Road Trip to Cali: Day Two (Pt.1)

Part One: Nebraska – Full of Dix
(Note: Apologies for the late updates. We’re drowning in boxes and have been super busy!)

Day two of our road trip began in Nebraska (at Grand Island, if you remember) and had us travelling the remainder of Nebraska and all of Wyoming, ending in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to our GPS, it was going to be an exciting day travelling on a single road for 771 miles.

Take the I-80 until your eyes bleed!

After a quick buffet breakfast at the hotel we set off into the Nebraksa morning. Nothing happened for a long time. We did pass underneath this exotic archway, though, which commemorated the pioneers who first “went west”. It was The Great Platte River Road Archway. Pretty cool stuff. (As with any of the pics on here, click to see it bigger.)

From 1843 to 1869, nearly half a million men, women and children rode and walked the trails to the West Coast.

After the archway there again were great stretches of nothing, and we eventually ran low on gas. Luckily, in the expanse of the great plains lay an oasis of Dix.

Getting off at Dix.

We drove hard into Dix and to find their gas station. (It wasn’t difficult – there were like 10 buildings.) Then we got to pumping in Dix.

Dix doesn’t accept credit cards, but they’re working on it.

Pumping

Derping in Dix

A little bit more of Dix

The temperature of Dix

The road back to I-80

Once we’d had our fill of Dix jokes we headed back to the I-80 for more and more and more miles.

One thing we noticed while on our trip west was a LOT of trains. Really, really long trains. (One of them ran through Dix while we were there.)

One train out of many.

Another thing of note: In case you’ve ever wondered where the Cabela’s World Headquarters was or what it looked like – suprise! It’s in Nebraska and looks like this:

Cabela’s World Headquarters (Nebraska?! Really?)

Until we were nearing the border with Wyoming, nothing else was interesting. Then there was a bit of scenery. This seems to be the case – most states only get cool at the edges. It resulted in many “Wow, this state is going to be awesome!” comments followed an hour or two later by “Jesus, who would live here?”.

The nicest part of Nebraksa?

The happiest I looked in Nebraska (except for when I saw Dix).

After a long haul through Nebraska and a brief respite with Dix, we hit the Nebraska/Wyoming border. Post incoming shortly.

(To be continued…in Day Two, Pt.2 later today.)

Road Trip to Cali: Day One

On Friday, we said goodbye to our lovely 2-bed, 2-bath on East River Dr in favor of crashing at my parents’ place, where there was still a real bed (the movers came for our stuff on Wednesday and we couldn’t face another night on the air mattress).

Goodbye East River Dr

We headed out to the Lorelei for a few drinks and hit the hay. On Saturday we began our trip to California, with Wisconsin, Iowa, and part of Nebraska on the docket. The good-byes were hard and a lot of tears were shed. I won’t show pictures of the tears because that’s sad. Instead, here’s HWY 172.

The trip begins.

And here’s me getting gas all puffy-eyed.

Using my Valentine’s Day gas card! Thanks mom.

Wisconsin was pretty uneventful – I drove the whole way out. There were some hills towards the border.

Wisconsin gets hilly

Snow-packed, of course.

Iowa was very welcoming.

Welcome to Iowa!

And as we crossed the Mississippi we got all kinds of majestic ‘Murica.

That right there is a bald eagle over the Mississippi.

We stopped in Debuque for, uh, linner I guess, and got some Wendy’s. It was delicious. Iowa had already exceeded all of my expectations – I had not anticipated a beautiful river town with a Wendy’s right when I needed it. It was suprising.

Debuque also welcomed us. Iowans are very friendly, I guess.

While we were there we also checked on the cats, who were doing okay. I gave Konan another sedative. It didn’t really effect her.

Then we switched drivers, and Darin took us most of the way through Iowa – which quickly became exactly what we thought it would be – a barren wasteland. What a lucky guy!

Darin eating a treat because damn, Iowa.

Such scenery.

The funniest thing Iowa gave us was this “Marshalltown” water tower that Darin and I both misread as “Marshmallowtown”. It looks JUST LIKE the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Certainly not a coincidence.

“I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never, ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft.”

So there was that, and these “Kum and Go” convenience stores. Seriously? Who came up with that name? My dad?

Brought to you by dad jokes everywhere.

Things got really quiet after that as we neared the Iowa/Nebraska border – a place I’m pretty sure no one has ever wanted to go to. Then we were treated with an incredible sunset.

Maybe the Midwest IS best. It was beautiful.

Then it got dark, and everything was a blur until we hit Nebraska.

Crazy lightstown, USA

So blurry that we couldn’t even get a good shot of the Welcome to Omaha sign.

Blurry Omaha sign

We drove for a few hours and stayed the night at a Quality Inn in Grand Island, Nebraska. (For the record, it was neither an island nor grand.) The hotel was really nice, though, and the staff were friendly. The cats were finally let out of their kennel and were surprisingly well-behaved. After a brief freak-out period where the entire room was inspected at high speed both of them settled down. All four of us cuddled up and slept like a bunch of rocks.

Scenery Rating: 6 (Points for that sunset, yo.)
Driveability Rating: 8 (Score reduced for inducing drowsiness throughout most of the drive.)