just stop their car in most any inconvenient place, jump out with their cameras and hope to snap a pic. It's a park for the animals. The culprit this time was a teenage black bear, the park range stopped our car in front saying, "Ok I'm gonna stop you guys, I think this black bear's trying to cross the road." Black Bears are a little more like dogs in their demeanor and this park range wasted no time in treating it like one.

As the Park Ranger said, "Get! Get Off! Get off the Road!"

Before I entered Yellowstone I made sure to stock up on gasoline and supplies, not knowing how much modern convenience the park had to offer. I soon found out this was unnecessary as most places around the park you can find cheerful ladies like this one filling up for the next big drive.

                    Demmi and I stopped and looked at a map of the park to find our location.

  

Springtime is hazing season for the buffalo. I asked Demmi and Amelia what the hazes were like.

Demmi: "A haze feels like, when I was in one and I almost got trampled by a buffalo and horse rider while hiding in the trees, it was this really invigorating experience because it felt like i was in the middle of an old west movie and a fucking battlezone. So I was afraid but it was also romanticized but I was also knowing this was fucked up and shouldn't be happening."

Amelia: "I've only been in one but it was kind of exhilarating and terrifying and upsetting all the same time, because I'm seeing them do this, and then when I was right in the middle of it when I was filming and they were right there, not only the DOL are screaming for me to get back in the car, but --- and --- were too, because I was right there with a camera and I was like, 'i'm not stopping, I'm not stopping' and they're like ' get in the car! " you know it was just really close, but I was so wrapped up in it. "

Demmi: "people just look at it like this roundup. they call it a buffalo roundup, it's like they're herding cattle.. but it's like no, these are wild animals and theres a lot of fucking more of them than they should take on."

Later that night we heard a Park Ranger was going to be holding a bear seminar at the campsite Amphitheater. Jim and I decided to check it out.

Turns out it was held by the same Park Ranger that earlier had shushed the bear off the road.

After awhile an actual bear decided to show up

This ones a black bear

Jim and the Crowd got really excited.

The next morning Demmi and I woke up and while Amelia and Jim took  the morning tabling shift, we headed to Lamar valley to see some more buffalo

Later on we went back to tabling and dealt with the common questions from people passing by, usually something like, "how far is it to the waterfall?" "is it worth it?" or "Is there a difference between a buffalo and a bison."I asked Amelia and Demmi about memorable tabling experiences.

Amelia: "there's a lot of people that say your 300 years too late, your not gonna accomplish anything,. and to everyone of those people, I'm just kind of like, we actually have. the bfc itself has actually made strides. They just want to say something horrible and then move on. Like the guy, 'your gonna effect them all with bruscellosis.' and then that's when I was like, ' you should probably educate yourself about the issue,' and I tried to hand him a newsletter, and he was like, 'no thanks I already know more than you.' "

Demmi: "unfortunately the most memorable experiences are those negative ones, because occasionally they're humorous, occasionally they just hurt so bad it sticks with you. but I think a lot of memorable experience are those people that normally wouldn't have ever thought of this that leave with this completely different viewpoint or like you know people who are willing to have a conversation, or like little kids that come up."

Amelia: "yes, that's the people who are like 'they're not just slaughtering them, they're not just doing that. " I'm like "ya they still are"  and they're like "there's no way that's happening." they find it unbelievable."


Part III: The Gang Heads to Old Faithful

Old Faithful has existed in my minds eye for as long as I can remember. You see it everywhere, replicated and exemplified in all forms.  

 Before you get to any of the geysers, you hang a right on a overpass and drive through a sea of parking lots, full of cars, trailers, trucks, and caravans. There are several large buildings, gift shops, general stores, visitors center, and the grand old faithful inn; which is actually pretty exquisite. The one defining element is that there a people, thousands of them, everywhere.We pulled up when the geyser had just gone off;

        

The Majority of people who come to Yellowstone never leave the walkways or the roads.

                Their appeared to be a boon of cellphone reception surround the Old Faithful complex.

 Old Faithful isn't the only Geyser, it's just the most reliable one. Beyond it leads a boardwalk viewing of all kinds of geyser's, shapes and sizes. But don't step off the walkway; this actually happened to a little kid visiting the park; more than once.

The Gift Shop at the Inn

The Crowd, waiting for eruption.

Innovative uses for Tripod, as the crowd still anticipates.

Watching America blow it's load.

Back to the Buffalo; 

The Whole issue, in essence, the buffalo are the only animals in Yellowstone that are not allowed to leave the park. They're not allowed to leave because the cattle industry makes millions of dollars a year using the public grasslands that used to be occupied by the buffalo. So when they get cold and hungry, the buffalo take off to these grasslands and are subsequently hazed back into the park and then slaughtered to keep their numbers at an acceptable quotient for the ecosystem.

