Day 5 - Nebraska

Miles driven: about 420

So, I'm not the biggest fan of Nebraska today. The steady wind of about 25 mph, paired with temperatures in the high 80's and the completely dry air, was just not pleasant. How in the world anything grows in this state is beyond me. It took us nearly 4 hours to break down camp this morning because I was just dragging. It may have just been me, but this weather stinks.

K and I took a walk to the lake from camp. It was a difficult hike through a thick collection of thousands of sun-bleached and dead trees. It was interesting, however, to take a look at all the footprints on the ground. Some I had never seen before, including some sort of giant bird. After we packed the car, we finally waved goodbye to the campground with our parched skin and lips and with our shoes and feet full of prickly burs. We were ready to get out of there and be anywhere else.

We got hungry for lunch near the city of North Platte and stopped at the Fort Cody Trading Post, a Buffalo Bill historical site complete with a mechanical diorama of miniatures and an unbelievable assortment of Western and touristy paraphanelia. C was in heaven as she gazed at the collection of pelts and animal parts. They had skeletons, horns, rattlesnake tails, and furs from more than a dozen different creatures. Jessey was amazed with the collection of knives, nearly all of which are illegal in California, but were for sale here for dirt cheap. The girls had a really tough time deciding what to buy but A settled on a wolf picture printed on a slice of tree trunk, C chose a skunk pelt and some chocolate rocks, and K got a coyote tail and face mask. J bought himself a knife although I'll have to drive it home for him.

 

We had lunch and got back on the road and I was really dragging by this point. I searched for a Starbucks but had to wait about 100 miles and then drive 6 miles through town to get to it, but it was SO worth it! The next one wasn't for another 85 miles or so, but one did the trick. At lunch we were surprised to see that somewhere recently we had lost another hour and it was 4pm. We are seriously losing touch with time and space, and for some reason even our electronics are confused, randomly jumping hours and changing at different times, which really isn't helping.

After our not-so-pleasant experience with the campground last night, I made a reservation at a KOA near Omaha and thought we'd try that out. The place looked posh and had a ridiculous amount of activities for kids including mini-golf, pedal carts, a swimming pool, horseshoes, and a jumping pillow. Of course we won't get in there until super-late (again!), but just the fact that it has grass and shade is a huge plus at this point.

We had one last stop for the day as we made our way to our first Little Free Library of the trip. There were a few in Salt Lake City that we skipped over, but (not surprisingly) there haven't been any more until now. In case you don't know, the Little Free Libraries are just a box that someone puts in their front yard where the local community can take and leave books for each other. There are a few back home, but they are all over the world and we thought we'd check some out on the road. All the boxes are different, and it gives the kids something new to read in the car. We leave a book and take a new one (or two or three). We're hoping to hit a lot more, but here's a picture of the one in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Extra Post - Little Known Facts

I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you to hear that gas is cheaper in the midwest, or that there is no traffic out here on our road trip, or that my car now has another layer of paint in the form of bug ghts, but some things might surprise you. Here's a list of some of the things that surprised me.

1. Nobody speeds in Utah or Wyoming.  Ok, I know that's probably not totally true, but I can tell you that I only saw one highway patrol officer in three days of driving and he was with a tow truck that was pulling a shuttle bus out of a ditch. I can also tell you that even though I drive no more than 5 miles over the speed limit,  I can count on one hand how many people passed me in the last three days. Considering that most of the people on 280 go 80mph every day, I thought that was weird.

2. People speed in Nebraska.  I was passed more times in the first 30 minutes of being on the road in Nebraska than I was on all the other days combined. They speed in town, too. They fly by me on the city streets and were driving so fast on the dirt road by the campground (that goes nowhere!) that I was a little afraid for the girls' safety. It just so happens that we also saw our first speed trap and our first traffic accident of the entire trip in Nebraska. Strange coincidence, no?

3. There are A LOT of trains. If I could think of a word that means more than a lot,  I would use it.  There haven't been very many times on this road trip where we can't see a train or train cars somewhere.  They are everywhere.  In fact,  in Cheyenne and Lincoln,  there were huge overpasses that went over at least a dozen set of tracks each. The one in Cheyenne actually had a tower in the middle of the road that looked like an air traffic control tower.

4. The billboards on the side of the road project ridiculously far ahead.  It's not uncommon for a sign to be for a business that is 60-80 or more miles away, even if there is something closer.  The hotel chain Little America was especially silly.  They advertised for their hotel for hundreds of miles, gradually increasing thd quantity of billboards as you got closer to their hotel until they were nearly back to back. Then, as you passed the exit for their hotel, the next billboard was for their next hotel, 288 miles away.

