Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

I definitely need to get organized!

The version of LD that I've been polishing is not the absolute latest one.  I thought it was.  I found nothing newer on my jump drive or laptop...until I looked at a PDF copy by mistake and found the last chapter had differences and remembered doing them.  Doesn't help that I have 10 different drafts I've done...some of which don't really count as a draft but more as a polish.  I need to do some serous Spring cleaning.

The drive down to Moab from Salt Lake City is lovely, once you get off I-15.  Some of the rock formations and the thousand shades of red and brown and white mixing together are just awe-inspiring.  I think I've seen some of the locations John Ford used to shoot "The Searchers" and wonder if Monument Valley is close enough by to go visit.

I also found the Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake...and was seriously upset.  First of all, it's 24 miles off the freeway down a couple of two-lane asphalt roads...and THEN down another 16 miles of gravel road where no fences separate you from the cattle grazing in the fields.  And once you finally get to the end of the road, it has a neat little overlook that shows...well, it's coming apart.  Completely.  You can barely make out the design, anymore.  The steady waves off the lake have nearly destroyed it.  I guess in a few years it will be gone.  And that's heartbreaking...but it's obvious no one really cares...not in Utah, anyway.

Something I happened to stumble across while en route to the jetty was a museum dedicated to the driving of the Golden Spike in the Transcontinental Railroad.  The last spike that connected rail between the East and West Coasts.  I'd known it was in Utah, but I didn't realize it was here.  They even have replica locomotives doing a little dance at the exact spot.  It almost made up for the pain of the Jetty.

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