A Blog Along The Lincoln Highway

The internet at this Holiday Inn Express is working this morning. The woman at the desk this morning smiles and says, “Oh we had some troubles, but everything’s working now.” Oh? And where’s the rude woman who treated me so gruffly last night? And who discovered and fixed the problem if there was no problem? And was there suddenly some one to call?

Let’s get back on the sunny highway and forget this place. We don’t have a lot of luck with accommodations in this town. Last year’s expensive night in the Super 8 was actually worse than our short, few un-wireless hours in the Holiday Inn Express.

We’re on I-80 today. We stop at a Wyoming rest area for a quick break, and it’s unusual with a weirdly shaped restrooms building and a number of picnic tables scattered across the rocky brown high desert landscape. In the lobby of the restrooms building, I read the info and see that this is a green building. It’s a passive solar rest area! Ingeniously situated and designed to take advantage of the sun for power and heat.

There’s also a small area right off the parking lot here that has a sign explaining some of the joys of Wyoming Wildlife. Bob saunters over there and hollers back to Glenn and me that there are prairie dogs all over the place. They are like nature’s original Whack-A-Mole game, peeking up from their burrows, running around, having a good time. And these rest area prairie dogs are obviously accustomed to people. And they scurry up to laughing tourists like us, take any food you might offer, and they inspect, gobble up or drop the various snacks that people are sharing.

One man in khaki shorts and shirt (who looks a little ranger-ish) hollers out to the small crowd that’s watching the prairie dogs, “Don’t you people know those things carry bubonic plague?” Huh? It turns out he’s just a dad, not an official of the rest area, but everybody looks around. Bubonic plague?

Apparently yes. It’s transmitted by fleas that live on the prairie dogs, and we easterners probably paid no attention to the news stories a few years ago. The little rodents are just too cute and playful to ignore. We like them. But we get back in the car and now hope that Glenn doesn’t develop the plague.