5. For hundreds of miles in Utah and Wyoming there are variable speed limits. The signs are LED or have scrolling numbers so they can change the speed limit at will. Others have pegs so they can hang new numbers over the old ones if needed. Talk about keeping you on your toes.

6. And speaking of speed limits, Nebraska has a minimum speed limit on their freeways, as does Iowa.  We weren't sure who exactly they were posting it for since it was 35 mph less than the maximum limit and they had already expressly forbidden things like farm vehicles on other signs.

7. People like to write messages on the side of the road with rocks. A good number of the cities since Nevada have written the first initial of their city's name on the side of a hill in white stone, but passing motorists have also written messages about loved ones all along the highway. Their words and letters are spelled out in black rock, and we have wondered so many times where these rocks come from. They are all the same approximate size, and as far as we can tell are not anywhere along the road except where they are formed into letters. We have seen probably 100 messages written in 1000+ miles over 4 states.

8. Wyoming and Nebraska don't like to put white lines on their streets. I never realized how much I rely on those lines at the intersection to know where to stop, but I find myself drifting way too far out before I stop over and over again. I guess it's a skill you must possess to live here.

9. They also stack their traffic lights from left to right, laying on their side.  I know lots of other states do this. I first saw it in Nashville as a child, but I still think it looks weird.  The red light is on the left and the green is on the right.

10. Octane levels of gas are all over the place. Many places still have 85 octane, which we don't have anymore. Some have 87, 89, or 91. One had only 85 and 91. I guess when I think about it, they all had 91. It was just the lower levels that keep changing. And as expected, all of them are cheaper than back home, and as far as I can tell, none of them charge extra for credit. Most of them also take local checks as payment.

11. Some of my favorite places to eat don't exist out here. While they have an abundance of Applebee's, McDonald's and Burger Kings,  we haven't seen a Jack in the Box or a Taco Bell in ages. They have Subway, but no Togo's. There are plenty of Dennys, though!

Tomorrow we head into Chicago and leave these rolling plains behind. It is amazing how much more you pay attention to the little things when there isn't so much all around you all the time.  Every little thing from the clouds to the colors of the semi-truck cabs driving by catches your eye and seems special and interesting out here. Its definitely a reminder that I need to take some more time to slow down and look around.

Day 4 - Wyoming and Western Nebraska

Miles traveled: about 425

I set my alarm with enough time to shower and get down to the free breakfast in the hotel, just in case the kids all slept in. I woke them up to tell them I was leaving and they all said they wanted to go with me except for K. She just didn't want to get out of bed and asked me to bring her some cereal and set it on a tray on the little table she had set up next to her bed the night before. I headed to go get some breakfast and Jessey and I were surprised to see the kid who had played Linus in the play the night before in the hotel cafe. He was there with his brothers and mom and dad and grandparents and it suddenly dawned on us that we had seen dorms on the map of the community college last night. His family must have lived in a town farther away and spent the night in Rock Springs to see his performance. So different from the community colleges back home where there are several choices so close by. We wanted to be sure to tell him how much we enjoyed the play in front of his family, so we took some time to do that before we headed back upstairs. A and C spent a lot of time getting breakfast put together for K, including cereal, fruit, hot chocolate, juice, a bagel, and a waffle with three choices of toppings. They went to deliver it to her while I ran out to the car to grab the swimsuits since this hotel had an indoor pool and the girls wanted to swim for a bit.

When I got back up to hotel room, I found K sitting on the bed like a princess eating her breakfast. She was so excited and it was such a sweet moment for her to have her sisters serve her like that.

We had about two hours until we had to check out of the hotel so I told the girls they could swim for an hour and then we would shower and change and leave. It ended up being a little longer, but it was kind of funny because "Linus's" three little brothers were in the pool with the girls, so it was fun for them to have someone to play with, and it allowed me to get a few things done, like yesterday's blog.
I also made reservations at a campground in Nebraska for the night.

We hit the grocery store in town to stock up and then we hit the road. I know I keep saying it, but eastern Wyoming so beautiful! It was super-windy, with gusts over 40mph, but the scenery was so pretty with the 10,000+ elevation mountain peaks, snowy patches everywhere on the ground, and the gorgeous red rock formations in the Medicine Bow National Forest. We pulled off the road at some random point to play in the snow a little bit and A and K also took some time to talk to and look at a bunch of cows with their calves.

