We dropped Megan at Salt Lake City airport and she was on her way to spend the second half of her spring break with friends.
Rob and I had many miles to travel before we got back to Lewis. We were in Ogden, Utah and Lewis was in Texas just north of Dallas.
We decided to take a different route back. We had come up through TX, NM, AZ, CO and UT. We decided to go back via a more northerly route with out next state being Wyoming.
We had quite a bit of mountainous terrain to cross and we were really lucky that the weather cooperated. It was cold and a bit windy but the roads were dry.
Wyoming is a fairly large state if traveled from west to east. The terrain varies from roads that are as flat and straight as the eye can see to roads that climb and curve through mountain passes.
BEAUTIFUL CLOUDS
LONG STRAIGHT ROADS
REALLY HIGH WINDS
HOURS LATER....NEBRASKA
After successfully navigating Wyoming with its windy mountain passes and even windier flats, we crossed into Nebraska. We decided that we needed to pick a place to stop for the night. We were traveling Interstate 80 and I will tell you that you can drive quite a distance without seeing much.
Rob continued driving and I looked at the map. We decided North Platte, Nebraska might be a good place to stop. It was on the way and it seemed like a fairly large city. I perused Hotels.com to find a place that took dogs.
We got to our hotel just as it was getting dark. I took the girls for a short walk while Rob checked us in. We unloaded the car and settled in for the night.
Our room was so cozy that we decided to just stay in. I had packed the leftover food from our ski trip and we had plenty. We had a hotel picnic.
We got up Saturday morning and, much to my surprise, we were greeted by snow, sleet and freezing rain. A very wide but not very deep front had settled along our route and was moving SE.
We had our coffee and breakfast and got ready to go. We were going to get away from the Interstate so we headed due south towards Dodge City, Kansas but we wanted to take a short detour through North Platte.
North Platte is a railroad town; Union Pacific Railroad's large Bailey Yard is located within the city. Today, North Platte is served only by freight trains, but during World War II the city was famous for the North Platte Canteen. Tens of thousand of volunteers from North Platte and surrounding towns met the troop trains passing through North Platte, offering coffee, sandwiches and hospitality.
The rail yard in North Platte is huge so we wanted to give it a quick drive by. The rail yard is so big that it can hold 15,000 rail cars at one time. Imagine.....15,000 rail cars! The logistics must be quite a challenge.
TRAINS OF LOCOMOTIVES MOVING TO HOOK UP WITH CARGO
There is a tower here called The Golden Spike Tower. Visitors can go to the top and get an aerial view of the entire yard. We have this place on our "come back in Lewis" list. We will come back with the RV and we will stay and explore this area. For now, it was time to head south.
The cold snowy weather hung over us for hours. The temps hovered between 23 and 26 until well after lunch. Most of the roads were in decent shape so slow and steady was the way to go.
The weather broke as we approached Dodge City. The skies cleared and the temps moved above freezing.
If you ever watched the television series Gunsmoke, you might think of it when I mention Dodge City. Gunsmoke was this really cool western that ran for 20 seasons from 1955 to 1975. The main character was Marshall Matt Dillon and many sub characters filled out the show. Toby Keith wrote the song "Should have been a cowboy" and it referenced Marshall Dillon and his love interest....Miss Kitty. Gunsmoke might be considered hokey now but it was cool in the 60s and 70s.
We also put Dodge City on our list of places to come back to and kept going south,
We got an hour or so out of Dodge City and our route took us right through an area that had recently been ravaged by wildfire. We drove and drove and the scorched earth stretched as far as we could see to the east and west. I had read the news about the fires and sort of knew the location but had not related it to our route.
BLACK EARTH AS FAR AS WE COULD SEE
It was fascinating to see places where the fire had seemingly "jumped" and left bits of land unscathed. The bits were few and far between but we did see them.
I cannot imagine the impact these fires had on the families impacted. I know there was loss of human life and there were huge losses of livestock and property.
Our route started moving more SSE and we left Kansas and crossed into Oklahoma towards Oklahoma City. We were treated to a beautiful sunset as we continued our trek.
We drove the rest of the route in darkness. We saw the red blinking lights of the wind farms all along the interstate.
We quietly entered Texas and our final exit brought us ever closer to the motorhome. We drove into the RV park and found Lewis just as we had left him.
We'd had a great trip but it was wonderful to be home.
Another great day in this thing we call life.
No comments:
Post a Comment