Day 03 - Omaha to Laramie, WY

We woke up around 6am and Rob took a peek outside. Just to the north the sky was flashing with strikes of lightning. A look at the weather radar showed a large thunderstorm cell just north of Omaha. More concerning was the line of thunderstorms approaching from the southwest. 8am was the predicted arrival time, exactly when we were planning to leave.

The heavy winds and rain arrived at 7:30am. We decided to wait for the heavy rain to pass before heading out. The hope was that we could leave under safer conditions by 9am. It allowed us to get caught up on Blog Day 1 and get it posted with photos.

The rain slowed at 8:30 and we suited up in our rain gear. At 9 it started pouring again. We had to go anyway since our mileage was 550 miles today. It only rained for our first 80 miles so we lucked out. Traffic was fairly quiet. 

About 30 minutes from our lunch stop we fueled up and took off our rain jackets since it was terribly humid and warming up fast. Our rain gear is effectively waterproof, meaning they don’t breathe at all!

We made good time to lunch. Michele jumped off the bike to check her phone. Our new baby niece, Amelia Marie, was born at 10:23am EST and weighs 7 lbs 11 oz. We are so proud of Angela and Dan! Of course she is very cute. 

Michele was both happy and sad, wishing she could be there to celebrate. Dan plans to bring Annabelle to the hospital tomorrow to meet her new baby sister. Grammie and Papa are babysitting her at home for a few days.

Lunch was at Roos Taqueria in Lexington, Nebraska. The Tysons Foods plant was nearby and very smelly. Not too appetizing for lunch.

After lunch we had about 300 miles to go, so over halfway still. 

The day warmed into the 80s and turned sunny. We made good time on Interstate 80 West. Rob kept below speed to improve gas mileage. We saw a few alpacas, beautiful horses of all colors, and lots of cows. Here's a pretty scene.

We stopped at a Pilot Travel Center somewhere in Nebraska after about 2 hours heading west. An older gent approached Rob asking about the bike. Then he started talking about how the government is lying about inflation and interest rates. One meets interesting people on the road. Sometimes they even let their pets drive. :-)

We kept going and at the I-80 and I-76 split, the scenery changed dramatically. We were definitely in the prairie!

Rob kept an eye on the weather radar. Closer to the NE/WY border he said we’d definitely get more rain. The great thing about Wyoming is that you can see 360 degrees around since there aren't many trees. The skies looked dark ahead. We decided to stop sooner than later and put our rain gear back on. We stopped in Potter, Wyoming as drops started to fall. Back on the road and just a few miles further the skies opened up and the wind was wicked! The temperatures plummeted by 20 degrees fast to 61F. The worst of the wind and rain lasted just 5-10 minutes. We couldn’t take pictures during, but there was a really cool dark gray shelf cloud that we approached and rode beneath.

After the rain stopped we had about an hour to go. We realized we had been gaining significant elevation all day on the Colorado plateau. At our highest we got to 8600 feet! A Lincoln memorial was at the top of the peak. It would have been fun to stop and look around had we known in advance it was there. 

It is a 4500 pound bronze bust of Lincoln. They used ten tons of clay in a lost-wax process of casting. It was built in 30 pieces and shipped from Mexico to Wyoming. It was dedicated in 1959 to commemorate Lincoln's 150 birthday. It was originally placed in the highest point in the Lincoln Highway from NY to San Francisco. After Interstate 80 replaced highway 30, they moved it to its current place in 1969. This info courtesy of Wikipedia.

The scenery was great, and we could see mountains in the distance as we rode towards Cheyenne and on to Laramie. We arrived at our hotel around 6:20 Mountain Time in Laramie. Michele Face Timed with Ange and got to meet sleepy Amelia. Everyone is doing so well and it's great seeing them so happy. 

We were beat and ordered Papa Johns for dinner delivered to the hotel. They delivered in half the time as at home. We ate dinner and watched movies in the hotel breakfast room under promise to the hotel host that we not spill anything.

Tomorrow we head to Utah. The weather forecast looks nice, low 80s in Layton, Utah, our day's destination.