We stopped in Cheyenne for a few minutes to check directions and arrival times and were sad to realize that we were getting into camp so late and couldn't take the time to drive up to Wheatland where my dad was born. It was 70 miles out of the way and we just couldn't lose nearly 2.5 hours at that point. Sorry, Dad! :( We did, however, cheat a bit and add a state to our repertoire by taking a little 3 mile trip out of the way to cross the border into Colorado. A little ways after you enter Nebraska, Hwy 80 dips down within a few miles of the Colorado border, so we made our way down a tiny rural road and snapped this quick photo.

 

Omce back on Hwy 80, our campground was just a little further into Nebraska in a town called Brule, which was near a town called Ogallala, which was just way too much fun to say so late at night. The campground was called Eagle Canyon Hideway and I see now why they named it that, because it was certainly hidden from us. Nearly a dozen miles off the freeway in the absolute middle of nowhere, including 6 miles on an unmarked dirt road, it took us more than a little while to find it, especially since Google Maps told us to take a 'road' that turned out to be the golf cart trail on a lakeside golf course (which I refused, thank goodness. My poor car would never have made it). We did eventually find it and got all setup just in time to go to sleep, again. We'll get better at this. I'm sure of it!

 



Day 3 - West Wendover to Rock Springs, WY

Miles traveled: about 325

We all woke up surprisingly early this morning: for some because the cats were so enticing, for others because breakfast smelled so good, and for me because today we have some activities on the schedule! Aunt Debbie made us a very tasty breakfast and after some final snuggles with her cats, Brady and Princess, and some farewell hugs, we were packed up and ready to hit the road.

 It was so windy!

Brady (black & white) and Princess

 

We barely made it out of Wendover before we were over the Utah state line and we were a little sad that this was the second state in a row with no welcome sign on the Hwy. Oh well, so much for our planned photo-op. Just a few minutes further was the Bonneville Salt Flat raceway. We followed the road for quite a while and thought about turning back a couple of times, but I'm glad we didn't. The salt flats were amazing, like an enormous field of crunchy crystals as far as you can see. We walked out a few feet, trying to decide what in the world you would do here when we saw a speck on the horizon ahead of us. As it got closer, we realized it was a motorhome driving across the flats, and when he got closer, he parked near where we were. We decided that if he could do it, so could we and so we drove right out on the flats. Well, I guess I should say that Jessey drove. He was very disappointed that I wouldn't let him see how fast he  could go or do donuts out there, but I was just too nervous. I told him he could come out here some day with his own car when he's the one paying for repairs. We got a little ways out, and I decided to take a picture. But just like all the rest of the pictures on this trip, they just don't get the message across, so I also took a video.

 

 

 

On the way back to the edge of the road, A asked if she could drive. There was nothing out there to run into, so why not? Jessey gave up the driver's seat and A took a few minutes drving around out there on the salt. She said it was so much fun, and I guess she honestly wasn't too bad of a driver for a 10-year old.

 

 

After we left the Salt Flats, we made a quick stop at the Great Salt Lake. The lake was pretty from a distance but  kind of smelly up close and since I am still haunted by my experiences there as a child, I was very happy to leave there as soon as possible.

 

Salt Lake City itself was a beautiful place and their central downtown area reminded me a bit of Santana Row. I was blown away by the fact that their convention center parking lot was free for the first hour and charged $1 for each hour after that. We were in town for 3 hours and paid $2 in parking. I couldn't help but think that it would have cost $20 in San Francisco.

 

In Salt Lake City we had one planned stop, at the Family Library, the biggest collection of genealogy records in the world. That place was amazing! I was immediately overwhelmed by the amount of information in that building and the thousands (or millions) of man-hours that have been spent taking all those books and records and digitizing and cataloguing them. They had computers with internet access, so the girls were happy and Jessey helped me look up records online. All around me people were discovering long-lost relatives, making family connections, and rediscovering their forgotten/lost heritage. The staff there truly have one of the coolest jobs on the planet. The lady next to me was looking for someone of Jewish descent. She pulled up a map of his last known address and looked for synagogues in the area that existed 100 years ago. She tried to determine which one was closest enough to walk to and could even tell from the census records (and the last names of their neighbors) which approximate neighborhood they lived in based on the nationalities and ages of those around them. Amazing! They know who kept good records and which types of people are harder to track. They know which rabbit trails to follow and they key in on the slightest clue of information and follow it much faster than my mind could keep up. It's easy to see how people could spend days, weeks, and months there (and why they have an onsite cafeteria :) ) We were there for at least two hours and felt like we barely scratched the surface of trails to be followed. Truly fascinating!

