Travel to Escapade, 5/6/14

Day 4 - Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Wyoming to Nebraska

It has been cloudy to partly cloudy everyday so far on our trip, but today, we woke to a bright sunny day.  It was cool, but not cold.  The view that we had out of the car window, as we continued across Wyoming, was of rolling hills, mountains in the distance and mostly ranch land, some oil wells and a few cities.

We did go up in elevation, but it was mostly by going up rolling hills.  There was very little long haul mountain driving.  We did see many, many snow fences used to keep the snow from drifting across the highway.  If you noticed, in the previous picture, there aren't many trees to stop the wind from blowing the snow. 

Just before we got to the highest point on the highway, we saw how the snow had drifted along the fence and has not melted yet.  As the wind blows across the prairie or field, the snow blows up against the fence which acts like a riffle causing lower pressure behind it   That causes the snow to be "sucked" down rather than continuing on across the highway or where ever.

There is the Summit rest area, which is located at the highest elevation on I-80.  The leaves still haven't come out on the trees, in the background, at the 8640 ft. altitude.

There is quite a display explaining the history of this area, at this rest area.  Mostly, ranching and farming are current occupations, but in the 1880's there was a lot of logging of the forests that used to be here.  The logs were used for housing and for building the railroad which was used to transport the livestock and crops to market.

Much of I-80 was built along the path of the Lincoln Highway.  The Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental highway going from New York City to San Francisco.  It was completed in 1913 when automobiles were first becoming popular and affordable for families, who , of course, wanted to travel to see things that they had only heard about before.  In 1959, a monument of Abraham Lincoln was built and it is the only monument to Lincoln along the highway that was named for him.

Some stats of the monument are that it weighs 4500 lbs. and it is 13 1/2 feet tall.  That is the head only.  See it compared to the man in the picture below.  The monument was moved to this location in 1969 when I-80 was completed.

 

There is another monument dedicated to Henry Joy, who was the first president of the Lincoln Highway Association as well as president of the Packard Motor Car company.  He is often referred to as the father of the national highway system.

As we were walking back to the truck, we passed this little guy, a prairie dog.  He seemed very brave to stay out of his hole while we were only about 5 ft. away.  A crow flew by and that made him disappear.  It is so unfortunate that someone did not take care of their garbage and now the prairie dog has taken that plastic bag into his hole.

 

Tonight we are in Sidney, Nebraska at the Cabela's RV Park right next to the store.  Cabela's has outdoor supplies and sporting equipment.

Tomorrow we will continue across Nebraska.  It is a very wide state, so we may still be in Nebraska by the end of our driving day.