10/13/10: Day 20: Across Wyoming and into Nebraska
After breaking fast at Penny's Diner (free with the room), we reluctantly decided to skip the Flaming Gorge and just head east.
Another sunrise seen through the window of our room in the Oak Tree Inn in Green River, Wyoming
--Click to Enlarge--
A mirror in Penny's Diner, showing some of the relics
--Click to Enlarge--
Penny's Diner is actually retro, rather than vintage. Sure, there are plenty of vintage collectibles on the walls. But I gathered that this shiny diner is of modern manufacture in the style of the golden age of chrome
--Click to Enlarge--
Wyoming is hilly, high, and dry. We're crossing the Rockies, but in a relatively unimpressive area.
Wyoming. Snow fences, windmills, and winding highways through pastureland.
--Click to Enlarge--
Another sign
--Click to Enlarge--
It'll be downhill from here. This is The Lincoln rest area on the Lincoln Highway. You can see the silhouette of his monument overlooking the interstate below the sign
--Click to Enlarge--
Here's Abe on a pedestal overlooking I-80
--Click to Enlarge--
We stopped for lunch at a little state park a few miles off the interstate, but directly en route to Cheyenne on the Happy Jack Trail. I took some video and time lapse of the road and windmills. Eventually I hope to piece together a moving picture of the trip.
Road construction on State Road 210, a loop north of I-80. But at least it is well past that dirt and gravel stage we went through on Montana 69 \(http://danklarmann.com/2010SeptTrip/trip.cgi?PicNum=IMG_5066\) or in Yosemite.
--Click to Enlarge--
After the rest area, we took state road 210, the Happy Jack Trail toward Cheyenne. Here's where we decided to stop for lunch: Curt Gowdy State Park
--Click to Enlarge--
It was quite windy by the lake. But a nice lunch stop, nevertheless.
--Click to Enlarge--
Here's my new shoes, and some flowers in the roadway of Curt Gowdy on Happy Jack Road
--Click to Enlarge--
You get a better sense of the scale of these elegant workers by seeing the high voltage towers in the foreground
--Click to Enlarge--
We stopped briefly at a landfill to pause and listen to the wind turning into electricity. Impressive in a somewhat different way than hearing rushing water make the conversion. Whoosh, pause, whoosh, pause ...
--Click to Enlarge--
And into another State Capitol we go.
The State Capitol of Wyoming in Cheyenne
--Click to Enlarge--
Instead of a soldier on horseback, they feature a warrior for rights
--Click to Enlarge--
As we approach the information desk, we have to look up
--Click to Enlarge--
Each Capitol rotunda is different. It's interesting to someone who like architecture, or history, or art, or stage design, or...I don't get bored easily.
--Click to Enlarge--
Inside the Wyoming State Capitol they use more plaster and wood than stone to show off their resources. Quite a contrast to Salt Lake.
--Click to Enlarge--
Wyoming has oil. The oil industry proudly contributed this display showing off some of the variety of their products.
--Click to Enlarge--
Don't look carefully at this picture if vertigo is your bugaboo
--Click to Enlarge--
Back when I toured the Vatican, the guide regularly pointed out details of high craftsmanship that were hard to see. There, they interpreted it as proof that the artists were designing for God. Here, I'm sure it's just an artistic nicety. Pity that modernism (1930's and onward) eliminated such details from most architectural goals.
--Click to Enlarge--
Wyoming Supreme Court chamber. I like the light and skylight hanging like Damocles' sword over the lawyers heads
--Click to Enlarge--
The ceiling of the Wyoming State Senate chamber
--Click to Enlarge--
Fossils on the floor of the Capitol Building.
--Click to Enlarge--
These cut steel panels adorn all the handrails around the Capitol Grounds. Yes I had to lie down to get this shot
--Click to Enlarge--
Another of the State Capitol Liberty Bell replicas donated by France.
--Click to Enlarge--
We got to the Wyoming State Museum just before it closed. Note the boot. It had an odd assortment of displays. Lots of good relics in search of a unifying theme. As a fan of the curatorial arts, I was a bit disappointed. But still worth seeing for what they have to show.
--Click to Enlarge--
Karen suggested that we stop and shop in Cheyenne, at a place from which a friend of hers buys online. Then we moved on, see sights, sites, and scenery.
Before leaving Cheyenne, Karen wanted to stop and see the actual outlet store from where one of her friends regularly mail-orders.
--Click to Enlarge--
Military listening post?
--Click to Enlarge--
This motel (?) won't run short of teepee
--Click to Enlarge--
And into Nebraska as the light fades. We stopped in Kimball, NE and spent a half hour stopping in at motels and asking about rates and such. We chose an older place that was fine, except for the nastily smoky non-smoking room. But I was too tired to keep shopping. I liked the owner, a throat cancer survivor who had just better than no voice.
And into Nebraska. But, if that mile marker is right, we're at Wyoming mile 402. Maybe the state line is right under the road, so they decided to have the sign early. Dunno.
--Click to Enlarge--
Tired, we stopped in Kimball. We stopped at several motels by I-80, either too pricey or no non-smoking rooms left. So we drove the US-30 loop to find this old place.
--Click to Enlarge--
A relic of the golden age of road trips
--Click to Enlarge--
Big rooms. But this non-smoking room was smokier than the smoking room in which we stayed at the foot of Mt Shasta. But the WiFi was good, and we were exhausted.
--Click to Enlarge--
And when is the last time you saw a room key like this?
--Click to Enlarge--
Another, quirk, of this stay was that Kimball was having a plague of flies. A couple of dozen of them got in while we had the door to the room open. There was a fly swatter hanging by the suitcase rack that we used busily. The owner later said that it had to do with the unusually long and warm summer. And he swore that he'd never seen them so bad in the years he'd been running the motel.