COLORADO
Here’s an unfortunate example of AI giving someone a real bum steer. A tractor-trailer’s navigational guidance system “trucked up” in a major way, inconveniencing slews of sightseers and campers en route to the picturesque Crystal Mill, six miles east of Marble in Gunnison County. Just how big a mistake did the GPS make? Well, it sent the driver up the very steep, very narrow and very rocky Daniels Hill — a road navigable only by four-wheel-drive vehicles, jeeps, dirt bikes, hikers and truckers who scare the bejeezus out of viewers on IRT: Deadliest Roads. The misguidance left the big rig jack-knifed across the road for 40 hours until three tow trucks could remove it. Samantha Smith Wilkey, owner of Crystal River Jeep Tours, said she lost 10 bookings while the road was blocked, but she doesn’t blame the driver. “The driver went above and beyond,” she told Aspen Daily News. “It’s not the trucking company. It’s the GPS software company.” Smith Wilkey added that misguided guidance systems are misguiding drivers to remote forestry roads rather than the correct routes to Gunnison or even Denver, concluding: “There is a glitch in this area.” Yes — and apparently a glitch in the matrix.
CALIFORNIA
Every dog has its day, they say, but most canines don’t spend theirs howling it up at a free Metallica concert. An unusually resourceful metal fan — and German shepherd — named Storm snuck out of her Inglewood home and somehow slipped unnoticed through the gate and past security to settle comfortably into a seat of her own at SoFi Stadium, KTLA5 reported. Storm’s owners were baffled when a photo of their pooch hanging out with concert-goers ended up on social media, but they were happy to welcome her home after she spent the night at an animal shelter.
Maybe it’s something in the dog food, because another unusual canine incident occurred in San Juan Bautista. KSBW.com reported that a sure-paw’d terrier “learned a new meaning to the word ‘bark’ when it got stuck in a tree.” The dog somehow climbed 20 feet up a tree and got marooned out on a limb. The Hollister Fire Department rescued the pooch, deploying a safety net, climbing the tree and carrying the pup down. Maybe there was another metal band playing nearby and the dog just wanted a good view?
ARIZONA
An understandably shaken Mesa homeowner contacted a snake-wrangling outfit after discovering a tangle of rattlesnakes lounging around in his garage, Fox10 Phoenix reported. The homeowner originally guessss-timated that there were three, but there were actually 20: five adult western diamondbacks and 15 babies. Oh, and one of the snakes was pregnant with babies — or eggs, technically. Like certain members of Congress, rattlesnakes are ovoviviparous, meaning that their eggs hatch inside the mama-rattler, who then gives birth to live young. Snake-wrangler Marissa Maki, who found the reptiles nestled cozily around the hot-water heater, used specialized tongs to grab them and carefully place them in plastic buckets for their relocation journey to the desert. Rattlesnake Solutions’ owner Bryan Hughes said proudly, “This is our record for the most rattlesnakes caught in one call!” Given the number of shed snakeskins they found, as many as 40 may have resided there at some point. As Maki observed, in what we consider a definite understatement, “That is a lot of snakes.”
OREGON
Here’s a great example of positive messaging. Bella Organic Farm on Sauvie Island is using the 2.7 miles of pathways of its seven-acre corn maze to say something important: “No more silence. End gun violence,” with the words accompanied by a peace sign and heart shapes. A Bella Organic spokesperson told The Oregonian, “We hope this year’s maze will bring our community together.” That seems like a message no one could get lost in.
WASHINGTON
Horse racing is traditionally the Sport of Kings, but Auburn’s Emerald Downs Race Course has something for commoners, too. About 20 seniors hit the track at the inaugural “Grandparents Race” held during Grandparents Weekend, King5 reported. Steve Butler from Everett, who took home the prize, told Emerald Downs that the last time he’d raced was against a lineman during a high school football game 50 years earlier. The popular racetrack hosts races for horses as well as for corgis and bulldogs, not to mention the T-Rex World Championship, which we were slightly disappointed to learn involves people wearing costumes rather than contestants running shrieking from live dinosaurs.
Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her book, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019), was a Washington State Book Award nominee. She resides in north-central Idaho near the Columbia River Plateau, homeland of the Nimiipuu.
Tips of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write heard@hcn.org, or submit a letter to the editor.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard Around the West.
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