Tumble Weed

Tumble weed is unique. It grows all summer and is green and lush and full. Then at the end of its life it becomes a brown skeleton like structure . It spreads its seeds by breaking off from its base and then the wind blows it and it rolls along the prairie. It often gets caught in fences along its journey.
That is what happened to this one.

 I have seen piles of them, many feet deep along the fences.

Valley of The Trees

Originally it was Ken's plan to head to Thermopolis but because time was getting short we could not travel that far. It was already Sunday and we had to be in Boise on Tuesday.
Our decision was to spend a couple of days just relaxing. We choose to do that at exit 216 on I84 in Idaho. This was a campground near the freeway and it has a pool so that was our objective.
We were so very pleased. This turned out to be the best RV park yet.It was easy on and easy off; it has many many shade trees, has wonderfully level sites, has a pool, a restaurant, a well equiped store, a wonderful river walk and the cleanest nicest washrooms ever and all of this for 33.00 a night.

We would spend Sunday and Monday nights here. We relaxed and enjoyed the grounds and the pool.Monday night we had dinner from this restaurant and it was very good.

Then On Tuesday we headed for the rally.

Idaho as seen from I84

On Sunday we headed into Idaho and turned north using I84. Because I knew that Idaho was  and is famous for potatoes I expected the terrain to change and become more like my idea of farm land. But the change did not take place as quickly as I thought it would. Idaho is still high dessert at this point, still around 4000 feet and still very dry.

But before long we we began to come to areas of the state where irrigation was possible and the difference was amazing. Add water and Voila!! Barren becomes bountiful.

Wyoming and Utah as seen from I80

We left Cheyenne around eight and within a few minutes we were into the dry lands.

We drove past a fairly good sized wind farm right away. These hills and ridges seemed especially suited to a wind farm.

We learned that they have more prong horn antelope than people so we were on the lookout for them.

Our first stop was the rest stop with the Lincoln Memorial, at mile 323. This is a grand place with many exhibits telling about the area. Some of the topics covered were the railroad history, the animal life of the state, the cowboys such as Butch Cassidy and the other attractions you could visit. We spent some time there and then I went outside and took pictures of the Lincoln memorial.

Then we were on our way again. All of Wyoming is over a mile high and it is actually high dessert. At one point it was almost 9000 feet high. We drove past mile after mile of nothing. It is all brown, I guess I should say tan, and there are no trees. There was some sagebrush and every now and then you would see a bush.

The land had some rolling hills and every once in awhile we would come to a geological formation of significance and perhaps a large rock left by the glaciers.

The land is barren and no farming is being done.

There was mile after mile of fencing and I had to wonder if the fence was there to keep animals inside the fence or was it to keep them off of the road?  Were they there for the antelope or for the cattle that might be there in the spring of the year?

Sometimes we saw pumping oil well grasshoppers and once or twice we saw what might have been a gas processing plant.

Driving along you had to wonder why anyone would choose to live here.

Do you recall the Burma Shave ads? The ones where there was a sign every mile or so. I don’t but I was told about them.

Anyway there is an oasis almost 2/3^rd of the way across the state. They call the spot Little America and the first sign telling you about it is at the one hundred mile mark and there were many of them after that.

 Of course we had to stop there. Right in the middle of the dessert is this complex of stores and restaurants and even a group of cabins to rent. There were playgrounds for the children and a large truck stop and loads of parking. It is really quite an amazing sight.

 They had wonderful soft ice cream cones for fifty cents so of course we had to have one. I expected a very small one and to my surprise it was a very large one. The best 50 cent value of the entire holiday,

The day began cool enough but before you knew it the gauge was showing 30 degrees. The miles of dry, barren, lifeless countryside continues for most of the day.

Around four o’clock we saw dark clouds begin to gather in the north . We could see that it was trying to rain. In this part of the country they often get what is called virga.  The air is so dry and it is so hot that the rain actually evaporates before it hits the ground. We could see this happening in the distance.

But before long we ran into actual rain. It rained very hard and there was thunder and there was lightning. In fact it was so bad at times that it was difficult to see the road.

By now we were almost in Utah, and as we were leaving Wyoming another huge field of Wind turbines appeared. So the state was punctuated with windmills, some at the beginning of I 80 and others at the end of I80

The next day was more of the same. Basically Wyoming and Utah are high dessert with much brown and very little green. The altitude here ranges from 4 to 5.5 thousand feet.

But Utah has water available in some spots and when they do they irrigate and that really makes a difference.

Again I have to emphasize that this view was from the I80 corridor and it may or may not be representative of the entire state.

Cheyenne

We are in Cheyenne and the altitude is over 6000 feet,so we are in a mile high city.

We arrived yesterday at around super time and we set up quickly and went to the pool for a dip and then back here to eat and check out all of the tourist literature we gathered and make our plans for the next day. Again the sunset was wonderful.

The reason for the stop here is Ken’s love of steam trains. This was the home of so many of the firsts in Steam train history.

In Holiday Park, one of the Big Boys (number 4004)  is on display.

The Big Boy is the largest steam train that was ever built. In all 25 were built between 1941 and 1944 and they were built in New York. They were 132 feet long and weighted 1.2 million pounds. Today eight are still in existence and can be viewed.