But it's not hard to imagine buffalo elsewhere, they'd go to national forests, national grasslands, there's plenty of public wilderness in America for them to roam around. America did such a good job of killing off the buffalo that they reduced there population from 60 million to 23; and by some natural grace these 23 survived only to have their offspring become prisoners of the place known as Yellowstone National Park.

The Fact is Yellowstone only wants 3000 buffalo, and that's not enough numbers to continue any species 200 years from now. It's only enough to have mutated inbred offspring until the last wild buffalo finally hits the ground. For whatever reason the United States Government and the Interagency Bison Management Plan doesn't seem to understand that.

It seems the Yellowstone bison are occupying this space between the past the future. And I suppose the cold reality is that unfortunately it is up to us to decide whether we want them around or not.

So why do these people do what they do?

Amelia: "I'm sure a lot of them do not even hate buffalo, they just see it as another day at the office.  It's like, we gotta round em up, move em out. I don't see them as a sinister, dark cloaked Jedi emperors. It's just like, this is what I do, this is my job, this is just how it is. They don't question it. "

Demmi: "I wonder sometimes how they feel while they're doing it; if they ever do start to question it. I'm sure that happens a lot, especially with us out there; these people that strongly feel they're doing the wrong thing. All together it's like, 'well the boss told us there's some buffalo out here and we need to get rid of them.' cause sometimes you see them cut short and do things that are completely illogical cause it's like they just came out and did there job and then left."


note: my views are not necessarily in the same vein as the BFC, to find out more for yourself go to www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

Fires, Mushrooms and Mormons

                                                     (on tour with Gabe Smith)

   Fort Collins had been on fire for the last majority of the last month; the high park fire was the largest fire in Colorado History,

totaling a burn of 87,284 acres. Right under that record there was the Waldo Canyon Fire, still going, burning almost 20,000 acres and causing the evacuation of 32,000 people. Fort Collins was the current residence of Gabe Smith, I had come up for a month to record a split and go camping – which due to the fact that all of the outside of fort collins was on fire the time I was there, I never did. Now the split was finished and the month was almost done, I left with Gabe on a two day tour heading to Idaho, stopping for two shows in Grand Junction and Salt lake City.

      "Do you remember the first time we met Gabe?"

      "Oh that apartment, was I on a lot of psychedelics?"

   “the story I heard was that you had like, the day before I met you you had come up on a greyhound and met kelley...”

      "well what happened was, I was living in Provo, I had just dropped out high school, got out of my parents house and I don't know I was raised Mormon for some fucking reason, I think it's when my sister lived in Provo Utah, where BYU is. I went there and I got really depressed. And I had a good amount of money, so this guy had a bunch of lsd and a couple other you know designer drugs so I bought like 27 hits of various things and took most of them in the course of two days. I didn't freak out but I was just like I gotta get out of this town"

  "so I'm on this greyhound and had just woken up from like 8 hours of being passed out because of my binge on hallucinogenic drugs and I wake up and there's this short kind of Irish looking guy, he's got a really groggy voice and he's like, “hey brother do you want to smoke some pot at the next stop?” and I'm like, “yeah sure” so we get off and go around the corner and the bus driver comes around and he see's us and he's like well as long as you guys don't cause any trouble on my bus I don't care. so we're smoking and we finished the bowl and we walk around the corner and the fucking greyhounds gone.

  "We're freaking out because Kelly just by circumstance happened to have 2 vials of acid.and 3 ounces of mushrooms in his bag. So he was freaking out.”

“that was on the greyhound?”

This is Gabe taking a drink of a smoothie we were told had 4 ounces of mushrooms in it (photo: Sally Boyd)

   “yeah, that was on the greyhound. And my fucking iPod got stolen. so we hitchhike to twin falls, beat the bus to the greyhound station, and got back on. So we finally get back to Boise and I don't know, Kelly, he was a nice guy you know, I wouldn't probably hang out with him, but you know that was a bonding experience and he ended up giving a lot of people free mushrooms." 

"so I think i met you the day after that, we were hanging out, or how many days later,”

  “ya, it was a couple days”

"it was at rays house.. when I met you you had just scarfed down probably like an 1/8th of mushrooms or something like that”

“oh yeah, yeah I remember that”

“and you super stoked, Andrew Link was there, and you talked to me about starting a record label, and we talked about a record label for like 40 minutes or something like that”

“yeah, yeah I remember that now”

"you were like telling me you would start one in the future, and I was telling you why don't you just start one right now”

"well cause dude I didn't really know how to do that at that point. I mean like, I had you know just gotten out of a fucking really uptight, I mean my families awesome, but they're really uptight Mormons. And I kind of knew how to play instruments, but I knew that I wanted to do something well And that came from that psychedelic trip I had down in Provo, I didn't want to do everything I was seeing around me so that whole idea came. Since then everybody's made progressively larger steps to getting there"

After living in Boise for awhile, Gabe left and spent six months in Philadelphia working as a door to door alarm salesman and then on a chance decision, decided to move to Grand Junction, Colorado – a small town on the western slope side of the state.

