April 16 Moving South - Kansas to Arkansas

Starting the day early at 8:30 am in Hays, Kansas, gave us 56-degree weather and clear skies for the beginning of our drive and the goal of reaching Arkansas tonight.  The landscape before us fully met our imagination of Kansas topography, flat and a view for miles!  The cultivated fields are already bringing forth green shoots and look like a luxurious green carpet leading out from the road to the horizon. 

  

Oil drilling rigs, wind generators, and Eastern cottonwood trees share the view with farm homes and fields.  

The Eastern cottonwood trees are sprouting their leaves more and more as we drive east.  They were landmarks for pioneers traveling west, indicating water along creeks and rivers, shade, and a place to rest.  Prefering moist soils, these trees, however, tolerate heat, drought, and harsh winters, all conditions Kansas regularly delivers.  Evidence of wildfires was also visible with strikingly green fields covering wide areas where the fires had spread, in contrast to other nearby fields still covered with dry, brown grass.

We spied five horses standing in the shade of an R.V. park's billboard early on.  Later, there was antique farm machinery sporting a sign that read "BANKERY" meaning it was a cottage or home-based business selling homemade baked goods directly to consumers.

Kansas has an abundance of both modern-day wind generators and the older windmills across the fields we passed.  The newer one is for electricity, and the older one is for pumping water.  Often, we saw the windmills providing water for livestock. Here I captured a photo of both the old and the new together.  

In Park City, Kansas, we passed "Thyssenkrupp Aerospace" which focuses on metals distribution, processing, and logistics for aerospace manufacturers within the U.S. distribution network.  Near Wichita, Kansas, we passed an unusual, white geodesic home.  Finally, in Fredonia, Kansas, I got a photo of one of the many grain storage facilities we saw along our route today.

  

We passed through Missouri briefly on today's route, where it is easy to see the layers of stratified rock exposed by highway cuts through the rolling Ozark Mountains.  Hundreds of millions of years of sediment piling up in ancient seas here were followed by a slow uplift.  Exposed by road construction and through natural, deep erosion, it is an interesting introduction to geology.

  

We ended our day in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at what appeared to be rush hour.  Grateful to arrive at our reserved Great Western Inn lodging for the night, we ordered in from Pizza Hut and called it a day.

From Winter to Summer in One Day

Yesterday's snowstorm left plenty of reminders of winter along I-80 this morning, alongside the clear road surfaces we traveled under a sunny, blue sky.  We left early at 8:30 am, wearing winter coats in 39-degree weather.  

 

Along the way, we saw a herd of pronghorn.  Often called antelope, they are common in Wyoming, which holds their largest population in North America, about 320,000 animals.  I was amazed I was able to capture a quick photo of them while we traveled at 75 miles per hour!

Another quick photo early today was of a buffalo.  Not a real one, but a metal sculpture of one.

Before leaving Wyoming, we spotted more evidence of natural gas production, electric transfer stations for wind generators, and oil pumping machinery near Cheyenne.  Energy production is well underway from Laramie to Cheyenne and beyond.

 

In Fort Collins, Colorado, we passed a large Anheuser-Busch Budweiser plant, and then in Loveland, Colorado, we spotted a huge Amazon facility while traveling on I-87.

Taking a bypass route to avoid going into Denver, we passed by the Denver International Airport with its white-roof terminal.  Also, nearby is the Colorado Air and Space Port, one of the FAA-licensed commercial spaceports in the U.S.  It supports horizontal launch concepts for future suborbital travel with two long runways about 8,000 feet in length.

We subsequently connected to I-70, and after lunch at McDonald's, I drove on the straight and level interstate highway, continuing easterly into Kansas.  The views all around us converted to flat farmland as far as the eye could see beneath a blue sky and white cumulus clouds, as the temperature rose to 79 degrees by the time we stopped in Hays, Kansas.  Today, we passed the halfway point of our journey.

From a Lost Kitty to a Snow Storm Pause

We began our day in Evanston, Wyoming, at the Best Western with a moment of heart-pounding stress.  Returning to our room after breakfast, Snoopy was nowhere to be found!  After searching high and low, we couldn't find him anywhere.  I envisioned him escaping while Jim put things in the car.  Jim worried that perhaps the housekeeper had inadvertently given him a chance to escape.  Finally, we decided neither of those events had occurred, and he must have made his way under the bed.  After removing all the bedding, the king mattress, and moving apart two box springs, his head popped up from beneath them.  Somehow, he had fit in between the wall and the enclosure they put under hotel beds these days.  Unfortunately, Snoopy has a good memory, so now we will have to block that space carefully each time we check into a room.

