A Blog Along The Lincoln Highway

Sunday morning in Laramie. Big breakfast in the motel. I write a bit of this blog really fast (not the last entry but the one before that) and Glenn has the windshield-washing video ready. It’s become part of our morning ritual to put new stuff on the blog after breakfast.

Now we’re back on I-80.

Bob is driving. He sees a sign: Omaha 525. That’s our goal for tonight: Omaha or just beyond, so we can get to Woodbine, Iowa, and our friends at the Brick Street Station promptly tomorrow morning.

We’re still in the west here with big odd rock formations along the side of the road. The Union Pacific tracks just to our right. Signs along the road for Little America Hotel (Just 20 miles!) and one for Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska.

“It’s a good day to drive,” says Bob. “The haze is magnificent. It make it easier. Cloudy days are better driving days.”

Patsy Cline, John Hiatt, John Mellencamp playing off Bob’s iPod. We have a rule that the driver gets to specify music, and since each of us has an iPod, it tends to be Shuffle Songs off our personal machines when we drive.

I wish we had time for a stop at the Luxury Diner in Cheyenne where I understand the green chili is stupendous, but there’s no fooling around today.

Soon the land is level again. The Plains. We are not to Cheyenne yet, but it looks like Nebraska already. “Get used to it” is Bob’s advice.

We stop in a rest area just west of Kimball, Nebraska, and it’s a welcome center too. I pick up a handful of brochures on various highways, including U.S. 30. I ask the guy behind the counter if he has anything else on the Lincoln Highway, and he says, “Well, at least we still have some Lincoln Highway. In Wyoming, they got rid of it all. Just paved over it.”

“Well, not really,” I say.

“Oh, really,” he says emphatically. “You can ride Route 30 all the way across Nebraska but 80 per cent of it is gone in Wyoming. It’s I-80.” Then I see what he’s trying to say: in Nebraska, 30 runs parallel to 80, usually just north of the interstate, and you can take that as an alternative to the big four-lane road. You don’t have that choice in Wyoming. But I haven’t seen anything like the Medicine Bow loop in Nebraska.

Now I do like the mammoth tooth in its little plexiglass box at this welcome center. And I like the sign on the water fountain. Dishes?

I drive out of the rest area and I take the wheel for the next 2 hours till we go in search of some lunch in North Platte. We pull into a small Mexican place called Little Mexico. It’s just OK.

Then Glenn drives from lunch for a couple of hours, under the Kearney Arch, and onward.

Nebraska goes on and on. I know Route 30 is nearby, but we have to stay on the interstate to stay on schedule. You can’t drive 80 (five miles over the 75 speed limit) on the two-lane. Time constraints force a lot of people to turn their vehicles onto the wide, flat, red-light-less interstate.

At the next rest area, Bob takes the wheel for a while. He complains of traffic. We’re too accustomed to being alone on Route 30. The crazies with two-handed obscene gestures are all out here on the interstate.

By 7 pm, we realize we’ll make Missouri Valley, Iowa, easily tonight. We’re just 40 miles from Omaha. Missouri Valley is just another 20 or so miles up Interstate 29.

On my iPhone, I make us reservations at a motel, and then I suggest we stop in Omaha for dinner at the Bohemian Cafe where Bob and Jarrett and I had found a memorable lunch last year on the return trip. “That would be OK,” says Bob. “Hunky food.”

Liver dumpling soup, here we come.