Four good ones in April: Missouri, Delaware, Mississippi, and Utah. The year-to-date total now stands at 36.

Spotting Delaware and Mississippi during the same down-island errand-running circuit would have been (almost) enough, since Missouri appeared near the beginning of the month, but then Utah appeared as April was heading toward the finish line. I never did see Utah last year.

It used to be that Utah could occasionally be found near the Family Research Center: FRCs are outposts of the Family History Library run by the Mormons in guess where? Salt Lake City. The Family Research Center is still there, in the Merchants’ Mart off State Road on the outskirts of Vineyard Haven, but though I pass through there fairly often I haven’t seen Utah outside it in quite a while. Maybe whoever runs the FRC stays here long enough to get Massachusetts plates?

However, this year’s Utah sighting took place outside the Black Dog Café, which is diagonally across the Merchants’ Mart (does anyone actually call it that?) parking area from the Family Research Center. So there might be a connection, though I doubt anyone working at the FRC would drive to the BD Café for lunch.

That band across the nation’s midsection is unusual, since Utah and Kansas are both relatively uncommon. If/when Nevada shows up, it’ll be unbroken from coast to coast.

Technical note: WordPress’s newfangled block system, which I don’t like but am trying to make friends with, doesn’t allow you to put borders on images. I like borders on images, so I just refreshed my memory of how Serif PhotoPlus, which I use for cropping and resizing images, does it. Borders, in other words, are back, and to hell with you, WordPress.

I also replaced my old Brother All-in-One with a newer model, and unless my eyes deceive me — which is very possible because they’ve been doing it all my life — the new scanner is doing a better job than the old of rendering colors.