Day 3 ... Nebraska Is Flat!!!

We left Illinois this morning and almost immediately crossed the Mississippi River into Iowa. We had to drive through some more storms until we reached Des Moines. From Des Moines to the Nebraska border, it was a beautiful day. Once we crossed into Nebraska, however, the sky became gray once again, though it never actually rained.

As everyone knows, when driving through Iowa, all there is to see is corn!!! It's everywhere and it's endless. Once we reached Nebraska, it was amazing how suddenly the geography changed from the rolling hills of Iowa to the near endless flatlands of Nebraska.

On our way to today's destination, North Platte, Nebraska, we stopped in Gothenburg, Nebraska, which was our original plan for this day before we received word that the campground we were supposed to stay at had to be closed due to flooding. In Gothenburg, we paid a very brief visit to an original Pony Express station that is now set up as a museum (souvenir shop). We then continued on to North Platte, and set up camp for the night.

Today's drive was a long one ... about 8 and a half ours, with only a few very short stops. Josh didn't sleep at all today, so he was getting pretty cranky in the final hour or two. Hopefully he'll listen to me tomorrow and take a little nap during the ride to "shorten it up" a little. After today, we are now more than 1500 miles into our trip.

While we were setting up camp this evening, several gentlemen walking by our campsite stopped to say hello. All of them are camped with RV's, and they had all stopped to mention that rain is expected for tonight. I'm hoping that our preparations will keep us reasonably dry, or better yet, that it doesn't rain after all. We've got our easy-up set up in front of the tent and we set up a tarp as an added rain-fly over the tent. Our Boy Scout skills are really proving to be useful, particularly the double half-hitch and taut line hitch knots that we've both learned!!!

After dinner, Josh and I played a game of Risk ... he crushed me!!! I just couldn't seem to roll anything other than a 1 or 2!!!

Tomorrow we head to our first "real" destination ... Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, near Montrose, Colorado. It's another long drive, but at least after this one, we get a day off from driving, followed by a day with only a fairly short drive.

That's it for now ... got to get to sleep so that we can get out early tomorrow morning.