Finished Nebraska, through Wyoming & Utah, into Nevada

 

At Little America in Wyoming

Our first night at Cabela's was beyond interesting.  Around 11:40 I heard water running. Thinking it is a broken water line, I open the door and realize they are watering the lawn...but one sprinkler is broken and shooting water sky-high just in front of our motorhome.  Ok, all is well except now Indy wants out...so her and I go out and get wet, she does her stuff and we get wet coming back in.  All is well...until around 2 am when the SKIES opened up.  For nearly 30 minutes it rained and rained and rained, with lightening and thunder and winds.  Fortunately the National Radar showed no warnings, and sure enough it passed without incident.  The second night was fine...although the lawn was again watered (along with the roadway where the broken sprinkler's water landed.

We were up by 6 am and hit the road within 20 minutes.  Even then the sun was being blocked out by the smoke from the western fires.

Looking west, you can see the smoke off in the distance, despite the rain the area got 36 hours earlier.

Very quickly we were entering Wyoming.  We zipped through Cheyenne, and we had already gained 2,000 feet in elevation from Sidney.  My plan was to stop for breakfast at the Rest Area between Cheyenne and Laramie. 

At 8,640 feet in Elevation it is the highest spot along I-80...higher than Donor Summit which is only 7,239 feet!  

This part of the Interstate is linked up with US Highway 30, which is the Lincoln Highway...so they have this wonderful monument of Lincoln at this rest are.

After a quick breakfast, we hit the road again.   Wyoming is full of hills, rocks, ranches, weeds and sagebrush.

At another rest area we saw these two guys (the gal stayed with the truck) working with this dog on these large boulders.  Marcia thought they might be training the dog, and sure enough they were...but neither of us thought about taking a picture of them working with the dog...our bad.  Anyway, the dog is on its way to Utah to get more training, and then it is going to Africa where it will work to track down and fight elephant poachers.

 These four pictures above were taken around Rock Springs and Green River.

By 2 pm we reached our destination of Little America, about 60 miles away from the Utah boarder.  The first picture in today's blog was were we first parked...we were a bit worried about how many RVs were there when we arrived...but they all left within the hour, and we picked a good spot in their RV area for the night.  Except for a bit of highway noise, we did not have to fight any truck noises, although a few latecomers were a bit noisy.  Not bad for a free night's sleep.  It is good to see that Little America, first built in 1952, is in such good shape.

We hit the road by 7 again, and found overcast skies, and very soon a light, but persistent rain.

But it did make for some nice pictures, smoke free pictures.

Soon we were across the Utah border.

Stopped for breakfast at a rest area a few miles into Utah.

And then found ourselves headed down Parleys Canyon.  It was a bit of a white-knuckle drive down the canyon and through Salt Lake City...and the light rain did not help any.

Along the receded Great Salt Lake shoreline is Saltair III.  Number one blew down and then burned down.  Number two was set afire by an arson.  Number 3 lies there mostly unused.  Never seen the inside, but have seen pictures of all three.  Number 1 was very popular, and the other two never could reach the popularity of the first one.

WOW, look how far down the Great Salt Lake is right now!  I have seen it low like this before, have also seen it reaching the roadway of I-80...held back in a few places by sandbags.

 

The rain started to let up out by Tooele (pronounced as Too·i·luh), and it was gone for the rest of the day.

The Tree of Utah sculpture created by Swedish Artist Karl Momen, was put alongside the roadway in the 1980's.  For decades folks would park near it and take pictures, but now there is a fence and highway sign which says "No Stopping".

Marcia did a great job getting this picture as I slowed down to 55 mph.

Our destination for the day is the The Welcome Station RV Park about 8 miles west of Wells, Nevada.  There are around 20 RV sites, just less than half are pull-through, each full hook-up, and the rest pull-in or back-in, some with full-hookups and other with just water and electric.

It is a Passport America campground, but only on Sunday through Thursday and only for one night...so we were only charged $17.50 for our one night stay.

Glad I called yesterday because the park is full.  Who would have imagined that here in eastern Nevada, as dry and desert-like that it is, that you can find an Oasis like this with plush green grass, large shade trees, and friendly folks running and owning this park.

Fort Bridger Wyoming

Yes, it is Tuesday…we were in Fayetteville Arkansas on Sunday, now we are in Fort Bridger Wyoming, just 30 miles or so from the Utah boarder.  We left after church on Sunday, on the road by 1 pm.  We got to Fort Bridger around 2:30 pm today.  The route we took was 1,200 miles long.  Yes, I can drive miles and miles….but we are here for two nights so that we can rest, do laundry, and give Bubba an overdue buzz job.

Bubba, you really do have eyes behind all that hair, don’t you?

Ok buddy, stop showing off….now get back to vacuuming up all that hair!  (Actually, I cut him in the back of the HHR…I sit on Marcia’s GoGo, open up the hatch, put down a piece of carpet, and have a garbage bag handy to catch most of the hair…and there was a bunch of hair this time.  He did have a shower in our shower, what a dirty mess he was.)

Did not take very many pictures along the 1,200 mile trek.  In fact, if it wasn’t for seeing nearly 100 Pronghorns along I-80 from Cheyenne to Rawlins, one group of 20 alongside the road on grass, we wouldn’t have picked up the camera.  Of course, after we got the camera, all of the Pronghorn were way off to the side….didn't get a shot of one of them, darn!  But above is a typical view of what we saw today, along with the shots below.

    

One thing about I-80 in Wyoming, you can see the roadway for miles.  We did hit any bad weather, wet weather, nothing along the entire way.  It is going to rain tonight, probably tomorrow, then Thursday and Friday are suppose to be nice all the way to Sacramento.  We did see all the smoke in Oklahoma, which I assume was from that nasty fire there.  I thought our thermometer which is in our rearview mirror was busted Sunday when it was giving reading of high 90’s, but it wasn’t, it was really that hot, but no humidity. 

But as always in Wyoming along I-80, you hit the wind…just look at that flag, and we were headed in the same direction as this picture, so it was blowing from my left to right most of the day…nearly had a truck in our lap once as it passed, but I moved over the right line just to be safe.  

    

Fort Bridger RV Park is nothing special, but it is away from the Interstate, a nice quiet and currently fairly slow park.  We stayed here last year on our way out west too, but only for one night.  For $25 we have electricity, cable, water, sewer and peace and quiet…can’t ask for much more.  It is also right next to Historic Fort Bridger, which if the weather cooperates, we might visit if it is open tomorrow…but getting laundry done is our first concern.  Then Thursday we will go see Stephanie, and that night try to get into Nevada so that Friday will be an easier drive.  Sunday we stayed at a rest area in Kansas, and Monday night we were at AB RV Park in Cheyenne, which cost $40 for the same thing we have tonight for $25....go figure.