Speaking of nationalities. We have been in Spain 24 hours. Jacinto (born in Mexico) says that most of the people we have interacted with have some sort of South American accent. Only the older man running the restaurant (who shook Jacinto's hand and said thank you for coming), had a Spain accent. Jacinto thought both of our waiters were from Venezuela. The bicycle shop owner's wife is from Venezuela.

Between the science lessons and the ship’s log, I am learning and enjoying ;’-). You find some good places to stay the night, and your kitchenette motel looks too grand for such an excursion.
I do think that prices for a hot beverage have gotten a bit ridiculous! $4.50 for a cup of coffee? I drink tea and if the charge is over $3.00 (or sometimes a bit less), I pass it by.
Stay safe and continue enjoying your journey.

Cool stylolites. You’re on the high plains now, sweeping winds.

It is a windbreaker and acts as a jacket. The yellow jacket I brought was too bulky, and I shipped it back. If I really needed something heavier, I would wear my rain jacket. It’s all about saving space. But in the higher altitudes where the sun is closer, it probably wouldn’t hurt to wear as sun protection also.

Really enjoying this journal! Love the "indoor desert" description of malls.

Doing lots of riding in areas with a small but accumulating hills, I've also been curious about accurately measuring height gain. This is tricky and calculation based on topology (DEM) measurement that the main planning sites use can be inconsistent - in some cases *really* consistent (i.e. wrong) if they have missing data, e.g. above certain latitudes as I found out in Norway! https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/middlesweden/technical-note-incorrect-elevations-at-high-latitudes/. I resorted to running a smoothing algorithm on the GPX data - this nearly always decreased my elevation deltas and so climbing amounts.

At least some Garmin devices do what you suggest and combine both GPS elevation and barometric altitude. The idea is - and I've found this bears out in practice - GPS gives accurate absolute numbers, while barometric gives precise changes in elevation. The GPS device is used to periodically automatically calibrate the barometer.

Relying on GPS alone also leads to jagged elevation profiles (e.g. when a signal becomes weak) and so tends to somewhat overestimate climbing. The barometer alone as you say can certainly "wander" as pressure naturally changes with the weather - in practice I've found this drift to be of the order of maybe 10-20m *but* your mileage may vary: it could be that in my maritime, Atlantic location we aren't exposed to such dramatic pressure changes as in Tornado Alley! For at least some devices (I'm using a Fenix 6 watch) there seems to be sufficient shielding from air currents that I've not seen them affect the barometer: Cornwall is also a very windy and gusty location and it doesn't seem to affect my GPX tracks (and if incoming breeze would perturb the barometer I'd expect to see a systematic effect with air flowing past when riding at different speeds). The barometer is very sensitive (it can actually detect a 1m altitude change for me standing up!) so I'd suspect this would show up if it was a problem.

This combination I've found to be very reliable when repeating the same routes, under very different conditions. It does indeed give rather different results to planning with a digital elevation map - RideWithGPS always underestimates climb by at least 10%! I don't know if this is coarseness in the DEM data, or that my "real world" cycling behavour weaves around in a way that isn't captured by those site's routing.

Apologies for the long note - you just tickled my geek instincts!

I know I’ve made this comment before but I do miss these wide open plains! Glad you are missing the worst of the storms so far—it’s definitely that time of year for the crazy spring thunderstorms.

Uncle Ed, I notice you wear the plaid shirt over your bike jersey. Is it a wind breaker layer? And sun protection layer? Just curious!

Could not find a good photo match... Looks similar to seeds of various species of dock, but those are not as grainy looking as dock. Also looks kind of like seeds of Atriplex species, but those plants are larger shrubs than these.

Not common sage brush, but another sage, probably sand sagebrush.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/148049-Artemisia-filifolia

Sunflower. So many yellow many petal flower species! Absolutely mind boggling...

https://www.hunker.com/12624162/the-differences-in-a-black-eyed-susan-a-sunflower

Spiderwort! Very much like we have in our garden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradescantia

Yay 2000 miles! 🎉

“Unprocessed steak” 😂

Unprocessed steak...
cattle feed...
alfalfa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfalfa

Thanks 😁