531 miles,
8.5 hours
Awoke to mostly sun at 7 AM. Pleasant 74 degrees (it's still early). Stop at cute coffee shop on W. 25 right behind the hotel. All our Marriott offers is Starbucks and we weren’t impressed with it the last visit and expensive. W. 25th is party central, lined with boutique shopping, restaurants and bars, old store fronts, lined with hanging flowers. One end of the street is Union Station, the other is a beautiful park. Their city mascot is a horse and various models are throughout the town.
We climb
from sea level up into the high country.
On the way the canyon is lined with red sand stone that has eroded into
various tall columns and shapes. We see a mother mule deer and fawn in a canyon valley. There
is still some small patches of snow higher up.
Today we are high plains drifters.
Rocky soil and scrub brush. Miles of snow fence and winter cautions
along the way. The high mountain peaks in
the south, across the Colorado border, have fair amounts of snow still. The temperature maintains average 80 with
heavy cloud cover. When we get onto I-80
we must deal with very heavy truck traffic.
I-80 is also US30, the Lincoln Hwy that runs through the middle of Ohio. We
cross Wyoming at the very far south border above Colorado. Lots of crop farming that requires irrigation
and very rocky scrubby ground cover.
Beef cattle are grazing on federal land granted access for that purpose
since it is so sparse. If you like earth
sciences (geology, mineralogy, energy: sustainable windmills, petro and natural
gas), paleontology and natural landscape sculpture, you’ll love Wyoming. As we
drop out of the high plains we enter grasslands into Nebraska, relatively flat
and have lost any mountains on the horizon. Corn and wheat are the crops of choice. Now it’s 99 degrees at 4PM. We are still on Mountain Time (2 hours from
Ohio, 2 hours from Ak) but should be changing to Central Time tomorrow.
We have seen
prairie dogs town and a few standing on their domes watching us go by. We passed over the Continental Divide today
at 7000 feet. All waters on the East
drain to Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico.
Heard from
Phyllis and Ray in Australia today via email.
They are reading the blog and on their way to Gold Coast. Spoke with Seth, he and Carrie are on their
way to Lake Erie shore to visit her mom.
They have been successful with their gardening this summer, more to
come. They visited our house and all is
well. Heard from nephew Chris and our
family dinner in Buffalo is shaping up with the menu. Cousin Cheryl is getting
ready for our visit to her.
We are
staying at a Marriott Fairfield Inn in Sydney, Nebraska. Room is nice but we are located near the
highway so restaurants are limited.
There is a town about 2 miles down the road. We drive to the small farming town and
everything is buttoned up tight on a Sunday night. Gas is cheap but cheaper if we pay by cash,
as low as $3.15/gal. We stop next to the
hotel at a Mexican restaurant and the food is
good choice. The sky is looking
stormy but no action. After dinner temp
is 91 degrees.
Resting
after such a long day of driving. Onward
tomorrow.
Nighty
night...
