Green River, Wyoming, to Ogallala, Nebraska
Driving Time for Day 2: 6 hours 39 minutes
Nebraska facts: I’ll add these to Day 3’s post…tomorrow will be all Nebraska
“My father owns a grocery store, and in this grocery store he sells, something that begins with the letter ‘C’!”
My daughter had never played this game before and didn’t want to stop when we reached the hotel. My son guessed “Elmo!” every time. He’s carrying on the family tradition of random suggestions for the paternal grocery store game; when I played this with my family as a child, my little brother would guess “Smackerel!” (inspired by the gopher in the Winnie the Pooh movie) every time.
At the Sierra Trading Post Outlet Store in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the kids ate a frozen pizza at the little cafe there, and I replaced the two pair of pants that got holes in them during the move and the first day of the trip. I also bought a traveling shirt and a running shirt that’s long enough to cover my belly so I don’t have to pull it down every tenth step when I jog. I brought some laundry soap with us, so I washed all of the new clothes in the hotel sink to test out their manufacturers’ “fast drying” claims and maybe have non-holey pants to wear tomorrow.
We crossed the Continental Divide during the drive today. I remembered that this meant something about the rivers on one side running to the Pacific and the rivers on the other running to the Atlantic. I thought I also remembered reading in The Gathering of Zion by Wallace Stegner that on the western side, it was incredibly arid and on the eastern side, there was more moisture. Stegner wrote about how, when the Mormon pioneers crossed the Continental Divide, their wooden traveling desks split from the dryness. There certainly seems to be more natural greenery in Nebraska compared to Wyoming, but I’m not sure about relative humidity.
There are more mosquitos here, it seems. I scared my husband by smacking one on the back of his neck without warning him.
While my husband bathed the kids after our family swim tonight, my daughter spontaneously began singing “Takin’ Care of Business.”
“How do you know that song?” my husband asked.
“I don’t know,” my daughter answered. “I think I just made it up.”
Imperfect Happiness 