No fancy slogan today

I'm fried. The beagles have been such good boys. But today, I could tell that they've had enough of the car. They start whining sooner, don't want to get back in the car, etc. Now that we are in the hotel, they are perfectly fine (read: asleep). I think the trip is getting old for all of us.

So tonight, we are staying in a slightly better hotel, amidst more civilization. You know why? Because I saw a Starbucks. This is the first Starbucks I've seen since Indiana!

Since the dogs wanted to stop a lot (and let's face it, so did I), we checked out a lot of things today. [We are in Wyoming now. I couldn't make it to the end of the state.]

As we were driving along, I saw a sign for the Lincoln Monument. I didn't think much about it until I saw it from the highway. He looks like like The Thing. There is a flood light that shines right on his face. Imagine how it looks at night as he glares down at the highway. Look how pissed he is!



I also decided to stop at this old "Frontier Prison". The pictures of the prison didn't look so great, but there was a wall of different branding symbols from the "Stockgrowers". I didn't read the pamphlet. Imagine branding something with a potholder?

Keep the road burnin'...

Yesterday, I was in Nebraska, walking the dogs at a rest stop. (All of the rest stops in NE are gorgeous, but that's for another post.) We saw a man with two basset hounds and another guy with two beagles. So of course we had to let all six dogs mingle. They were both truck drivers and the dogs live with them in the truck. It was fun talking to them. One of them said, "In fact, I don't really trust anyone who doesn't have a dog." I agree. I was too busy blabbing and did not have the presence of mind to get a picture. I suck. When we all said good-bye, one trucker said to the other, "Keep the road burnin'." And they told me to drive safely.
This thing goes over the whole highway at some point in Nebraska. It's a monument to a great American thing. You can see the trucks going underneath.

Nebraska has big sky.
It's really cool, but I keep looking up at it, instead of the road.

If W was K

np: 300 soundtrack, Lynrd Skynrd, The Black Crowes, Monster Magnet's 'Space Lord'. (It all fits together. Take my word for it.)


Okay, so the obscure Jimi Hendrix reference is pretty bad (and if I were at all consistent, the title would be, "If W was M"). But having crossed the Mississippi River, I am in alien territory, for now:
All television stations
All radio stations
Start with a K
And not a W...
That's wierd.

Anyway, I am just on the border between Iowa and Nebraska. I-80 in Iowa gets points for ease of use. This state has a lot of wide open spaces and an abundance of parking spaces wherever you go. [I'm assuming that's because hardly anyone lives here.] However, it gets major points off for advertising the free WiFi at their rest stops -- because the speed is somewhat slower than dial-up. This caused me stress.

The weather was nice, though. And that infernal Confederate wind from the South finally left us damn Yankees alone. Yesterday I had to just hang on the wheel and stop the car from being blown off the road. Today was no where near that bad. The day started off cloudy and cold but ended with a bright bright sun and felt pretty hot.