Front Range to the Wasatch Front (The Back Range?)

And Then! Another load from Denver back into New Mexico! (I was beginning to get exasperated, I-25 along the front range of the Rockies is beautiful but any road after the 3rd time in a row begins to get old.)
This load was Nestle PureLife Bottled Water from a plant in Denver on its way to a Wal*Mart DC in Los Lunas, NM. I asked the shipping clerk what the source of the water was and he said it was from the Denver municipal supply, i.e. tap water. Now, I know that a lot of bottles water is tap water but this movement struck me as ridiculous.
I know New Mexico is a desert but it has plenty of drinking water which, curiously comes from the Rio Grande, a river with its source in where? Colorado. And how does it get to New Mexico? By trucks running at 6mpg? no, by gravity. hmmmm.
Anyway. Then I got a load to pick up in Roswell, New Mexico, the sight (well biggest town near the sight of) of a "UFO" crash and alien autopsy. Look it up on wikipedia.
Roswell is a different part of New Mexico, part that feels more like Texas or Oklahoma with vast (dry brown) grassy plains and the smell of concentrated herds of dairy cattle all around.
New Mexico, surprisingly is a very productive dairy state and Leprino Foods here operates the worlds largest mozzarella cheese plant making IQF shredded cheese, primarily for pizzas, I would guess. I don't drive a reefer (refrigerated trailer) so I was not here to pick up cheese but rather a byproduct of cheese making.
When you make cheese, you must first separate the milk solids (curds, which will become cheese) from the whey, a protein rich translucent liquid (think what rotten milk in your fridge looks like). If you have a huge cheese plant (ie it would be very hard to do this at home) you can dry this whey into a fine powder, whey protein concentrate, which is used as a nutritional supplement and industrial baking additive.
I trucked this stuff up to Salt Lake City and unloaded at a cold storage warehouse on the west side of town, not far from the shores of the city's namesake body of water. When I opened the trailer doors a rich sweet smell reminiscent of milkshakes, wafted from within. I sit now, at a Pilot on the west side, typing away, waiting for some way to get back to the beautiful northwest.

(looking west on NW 116th or 117th St. in Seattle, down into Carkeek Park and across to the Olympic Mountains (click to enlarge and see the snowy peaks))