The Great Plain Drive

Fast driving through Iowa

We started the day eating breakfast with Sandy and Jessica again. Dwayne doesn't eat breakfast, or lunch for that matter, and Marcus usually sleeps til 10. Jessica was still sleepy eyed, but nevertheless she asked us in the cutest way possible to stay a little longer. It wrenched my heart to tell her no, (see! I do have a heart!) but at least she took it well when I declined her request. After a little inspecting of the map, I determined that a toll road would save us about 100 miles, so we grudgingly took one out of the city. Fortunately, I had enough cash this time.

The drive across Iowa was farmland and freeway. I finally determined what it is about midwest gas that gives us 25 mpg instead of 35 mpg. It's the gas with ethanol added. The ethanol falsely raises the octane of the gas, and makes it approx 10 cents cheaper too. I found if I avoid the ethanol gas the car gets much better gas mileage, regardless of octane. I did further research into octane on the internet, and I found that at higher elevations your gas acts like it has a higher octane, so that's why the gas in the midwest is octane 85 for regular. See, the good thing about Iowa was that I had good internet connection across the whole state. About midway through Iowa we came upon the self proclaimed "World's Largest Truckstop". It seemed like it to me, and it was the highlight of the state.

Entering Nebraska at Omaha changed things up a little, but only briefly. Omaha is a sprawling huge city. It seems completely non descript, and reminds me of Fresno more than any other city we've been in thus far. About 100 miles outside of Omaha, a huge manmade wooden archway stretched across all 8 lanes of freeway. The sign said it was a national monument, but it seemed pretty hokey to me. That was the extent of the interesting things in Nebraska. I managed to make a couple of phone calls and chat with Dan a little bit, and Steph and I chit chatted some, but it was mostly just drive fast and get through.

14 hour drive requires addiction to caffeine

Colorado started similarly to Nebraska, but we started entering hilly country quickly. Things got dark rather earlier than normal because some thick clouds massing in the west. Soon enough we were under those clouds, and then they let loose. I thought the storm in Michigan was bad, but this one was even worse. Stephanie was driving, and she tried to continue on at about 20 miles per hour, but then the rain got so thick that everyone on the freeway had to pull over. We were in a long line of vehicles parked along the side of the freeway that stretched as far as we could see (which was only about 100 yards). Lightning flashed literally 5 times a second for about 20 minutes, and we were powerless to do anything but sit in our car and admire nature's fury. Even with the wipers going full bore and the car not moving, we couldn't see a darned thing. The lightning made us feel like we were in a strobe light, but it must have been coming from high in the atmosphere, because we never heard any thunder. Finally the rain let up a little until it was more like the storm in Michigan, so we began to creep along the freeway. As we drove along we began to run over hundreds of frogs. They were hopping across the freeway in a real life game of frogger. I have no idea what drove them all to hop across the freeway, but they were so thick we couldn't avoid them. Stephanie squealed and cringed at each amphibian we crushed, but she pressed on like a trooper. Soon enough we passed beyond the fury of the storm and continued on to Denver.

The sunset before the storm

Upon arrival in Denver we visited Stephanie's friend Christi Simpson. Steph and Christi grew up 4 houses away from eachother in Denair. Christi was very excited to have us and came down out of her apt to meet us before we even got out of the car. She showed us around her apt complex, showing us each thing that she doesn't like, but we were quite impressed with it. She has a very large balcony on the 5th floor with a nice view of some downtown buildings. We met her cats, Simon and Tigger. Oddly, Simon is a small orange cat, and Tigger is a huge gray cat. I think Tigger may be even bigger than Sherbert, but don't tell him I said so. Christi's boyfriend, John, came over to visit with us and Stephanie showed them the blog. It was pretty late when we got there though, so pretty soon we headed off to bed. Christi was such a darling, she insisted we take her bed, and she went and crashed at John's.

Simon smiled for this picture but Christi wouldn't

John, simon, christi, and Tiger

It was a little over 1000 miles from Chicago to Denver, we did it in about 14 hours.

That is all.