Day Seventeen: Grand Island to Laramie

So today we got up early and drove just over 400 miles to Laramie, Wyoming. (It's a good thing we didn't pick Cheyenne, since it's Frontier Days there and the town is packed.) It was a long, hot day - the heat is supposed to break tonight in Nebraska, I hope it does - but uneventful till just before Laramie when the sky clouded up and the rain came. I'd almost forgotten rain - okay, not really, but I'm sure they'd kill for it a little further east. The guy at the hotel said it's been raining every afternoon for a while...

This is the Grand Platte River Road Archway Monument, and it's rather startling to see across I-80 in the early morning.



The drought is really hurting the crops that don't get irrigated



A Pony Express station site that we didn't see



And the Platte - always flat and shallow - is very much the latter now



This dino has fallen and if he can't get up, he'll be a fossil. Or Sinclair oil.



That's looking out into Colorado (looks like Nebraska, doesn't it?)



Although the heat is nasty, I'm very glad we're not driving across here in January!



This part of Nebraska looks different - it's not flat, and it's mostly cows instead of corn.





Welcome to Wyoming!



And just over the state line - I'd have let this wait for the Wyoming birds, etc, post later on but it's a first for me - a Eurasian collared dove.



Really? I mean, really?



I hope the cows can't read!



Rain! After all those hot, dry days in Nebraska and Iowa, very welcome - though it did come down very hard for a short while. Lots of lightning and thunder, too. Exciting.



Wind turbines (there are a lot of them out here) in the rain



Rain on the rocky landscape coming into Laramie



The storm line - quite clear!



And the view out our window, as the sky clears and the night comes on