It was just announced that Union Pacific plans to restore Big Boy number 4014 back to operating condition and it will be in Cheyenne. I see a tip back here in our future.

When you get up close you cannot believe how large they are. We took many pictures.

Today another of their main attractions is the Depot Museum in downtown Cheyenne.

This is the center of the community with a completely restored Union Pacific Depot. Here we found a wonderful model train lay out. They did it in such a way that you could see how the different effects were accomplished. We were there for at least an hour admiring what was done; talking to the guide; and trying to imagine these things in our dream lay out.

We had lunch at the depot restaurant and it was a step back in time to be sure. The floor tiles and the walls were the originals and the light fixtures and the rest were reproductions. It reminded us of the many times we shared one pot of tea at the train depot in Truro. The food was amazing. Ken said the clam chowder was one of the best he has ever eaten.

A lady at a nearby table had what was called a waffle sundae and I just had to take a picture of it.

After lunch we strolled around the Depot Plaza and took more pictures. I gather that tomorrow will be a farmers market here in the plaza and tonight will be a free concert. So it is a center and gathering spot for the citizens

I was so impressed by the older restored buildings. Some are so very beautiful; however the heat was so intense that we decided to head back to the campground and the pool.

We had a great dip and then the black clouds rolled in and we were treated to a very intense thunder storm.

Tomorrow we head for Utah. It is 360 miles from here and we are about 900 miles from Boise and the rally so we are doing very well time wise.

PS.

The cicadas are not here.

Cicada

You would not believe how loud these things can get!
At one point on Tuesday we were driving along with the windows open.
We could hear the sound of the other vehicles on the road including the big trucks.
We could hear the sound made by the breeze coming in the window.
We could hear the motor of our truck and above it all when we came to trees we could head the cicadas singing.
Even Ken could hear them.
Their song is hard to describe but you can go online and listen to a recording.
I have only heard them, I have not seen any, thank goodness!!!

Here is what I learned:

They’re loud, they’re punctual and they’re kind of gross.  After 17 years buried in the soil, the cicadas of Brood II are emerging with the hot summer weather. Once above ground, they’ll sing their intensely loud mating song—which can reach as high as 120 decibels—breed and die, leaving billions of squishy orange corpses on the lawns and sidewalks of America.
The basic details of cicada life for Brood II is pretty well established: born in 1996, they burrowed into the ground, where they lived safely as nymphs for the next 17 years, sucking on sap from tree sap. 17 years later they burst above ground at once, depending on their sheer numbers—as many as 30 billion may emerge—to ensure that enough will survive to reproduce and begin the whole cycle over again.

Fortunately they do not sing after dark and so they do not keep you awake.
I am relieved that we will be well out of their territory before they decide to die and cover the roads
and lawns with their corpses.

Massachusetts to Nebraska

We left Cape Ann around nine and it was a beautiful morning.

 I decided to just enjoy the dive and the scenery,

 I made no hats at all.

We just sang with Benda,(Lee);Don and Phil (Everly) and Roy (Obitson). And we tried to see who saw the palindromic  numbers on the plates and the mile makers first.

We traveled through Massachusetts and Connecticut and New York and into Pennsylvania. We spent the night at a Pilot truck stop. It was great, not noisy and it cooled off nicely.

The next day was almost the same.

We got an early start but this time I made two hats. By now we are beginning to cross the county and we are passing fields of corn and crop we do not recognize, It turned out to be “soy beans”. For the next couple of days we dive past miles and miles and aces and aces of corn and soy beans. I could not imagine that there would be so much of the same crop. We passed through Pennsylvania and Ohio and into Indiana.

We spent Sunday at a Wal-mart in Decatur. It was a beautiful sunset

and so before we called it a night we went for a walk and we saw something different for a parking lot. They have a fairly large Mennonite population and so they need a special place for the horses and carriages and of course a way to take care of the manure.

Now we are getting into flat land with few trees but still are seeing corn. There is a wonderful wild sunflower filling the ditches.

Last night we stayed in Oxford, Iowa. The campground was called Sleepy Hollow and it was so very pretty. But the sites were  very slanted. It took Ken a couple of tries to find one that might work but even with that we had the trailer up on three boards.

They said they had WiFi but it did not work.:-(

We did laundry and showered and generally recovered from a couple of hard days of traveling. We had hoped to use the pool but we were late arriving and the pool was closed. But the grounds were very beautiful.

At one of the rest stops in Iowa there was a U-Haul truck there and on the side was a story about Canada and the Underground railroad. It made me proud to see this.

You might wonder how an RV stop is chosen. Well there are several things we look at and they might differ from night to night.

Sometimes it has to do with location, especially if we want to hunt out lighthouses.

Sometimes it might be because of what they offer, do we want to do laundry or do we want to relax by the pool and do they have WiFi?

And it may be whether or not they accept our membership cards such as Good Sam or Passport America or AAA.

Well tonight we are in Waco, Nebraska and we chose this campground, The Double Nickel, because it was a Passport America and because it had a nice big pool.

NOT, it is no longer a Passport America and they have drained the pool already!! But as you can tell the WiFi works great.

This is a very wide state and we have another 360 miles to go before we get into Wyoming. So we will be on our way early in the morning, hopefully before it gets too hot.