 

We left Salt Lake pretty quickly, already nervous that we were going to get into the campground late and be setting up the tent in the middle of the night again. The views in Utah and western Wyoming are beautiful. I especially loved the area between Salt Lake City and Echo, Utah. As we continued through Wyoming, it became clear that we were not going to make it to the campground before dark. This one was especially troublesome because the campground was a primitive one with only 5 sites in the middle of nowhere. It was free and didn't take reservations and it was a Friday night. We had a backup campsite (also with 5 spots) nearby just in case, but I was just as concerned with not being able to find it as I was with getting there and finding it full. We stopped in Rock Springs, Wyoming, assuming that dark was dark and we might as well see something fun before we succumb to a night with no running water and no toilets in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.

 

Rock Springs had a community college that I had seen somewhere online as something to see. It had a giant dinosaur fossil exhibit - huge, in fact - and we decided to check it out. As we drove up the hill to Western Wyoming Community College, we considered our situation and commiserated a little more. Jessey spotted some signs leading up to the college that said they had a play happening that night at 7:30 (about an hour later than when we arrived) and I jokingly said that maybe we should watch the play and spend the night in this town instead. We tossed the idea around for 15 more minutes before we reached a consensus to do just that. We bought tickets to the show and drove down the hill to grab some Sonic before it started.

 

 

 

The show was SO good! We all laughed hysterically through the entire production of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and A said she wished it would never end. It was the perfect way to spend the evening after a long car ride.

 

There were plenty of hotels in the area, so I booked a room and we drove straight there after the play. We were all notably crabby from lack of sleep and I was relieved that we were all going to get a good rest and a big breakfast in the free cafe downstairs the next morning. It was just the rest we needed after 3 days on the road.

 

 

West Wendover, Nevada

Day 2: Driven today: about 475 miles

 

I felt bad dragging the kids away from the beach this morning. I get the feeling they could have stayed there all day, but we had some ground to cover and I knew there'd be plenty of beach time in the weeks to come. We definitely took our time this morning eating breakfast and packing up so it was about noon by the time we left Lake Tahoe. I had called my Aunt Debbie who lives in eastern Nevada, hoping we could stop by and see her on our way through. I was surprised when she asked us if we wanted to stay the night with her. It's been so long since I'd seen her and I knew the girls would love her.

 

Driving through Lake Tahoe and Carson City, Nevada, reminded me why I love road trips. My favorite part of the trip is driving through towns and seeing a glimpse of the lives of the people who live there and feeling the heartbeat of the town that is visible in the decorations, shop names, billboards and businesses that are there. We chuckled at the wedding chapels in Tahoe, the myriad of casinos just outside town, and the small, nearly deserted towns just over the Nevada border. We wondered about the origins of street names, read local advertisements, and of course amused ourselves with lots of silly signs and posted warnings. Carson City was full of amazing carved metal sculptures that were a lot of fun to look at, and a little while later we stopped in Fernley, Nevada for a bit of ice cream (it was 80 degrees in that Nevada desertland!) and yet another sleeping bag in Walmart (this time we had a broken zipper).

 

 

Then, for nearly the rest of the day, this is what we saw:

 

 

Until we hit Elko, NV, this is literally all we saw. For probably 5 hours we drove through flat desert wasteland, with only a few houses and power plants, although there were a surprising number of prisons out there. We passed a few towns, but mostly lots and lots of this.

 

Finally, near Elko, we were greeted by a beautiful snowy mountain range looming up ahead of us, followed by a stunning glowing sunset behind us, and then topped off with an enormous full moon straight ahead of us. It was defnitely worth the wait.

 

I felt a little bad pulling into West Wendover so late, especially when I got to her house and realized that she was 10 minutes over the time zone change and it was an hour later than I even thought, but she made us feel so at home and I was so glad to be able to have the chance to visit with her. It turns out that she also has two very chubby cats in her home that my girls were instantly enamored with. They were so excited to sleep on her floor hoping to get a midnight companion cozying up with them.

 

We had some cinnamon apples and chocolate mayonnaise cake (who knew?!) along with some silly conversation, and then we finally settled down to get some sleep. I'm glad that we will still have some more time to visit in the morning before we head out for another day of adventures.

 

 

Camp Richardson, South Lake Tahoe

Driven today: about 235 miles

Well, we didn't make it to camp before dark, but we made it.
 Thank goodness we had that easy tent! I had it up and everyone inside in about 15 minutes. It was pretty cold but didn't quite reach freezing temps, and we all stayed cozy and warm in the tent together. In the morning, we woke up to find ourselves completely alone. We saw an rv parked a ways off in the distance but we didnt see a single person until we drove out of the campground and across the street to the general store.

