I'm sorry these two day's never got talked about but on day 2 I drove 640 miles and on day 3 it was a little over 660 miles, so as you can imagine I was rather tired and incapable of writing complete sentences. I also want to apologize for a) saying I was going through Montana and not Wyoming and b) for loosing whatever whit/sarcasm I usually write with, alas I just don't have the mental capacity to do so.
Now for a recap of the days and some pictures of their happenings. On day 2, I picked up the drive at 7:30am with a 20˚ weather with 15mph wind gusts outside. This picture below is the scene of Utah just as we were leaving town. Unfortunately, the day didn't start that well, as I went to Carmax upon wake up and found that my car's thermostat was dead. While this tends to be a common issue from cars traveling East from California due to the weather shift, it was still a FIVE hour delay in getting the day underway. Finally back on the road just after noon, you find this picture.
I should take a bit to talk about Utah itself and particularly Salt Lake City. The city itself is basically in a fish bowl so the smog of the town just never escapes the mountains and leaves a permanent haze and breathing issues. However, once you get above the smog line and up into the mountains, the landscape and the houses are really quite pretty. There are also a half-dozen good mountains of snow runs that are open and busy. Leaving Utah about 3 hours later, one enters the land of Wyoming.
Now I have to say, Wyoming is the most desolate, boring, dare-I-say USELESS state in the union. The photo below is the only one I bothered to take in Wyoming. Partially because it was dark around 5:45pm (note the time change too), but more importantly there just isn't anything to look at. There are almost no houses, maybe 4 towns, and an entire state population about equal to the greater Sacramento area.
Eventually, I passed through Wyoming and into Nebraska around 6:30pm, or in the dead of night. The temperature had dropped from 54˚ down to 30˚ and there was some pretty mighty wind, but not that bad as day 2 ended. This ended day 2 after 9:30 hours of driving and finally getting to the hotel around 10:30 pm and getting to bed around 12.
Day THREE started about the same as 2, with a relatively early wake up and a quick breakfast. Then back to the driving through the land of Nebraska. It kinda sucks that I went now instead of 2 months ago as the myriad of corn fields had already been harvested and leveled for the impending winter. Driving through Nebraska during the day actually leads to some rather pretty scenery and a bit denser population, but you can definitely tell the "corn-bread-Nebraskan" is a true statement. The day continued passing through Nebraska, Iowa, and into Illinois mostly unhindered except for the extreme about of wind and therefore the extreme about of wind turbines. A couple of these photos are below.
You know, I worked on wind turbines for Professor Case van Dam at UC Davis for about 8 months on wind turbines, but I had never seen one that close before. I didn't realize just how huge the blades and the sections are, but when you see these things on semi trucks, you realize 80ft blades are really quite enormous. Iowa, I believe, should be renamed to the land of epic wind. For almost the entire state I was battling some pretty massive wind gusts up to 30mph and a steady wind around 20mph. It's really kinda hard to drive with such massive wind constantly berating you. Into Illinois, the land is still really windy, but not too bad. Finally getting to the hotel around 11. another day of driving was done.
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