 "I lived in grand junction for about a year in a half, starting october 2009, there wasn't much going on in that town and now there's a bunch of house shows which is pretty cool.

   I had moved out there, and I was looking for a place to you know, start doing house shows, bring my small booking abilities at the time into a greater focus. You know my friend Lincoln Holloran, he plays in Hello Shark, he told me to contact this guy, Layhee and I had also put up a Craigslist ad. Layhee messaged me on the Craigslist ad, and I had messaged him on MySpace at the time. So you know we started doing shows together and we eventually got this idea to put together this festival for three days, during, like around houses and we wanted to widely publicize it, so and that was, you know there's gonna be drinking at a house show pretty much, like it's gonna happen. So what we did to kind of cover our asses is I guess we turned it into sweater fest, so it was a benefit for the local homeless charity.

The view we saw driving into Grand Junction

    then we screened bands of 208, to kind of get people pumped on local culture" 

"So what's Grand Junction like?"

   "the people are awesome, the kids are so pumped on touring bands because there's not much else to do out there, I mean at least there's tones of outdoors, but as far as art culture goes, house show are really the only thing that a lot of people go to. I mean people that could go to bars would rather go see a house show out there, because it's so much more fun" 

Part II: The Show at the Sabotage Lounge

The Circle A farm is located in Orchard Mesa about 7 miles from downtown Grand Junction. The fire started the day before we got there, as we passed through a canyon just before Mesa Valley, we could see the flames rising up over the walls. Later that night, the fire ended up jumping the river and they closed down the highway for a bit. It was hot outside, 101 degrees.

Gabe and I arrived at the farm and met with Comfrey Root, who books the shows for the sabotage lounge and does work trade in trade for a place to stay at the farm. When we arrived we all looked at the fire update on inciweb.org. There was a chance Comfrey might miss the show, possibly having to split to help his mom evacuate her house in Fruita. I sat down with Comfrey and asked him a few questions about the farm and the sabotage lounge.

    “so what is Circle A Farms?”

“Circle A Farm is a small community based agricultural experiment here in grand junction colorado,

out ultimate goal is to be sustainable, but mostly just grow a lot of awesome food and make

pickles and stuff."

    “and how many shows have you had here?”

“"this is the 3rd show at this space as a whole, last summer we hosted Holy! Holy! Holy!

which was a fun time, from that I wanted to start using this space as an alternative venue,

and got it rolling as an art gallery and alternative traveling music venue.“

   “why do you identify as an anarchist?”

"to me identifying as an anarchist is something that's always changing like water, it's something that doesn't tie me down politically, but can always be identified as an alternative culture. I believe in a circle not a pyramid, is the best way to put it on a political level. I think the consensus based organizing that I've seen in a lot of anarchist communities is a very good thing on a small local level. I believe in local politics, and I find anarchism is a better solution on a local level than all the other things that we have pushed in front of us.” 

Clyde Mcgee at the Sabotage Lounge (photo: Sally Boyd)

    The show was a Friday, June 29^th set to play was Gabe as Happy Family, myself in Clarke and the Himselfs, Clyde Mcgee and the tape worms, Ryan Hennessey, Gabe's old band from Grand Junction, Dem Bones, and our good friend from Colorado Springs, Dear Rabbit.

  Dear Rabbit, also known as Rence Liam, I first met In Boise, in 2011, when he toured up from Colorado with Gabe on a similar 3 day stint. Since then I had played a few shows with him touring through Colorado and a gig in New Orleans when I lived there this past six months. Rence had just come back to Colorado Springs from a 6 week tour. The day before he got back home, he played a show in Pueblo and got a call from his friend telling him that he had to evacuate his house. Six days later he would be back on tour playing the show in Grand Junction. 

 Rence arrived at the Circle A in high spirits. A few hours of waiting for folks to gather and show 

the show kicked off with Clyde Mcgee opening a set on banjo and Dobro guitar. 

Next up Ryan Hennesy and then Happy Family. Gabe started doing Happy Family after he moved out of grand junction and split his band Dem Bones. As he said before he started the set, “"we're gonna play some songs. I go by happy family cause there's a bunch of  musicians across the country that I just love playing with, and when we play together it's one big happy family."

