Today started out pretty ok. Well except for that lack of sleep thing. So we got on the road and Mom was going to take the first leg of the driving seeing as we were headed from Boise, ID to Denver, CO (which is about 827 miles), but at this point (500 miles into the drive) it looks like she’s going to drive the whole distance. We are currently stuck, for unknown reason’s, on I-80 Eastbound, 50 miles West of Rawlins, WY. We’ve just been sitting here for, oh, 10 minutes or so, so I decided now was as good a time as any to start the blog for the day.
What started out as an assumedly boring day, was not as boring as we thought it would be. I only ever thought I would fall asleep once! Ok twice, but still that’s good.
First off, I saw two semi trucks FULL of pea pods, which delighted me because I eat sugar snap peas like there is no tomorrow.
We made it all the way down to the Wyoming border on I-80 before we made any real stops (except rest stops). Right after we crossed the line, we realized, “We’re in WYOMING! And 4th of July is literally a month away, FIREWORKS!!” So we stopped and were prepared to spend, oh 250 or 300 dollars on fireworks. We got a ton, but spent half that. They were having a great buy one get one free sale. We didn’t buy anything that we could get in Oregon or Washington though, it’d be pointless to use our space for stuff we could get at home.
Oh, so we just discovered the reason for the delay (as we got to move very very slowly for the last few minutes). A FedEx semi (one with two trailers) was rolled over on the side of the road. The second trailer was actually 25 feet (or more) away from the rest of the truck lying on the shoulder. Hope no one was hurt! But of course, we rubbernecked and took a photo so you can see it for yourself. If anyone is expecting a package from the Eastern side of the country, it might be a smidge late.
Anyhow. So after the firework stand, we stopped and got an ice cream cone at McDonalds (it sounded good). Then we got back on the 80 and took off. Well a few miles later we got distracted again. We came over the crest of this hill and the highway was stretching out in front of us all straight and down on the floor of this little valley, and on the ridge of the hills on the opposite side were probably 100 windmills. Well as you know from the blog about yesterday Mom and I are slightly fascinated by the monstrous creatures, so once we got across the valley floor we pulled over and took a ton of pictures, alternating between the mega zoom lens and the regular lens. The three specific wind mills we were photographing happened to be in the middle of a cow range, so three black cows mosied on over to us and I got them in a few shots too. See title of today’s blog.
After wrapping up our little photo shoot we continued on towards Cheyenne, WY (where we are turning south to go down to Denver). Mom realized she needed gas, so we stopped in the smallest town I have ever seen. This town had about 20 trailer homes (the ancient single wides you see rotting away in the desert), a fireworks stand (come on, we’re in Wyoming, of course there is a fireworks stand), a gas station and a bar. The gas station doubled as the grocery store (I think) and the post office. I guess it tripled as those things then. Anyhow. We pulled into the gas station and I went into the store to use the facilities and the kid behind the counter looks at me, my shirt and says “That’s the Oregon Ducks right?” I was slightly floored. Here I am in the middle bum-f@#$%-nowhere, WY and this kid knows who the Oregon Ducks are. I said to him “Yep!” and we had a little conversation about the Ducks. I asked him if I could take a picture of him and told him about this blog (gave him the URL too) and chit chatted with him a moment. Apparently he’s been thinking about moving to Portland to go to school at the university’s (PSU I am wondering) media program. It was kind of cool. I made a friend in the middle of no where, I am so my parent’s daughter.
As we drove East on the 80, we discovered a very interesting little thing, there were patches of packed snow on the ground…not right next to the freeway, but not real far off from it. We looked at the thermometer in disbelief (it had been 80 degrees in Ogden, UT only a few hours earlier) and it said 65 degrees. How on earth? Well we still don’t know but there were “butt cracks” in the hills like in Oregon and snow was there, and on the gently slopped ground nearer the road behind the drift fences (I figure they provide just enough shade that the snow doesn’t melt, but I really can’t say that is the case), and randomly in the middle of the grass. It was really weird.
Want to know a random tidbit of Wyoming trivia? The state of Wyoming has more antelope in it than it has people.
Another interesting factoid is that they actually warn you a good distance ahead of time when there has been an accident. We figured out after all that standing still with the upturned FedEx truck, that it was indeed the accident we had been warned about 50 miles before. There had been a sign flashing “Proceed with caution: Accident ahead in 50 miles”. That was cool but we totally forgot about it until after all the “Why on earth are we just sitting here”’s happened. Those electronic signs over the highway can be a glorious thing.
Yes indeed they can be. Especially at 11:30pm in the dark after driving for 14 hours. We crossed over into Colorado without even realizing it, so we didn’t get a picture of the “Welcome to Colorado” sign like I have been attempting to procure at every border. We just might have to fake one. Anyway, we were driving into the northern outskirts of the Denver metropolitan area and one of those electric signs is flashing “Following too closely equals 4 points.” Mom repeated it and said, “Four points? Is some highway guy trying to mess with people?” I replied that I didn’t know, and then I noticed a semi truck hauling butt and changing lanes to pass us so I yelled (at the top of my lungs) “FOUR POINTS!! FOUR POINTS!!” and we broke into tears laughing so hard. That said, we now understand the points system, but only after calling Dad and making him explain it to us while we sat in our seats with tears dripping down our faces we were so hysterical, I mean, we’re from Oregon, they don’t do the point system there.
We made it to Mom’s Aunt Lou’s house about midnight. Now I have showered and we sit on our separate twin beds in the guest room typing away on our respective computers. It is about one am (mountain time) so I think I am going to call it quits for the night.
Sean
License Plates Seen
In Idaho
Virginia
Oklahoma
In Utah
Wyoming
In Wyoming
Nebraska
Nevada
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Washington
Playlist
Katy Perry
Lady Antebellum
Miranda Lambert
Toby Keith
XM’s 80’s station
Phil Collins
Jessica Andrews
Jo Dee Messina
Faith Hill
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