Heading east from Evanston, we continued along I-80 today.  The first thing that we noticed was a striking range of snow-covered mountains running east to west, parallel to the highway beyond some wind generators.  They are the Uinta Mountains in northeast Utah, the only east-to-west trending mountain range in the contiguous Rocky Mountains.  It looked as though they had a very generous snow accumulation over the winter.

This area of Wyoming has many interesting geological formations visible from the highway.  Buttes with very steep sides and flat or narrow tops appear regularly.  Created from a plateau or mesa, the surrounding softer rock wears away over time, leaving the harder core standing alone.

Another beautiful feature here is stratified rock made up of distinct, visible layers called strata.  Formed by sediment or volcanic material deposited sequentially over long periods of time that vary in color, composition, or grain size, these combine to create the visible layers.

We observed that there is a lot of natural gas being collected in this area, with sites bringing it out of the ground as well as what appears to be processing equipment and buildings, too.

This area deals with wind and substantial snow in the winter, and you can see snow drift fences constructed along the road to control drifting snow.  Once, we thought we saw a live elk standing by a snow fence, but after passing by, we realized it was a metal sculpture!

 

 

The straight roads here extend for miles into the distance, and after a while, it becomes mesmerizing, and you have to work hard to stay alert.

A serpentine-shaped ridge stood out to us along our drive, and a snow-draped hill foretold what was soon to become a challenging drive in the snow!

Approaching Laramie, Wyoming, we drove into a snowstorm that made visibility of vehicles in front of us almost dangerously impossible.  Prudently, we decided to stop for the day at our age.  Finding a Best Western motel, we waited out the storm and then headed into town for dinner.  The hills around town were covered in snow.   

 

Driving into Laramie, we passed by the University of Wyoming, one of the many universities in the western United States that Jim acquired for yearbook production when he worked as a professional photographer.

Upon the recommendation of the front desk at our hotel, we had dinner at Wyoming Rib & Chop House. It was delicious and the best baby back ribs we've had in a long time.  A perfect way to end the day!

 

Boise Idaho to Evanston Wyoming

After a quick cheese omelet at the La Quinta motel in Boise, Idaho, we started earlier today in heavy rain.  We are now 582 miles into our trip and were looking for fair weather after a long, rainy drive yesterday.  Finally, we could literally see light at the end of what seemed like a rain tunnel on the horizon before us amid a wind generator farm. 

The edge of the weather front tormenting us formed a straight line framing the blue sky beyond.  It was a welcome sight.

While helping us empty our home for the trip, our grandkids, Matthew and Andrea, had introduced us to Clementine oranges, and we were thrilled to find them at a Love's Truck Stop already peeled to eat.

The blue skies and clouds only delivered rain in brief intervals as we continued.  In this photo, we are passing what appear to be three grain silos Declo, Idaho, shortly after our first crossing of the Snake River.

Near Tremonton, Utah, the snow-covered mountains, including Mendon Peak, glowed white beneath dark, threatening clouds.

Escaping the rain, we encountered Willard Bay Reservoir.  Though we could only photograph a small portion of it, in the distance beyond it broadened into a large body of water.

In Morgan County, Utah, we grabbed a quick photo of "Devil's Slide" just off the edge of the highway.  This is an unusual geological formation located near the border of Wyoming in northern Utah's Weber Canyon, near the community of Croydon.  Two parallel limestone strata that have tilted to lie vertically protrude 40 feet from the mountainside, descending for hundreds of feet down the mountain, with a 25-foot erosion channel situated between them 

Near Henefer, Utah, close to Salt Lake City, an American flag flies proudly before the backdrop of white clouds and blue sky.

Cows are abundant along this stretch of Interstate-84 in Henefer with their recently born calves.

Turning easterly along Interstate-80, we start to see the red rock bluffs near Coalville, Utah, as we pass through Echo Canyon, part of Utah's famous red-rock country.  The color is caused by iron oxidation-essentially a natural rusting process.

 

In Tremonton, Utah, a small barn with a crooked roof and a white home caught our attention.

We arrived in Wyoming at 2:32 pm, crossing parts of three states today.  It feels like progress at 951 miles from Sedro Woolley, and not quite one-third of the trip.

We checked into a Best Western motel in Evanston, Wyoming, tonight, ate a spaghetti dinner in their on-site restaurant, and saw taxidermied animals in their lobby of local wildlife that were so expertly created it seemed like the live animals were present.  Outside, a fountain was decorated with an elk statue.