Nebraska and Colorado

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I read recently in the NY Times that Omaha (and, presumably, the Midwest in general) is where the Crocs craze really took off a few years ago. Yesterday we stopped in Iowa City at a sporting goods store. The girl at the door openly stared at my feet, and I wondered if it were just their size or the staid color choice of my favorite Crocs that caught her eye. Surely she’d seen Crocs before since the shoe department featured more Crocs than I’d ever seen, including thong and sportin’ two-tone versions. I did not, however, see a single person wearing Crocs as we zipped through the rest of the mall.

Anyway, we got a relatively late start today, heading west on I-80 out of Omaha at 8:45 am. (Still noting time but Mike changed the clock in the minivan to MDT so the confusion will soon be upon me.)

It’s about 345 miles across Nebraska on I-80 if you veer off into Colorado on I-76. It was a gorgeous day, much more pleasant than when we crossed a year ago because there was very little wind. Temperature was about 72.

One of the nice things about I-80 in NE is there are lots of rest areas, even more than we needed. We had lunch at an especially pleasant one near exit 190.

What did we see in Nebraska… quite a few cows, the capitol in Lincoln from a distance, long trains, the Platte River, and the big blue sky over the mostly flat terrain.

Got a phone call from Dan somewhere along the way. He and Martha were on their way home from the library, and we were whizzing down I-80… what a different world from our early cross-country road trips when we were gone for weeks and noone knew exactly where we were.

We stopped, as usual, in Julesburg, CO for gas. And then on to Denver. This part of CO is also mostly flat and wide open. About 60 miles outside of Denver, we came over a rise and got our first glimpse of the snow-capped Rockies… or was it only fluffy white clouds floating above the horizon. It was probably at least 15 more miles before I was convinced that they really were the mountains.

About 20 miles out of the city, we pulled off at an exit so that Mike could take over the driving and I take over the maps. There, in the little triangle between the ramp and the roads was a dogie town with lots of little dogies and baby dogies.

We headed to downtown Denver and the library. You remember the Art Museum, Andy? The library is right next door. Our quest in the library was a 1969 obituary for one of my mother’s cousins. No joy there, but it’s a handsome library.

Stopped by the Wild Oats store on the west side of town and picked up some groceries and dinner. As the sun sunk into the west, we headed into the Rockies and through the Eisenhower Tunnel planning to stop somewhere around Dillon for the night.

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