I started Clarke and the Himselfs as a recording project when I was 15, here's what it looks like now:

covering Poison Culture by New Science Projects

 

Rence tours a lot, he has been for awhile and most nights out of the week he finds himself playing a gig somewhere in the country. Tonight he addressed the crowd at the Sabotage Lounge;    

    "alright, so we didn't have to go to the second question, but I'm gonna ask you this, do you know what my favorite night ever is? friday, june 29th, 2012. This is a special night, it's more special than a lot of other nights, cause tonight we're gonna sing some songs. Now I'm gonna start the show off with a challenge to myself. I wrote this song on monday,

Rence gave a way this trucker magazine as a prize

to whoever could answer the question, what his favorite day of the week was (photo: Sally Boyd)

and I tried to sing it that night, and I couldn't remember the song. and i haven't played the song since, so that's a challenge. I couldn't remember it, four days later, after I evacuated my house and all that stuff. so I'm probably gonna forget this song again"

"if it's great it's great, if I mess up it's no surprise."

"but for now, we're gonna try to sing this song. there's a lot stuff up here on the stage here, and then were gonna try to sing this song, for the first time ever, I haven't sang this song since the monday night when I wrote it and I haven't practiced it at

all. We're gonna sing it, dear rabbit's gonna sing it, It goes like this as far as I remember"  Rence was about to finish his set, up next was Dem Bones. Gabe Smith's former band when he lived in Grand Junction, and a wide favorite around town.

  "Dem Bones is getting ready to come on after this and I want you to listen to what they have to say tonight, they're going to sing some songs. and right before that, i want to tell you something highly important and that is this, of all the songs that I've ever written, this next song we're gonna sing tonight is my favorite song I've ever written. The title of the song is called, With Them Shoes..."

  "Anybody got a bottle opener? If not I have one, I have one right here. I don't even know why I even asked. This is the one I brought myself cause..

 "You want a drink of the water? You can have a drink of the water. I'm gonna have a drink of my Laughing Lab. This is brewed back home in Colorado Springs, this is a toast to that place.

We got fires out there, we got fires up here, but most importantly is that we got fires in our hearts. so anyhow, check it out people, just for a second here if I could have your attention. the title of this song is with them shoes he only has one sock. and here's the important part; The important part, it goes like this.” Dem Bones finished out the show for the night, playing all their hits in a lovely drunken rumble that must have lasted an hour or more. The night was pure joy and theshow, for the 3rd one at the lounge seemed a success.

 I woke up early in the morning. News had that our show in Salt Lake City was cancelled, Gabe told me that his sister, who lived just south in Orem, could possibility get us another one but he was still waiting on the confirmation. If there was no show in Utah, we would just drive straight through to
Idaho. Having not gotten much sleep the night before, I went back to bed.
 Gabe woke me up at 1pm. The show wasn't going to work out in Utah, so it looked like a ten hour barge to Boise was imminent. We made $20 in donations after being split with Rence, and sold a few a cd's and buttons to top it off. Gabe and I saved enough money beforehand to make it to Idaho regardless of whatever we made on tour.
  "Do you want to go get fast food?"
We'd been eating government stipend food bank pizza and bread and off-brand stew for the last couple of days. "sure" We packed up out stuff, said goodbye to the folks at the circle A farm and headed out.
 On the way the burger king, I noticed a brown spider crawling up my right leg and flicked it off into the drivers seat. Grand Junction was hot, extremely arid and Hot.
 As we left Colorado and headed to Utah, we saw another plume of black smoke blotting out the sky just outside of Price. Utah apparently was on fire as well. The smoke turned into a thick haze as we entered Provo and began our trip through the valley. We had plans to go see Space Jesus at the Mormon temple in Salt Lake but it was closed by the time we got there, and we both agreed we didn't want to stop anywhere; It's a wretched valley and if we made good time we would get to Boise just after 1am.
 Rence had a show in Twin Falls on the First and another show in Boise on the 3rd. We both pondered what he does on his days off.
Gabe and I arrived in Boise on time, and I hung out without for another day before he left for Garden Valley to go to his Families Cabin for a reunion. Rence gave me a call later that day, he was in a town a day early for his show; I met up with him and drank some coffee, went to a screening of Magic Valley at The Red Room and found him a place to crash later on in the night.

I met up with Gabe again on July 4th in Garden Valley for the fireworks show in a town called Crouch. In the town center, which every time at that year is filled with a bunch of River Rafters and Mountain Hicks exploding a never ending supply of illegal fireworks while everyone gets drunk and listens to country music. I found Gabe here, with his sister Hannah and her boyfriend, the other Clark. The rest of Gabe's family was there as well, I gave his mom a hug, having seen her last when I spent some time at her house in Colorado Springs.
Gabe would be gone later that night, and the next day flying back to Fort Collins. Rence was somewhere in Oregon, eventually on his way back to Colorado. As for now I'll be in Boise until later this month when I'll be in Yellowstone, tracking buffalo herds with the BFC.