Day 2: Nebraska to Thermopolis, WY

Day 2: Lake McConaughy, Nebraska to Thermopolis, Wyoming via US-25 and US-20

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Today, after an early breakfast in our RV, we left the interstate behind and took quieter, smaller highways through western Nebraska, into Wyoming, and north to Thermopolis. As Alle said, she didn’t set foot outside our RV the whole time we were parked at the RV Lodge at Lake McConaughy. It was not an inspiring location. Once on the road, the boys were most taken with the long and frequent coal carrying freight trains we saw. Along the US highway 26 heading out of Nebraska, we followed a number of old trails: The Pony Express and the Oregon and Mormon Trails. It was also the track of the Union Pacific Railroad carrying coal to help provide the two coasts’ need for power. We saw a 150 car coal train heading east about every 10 minutes in the early part of our journey.

Western Nebraska and Eastern Wyoming were barren, rocky, stark, mostly flat and harsh. We didn’t see much other traffic or signs of life. We rode past farms of some corn, some sugar beet and cattle. The land is big and open and looks best for ranching and grazing herds.

I mostly kept the boys entertained, which on day 2 of our long driving days was not as easy to do. We played games, drew some pictures, attempted naps (I did; the boys did not) and ate snacks. In the end, we all watched the movie Cars for the last two hours of the ride, while Ricardo drove. The boys have not seen that or any full length movie before, so it was novel. Peter’s bump is better today and both boys continue to be excited about our trip.

Our last hour of driving was the most interesting. We passed through the Windy River Canyon in Wyoming starting near Shoshoni on our way north to Thermopolis. It is a very deep canyon, carved by the Windy River, exposing layers of stone about 500 million years old. We are visiting Thermopolis to see and hopefully feel the largest natural hot springs in the world. The park here has at least five, which we hope to see and perhaps dip into tomorrow, before we make our way to our first National Park on this trip, Yellowstone.

 

Day 1: Leaving Iowa for Lake McConaughy, NE

Day 1: Des Moines, Iowa to Lake McConaughy, Nebraska via North Platte

Saturday, July 27, 2013

We are off! Day 1. When the RV arrived yesterday afternoon, it was clear that no one has really cleaned it in a while… We spent our first few hours with it washing the insides and spraying disinfectant. With boys dragging their blankets around and going barefoot, we wanted them to at least not catch anything. We finished packing the RV last night around 1 am and there was more clean-up and last minute items to organize inside until about 2 am. When Peter was the first one up at 6 am, it made for a short sleep! Luckily, there was not much work to do this morning other than for Ricardo, who still needed to pack; we were able to leave by 9:30 am. We managed to back out of our driveway without scraping anything and we were on our way.

Sunny, clear, breezy and about 80 F, the weather was perfect. We drove on I-80 west in Iowa, passing the windmills, Lake Anita and Council Bluffs.  The boys were kept entertained by the novelty of riding in an RV and by drawing many pictures of RVs. We identified every interesting truck on the road and Alle started to track license plates. We stopped for a corned beef hash style brunch at a Sapp Bros. Café outside of Omaha, NE and visited the largest railroad train “classification and connection” yard in the world in North Platte, NE on our way to Lake McConaughy, Nebraska.

Our only mishap so far is that Peter crashed while running on the concrete near the railway yard on our way back to our camper. We were focused on his knees when I noticed a huge goose-egg bump on his forehead. Ricardo ran off to get ice (which almost required an “incident report” from the gift shop) and I tried to hold frozen pasta from our little freezer on board, to help the swelling bump. Peter is a trooper and after about 30 minutes of icing and some kids’ Tylenol, he announced it didn’t hurt anymore although it is still a very large bruised bump.

Our other surprise came when we arrived at our camping area near the North Lake Lodge after about eight hours of driving. This is our once in a trip opportunity- hopefully - to experience a very crowded area of trailers and campers filled with rowdy families. Our site was filled with the overflow from a large beer drinking family in the three sites next to ours. Hmmm, we are planning to leave early tomorrow for Thermopolis, Wyoming. We are hoping the camping areas get better from here!

Day 0: Packing up

Day 0: Packing up

 

One Mission. Three weeks. Five people.  

We are surrounded by packing lists and packing piles… This is our first blog entry for our three week venture to try to see most of the National Parks between Iowa and Sun Valley, Idaho. We set off tomorrow. The boys are playing happily and the rest of us are frantically packing a small household worth of stuff to fit into an even smaller RV. I hope to upload a photo of our rental RV when it arrives.