Day 2, er, 3: Salt Lake to Lincoln, Nebraska

Since leaving California, we'd been following weather reports of blizzards in Wyoming and Nebraska that had closed parts of I-80, the road we are taking most of the way across the country.  When we woke up in Salt Lake on Sunday morning, the interstate was still closed from Rock Springs, Wyoming, East through the rest of the state.  I had slept poorly due to a bad cough, and was consequently feeling worse.  We decided to wait things out for a day in Salt Lake City.

We had forgotten it was Sunday, and not much is open in Salt Lake on Sunday.  I didn't have the energy to do much anyway, and spent most of the day in bed.  Scout enjoyed an extra day's reprieve from the dreaded carrier.  Below is a picture of Scout chillaxing on the sofa in our hotel room.

Salt Lake City is surrounded by beautiful mountains.  They were quite spectacular but I couldn't get any pictures that didn't have a Wal-Mart in the foreground, so didn't bother.

Monday morning we set out early, driving through the mountains as the sun was rising.  This is probably somewhere around Park City.

From the snowy mountains, I-80 winds into an area that looks kind of like the Old Thunder Mountain Railroad in Disney World...

From Utah, we drove into Wyoming -- and little sign of the blizzard that had closed the road.  There were a few inches of snow in some places, but just a dusting in others, and the roads were clear.  

At a rest stop, I saw at least six little critters that I think were prairie dogs -- except they seemed kind of smaller than I expected.  What do you think?

One of the snowier areas, below. That's Elk Mountain, part of the Medicine Bow mountain range.

Wyoming was long, but not as long as our next state: Nebraska.  We remembered from our drive in the other direction that Nebraska is very flat and very, very long.  It seems to go on forever, and is the first state we've gone through so far where there really isn't anything to look at.

There was a  nice sunset behind us, which I tried to capture in our rearview mirror:

We arrived at our hotel in Lincoln without incident, and feeling only a little stir-crazy.  We were pleased to find a Runza Restaurant just around the corner.  While preparing for this trip, I had researched some of our stopping points on the Road Food website, which indicated that when in Nebraska, one has to try the regional phenomenon that is the Runza sandwich.  It's a soft bread pocket into which is stuffed a mixture of ground beef, onions and spices.  We wisely bought the kind with cheese.

Well...the Runza is not bad.  The ground meat and onion mixture is sort of pasty, but it tastes good.  The bread is good.  But I won't go running back to Nebraska just to get one.

Perhaps due to our Runzas, we slept well last night and are getting ready to head out for our third leg of the trip.  It is only 22 degrees here in Lincoln -- the coldest weather I've experienced since the winter before we moved to California!  We'll be glad to get out of Nebraska.  Fortunately, the Iowa border is less than an hour away.