Just "Plain" Wore Out

Mon Jun 11 - After an early morning visit to the World's Largest Pitchfork (and driving by where the World's Largest Concrete Garden Gnome is, although we couldn't get in) we stopped at a quick oil change shop. Boy, Jiffy Lube has a lot to learn from these guys! Amazing service, quick, efficient and polite - we were on our way in less than 10 minutes. Unfortunately for us, they are a single family owned location. I hope they expand!

There were fields of power windmills that seemed to stretch for miles. We found a fun contrast to them in Elk Horn, Iowa, where there is a large Danish population and an authentic 1848 Danish windmill. It was nice to take a break and walk around in the shop in the adjoining building. Not what I expected to see in Iowa, for sure!

More than a week in the car is really taking its toll on us. What should have been a seven hour drive today took nearly eight and a half (of course, that doesn't count the time that we spent napping under a tree in a convenience store parking lot.) Driving through the plains of Iowa and Nebraska, there was not a lot of variety in the scenery, even though it had its own beauty. Fortunately, the weather was not overly hot, so when we would stop, the breeze was refreshing. We saw the World's Largest Coffee Pot just outside of Omaha (another converted water tower @ Sapp Brothers) We ate lunch at the cafe there, tasty BBQ brisket sandwiches. People in the gas station stores, snack bars, etc. were so very friendly, it almost seemed strange.

When we reached North Platte, Nebraska, we wandered through Fort Cody Trading Post (it's just down the road from Buffalo Bill's Ranch, but that was already closed for the night.) Lots of memorabilia and historic displays and of course, tacky souvenirs. We were so tired, we just had dinner at Taco Bell and hit the hotel. We've decided to skip Colorado entirely, both to save driving time, and to avoid the wildfires near Fort Collins. Rearranging the hotels again, we'll have a short drive to Laramie, Wyoming tomorrow, then to SLC! We also decided to split the desert trek up better, and will be staying in Winnemucca instead of Reno. We figure it's better at this point to be safe in how much we push the driving times.