It was a full moon last night, but thankfully only one creature crept out on the road as we drove, and i was able to avoid it. Of course, we did forget a couple of things, including a 5th sleeping bag (oops! - had to stop in Vacaville and hit a Walmart), but everything else we were able to manage without last night, although we'll have to go to a store for a few things sometime today.

The kids are loving the beach here at Camp Richardson, but it's time for us to head out again. Before I go, I wanted to make sure I say some thank yous. Thank you Dad for making the divider for my trunk. It makes packing so much easier already. Thank you Mom for packing our food. It was a little bit like Christmas opening up the snack bag in the car to see what was in there. And an especially huge thank you to Michael for throwing matches in the bag of wood when I wasn't looking, and an even bigger thank you for my early birthday present that made it so easy to find our campsite in the middle of the night and is also allowing me to sit here on the beach at lake tahoe with no wifi and update this blog. Thank you!

Meet Lulu

This is our beloved minivan, Lulu. We have asked more of this car than anyone should reasonably be able to expect, so it's only fitting that she accompany us on our cross-country road trip (unfortunately, she has to do all the heavy lifting!).

Packed to the gills, we're ready to go. It's a little overwhelming to think about the trip and everything that's coming, so I'm only planning a few days ahead. Right now we're just hoping to set up camp tonight before it's dark. See you tomorrow!

C armed herself for battle in the parking lot, finding this custom-fit breastplate (piece of a palm tree) that she wore into Subway without me noticing.

I wanted to share with you something that blew my mind this week. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it, and I'm so glad I snapped a picture of it while I was there (even if it was only with my cell phone). My mom has been going through my grandparents' belongings for months, searching for treasures and passing them on to family and friends. While she was emptying the shed one day, she found this giant piece of wood that had been her art project in college. Inspired by looking up at the wood grain on her bunk bed at night and remembering being able to see patterns and pictures in the grain, she decided to buy a piece of wood and paint the pictures she saw so that everyone could see them. I was amazed at this idea. So creative, so simple. I am definitely going to try this with my kids when we get back home (and I want to try it, too!). So inspired by my amazing, artistic Mom!

(See if you can find the black cat, duck, giraffe, swan, devil, fire, man, bat, and deer.)

Science and nature never cease to amaze me. The things we learn daily often have to do with animals or similar creatures and are spurred by a single question that leads me down a rabbit hole that turns more into a black hole, sucking me down farther and farther until I realize that I long ago lost the interest of my fellow adventurers and am pursuing this trivia further on my own.
I'm sorry, but I just can't help it. I just find the world interesting and fascinating and my brain yearns for information like a sponge left out in the summer sun. And the world answers back with Wikipedia, a website that I'm sure sometimes was created just for me. I could spend years on Wikipedia reading through the information there. And I find it astounding that the site is updated daily, hourly even. Within an hour of something happening in the public's eye, it's probably on Wikipedia. Try it sometime. It's amazing!

So, what did I learn this week on Wikipedia? Well, a couple of days ago I learned that the largest amphibian on earth can get to be 6 feet long, the Chinese Giant Salamander, but what I thought was even cooler was the smallest amphibian on earth, which also happens to be the smallest vertebrate, a tiny species of frog from Papua New Guinea that doesn't even have a common name yet. It's known only as Paedophryne amauensis.   They show the little guy perched on a dime and he could barely cover the word "United". These frogs reach an average size of only 7.7mm (0.3"), but are a perfectly formed frog in every way. We marveled at how someone actually discovered such a tiny species (no wonder they were just discovered for the first time 4 years ago) and how tiny their little tadpoles must be - microscopic even. Then today, as I type that, I read the article and discover that they don't go through a tadpole stage. The babies hatch as 'hoppers', perfectly formed tiny versions of the adults. How amazingly tiny they must be!

Yesterday I learned something else on Wikipedia. We were looking up the common Western Fence lizard (blue-bellies) which my kids catch nearly everywhere we go, and I read that in areas where this lizard lives there was a reduced amount of Lyme disease. Apparently there is a protein in this lizard's blood that when the ticks bite them, it neutralizes the bacteria that causes Lyme disease in the ticks stomach. So cool! (and kinda gross, but that's nature ;) )

Welcome to my blog! I hope to use this page to post interesting things our family is doing along with any tidbits of wisdom or knowledge we come across on our adventures.