This is what happens when I leave Nikki and Ashley alone in the tent at night....

http://www.sitproperly.com/bmm/images/zombie

Seriously. Be scared... be very ascared!

Morning came slow and long and in the form of the lot of us not really sure what we wanted to do. Stay here? Travel? Drive like crazy? Well, we did a bit of both.

But first let me tell you about something that happened last night. Actually, it was right when we first got to the campsite. The bathrooms there were really wacky. It was one door. Just one. On one side of the doorway was the word "LADIES" and on the other side, "MEN."  However, as I said, there was only one door. What to do? Open it, right? Sure!

I was still in the car when this went down, so this is how it happened for me. Ashley and Nikki went to the bathroom. It's only about 500 feet away. You could see it from our site. I don't know who left first, but Ashley returned first. She asked, "We're Nikki?" I said, "She went to the bathroom, didn't you see her?" Ashley, of course, did not.

"How big are the bathrooms?" I asked.

"Three stalls." Ashley replied.

Hm. This is strange. "So where is Nikki? You're sure you didn't see her?"

She did not.

About five minutes later, Nikki comes bopping down the road to our site, decked out in her pink monkey pjs. We ask her where she was.

"I was on the Men's side!" She proudly boasted.

No, this wasn't some act of rebellion. As it happened, she didn't really look at the signs, just walked in past the word "MENS" (which was, by the way, written in big black letters on the men's side after you opened the door), undressed, put on her pink monkey pjs, brushed her teeth, washed her face and didn't think twice about why the heck there was a urinal in the Ladies bathroom.

Go Nikki!

Anyway, back to the morning...

I wake up and am in a slightly grumpy mood. The trip has been hardest on me, I think. It's because I have to drive all of the time. It's not that I didn't know this coming into the trip, but still, it's rough. So I really wanted to stick around Estes Park. But yet, I really didn't want to stick around Estes Park. It's just not for me.

The daily journal needed typed up, so I got to that and chatted with my Mom for a bit on IM. Hi Mom!  Our net connection at the campground was pretty crap, but we uploaded the pictures and the words and got on the road at (I'm not joking) 12 noon.

Our only destination: Carhenge. More on that later.

Coming out of the mountains, Colorado turns into Nebraska. Just flat and... well, it's like a slightly greener and less interesting Arizona. I really like Arizona and New Mexico. A lot. This part of Colorado wanted to be like that, but just wasn't. Looking behind us, the mountains seemed unimpressive. I wanted to look back and see huge giants towering over us, watching all that we did. But I just saw some pretty big hills. Kind of depressing.

We drove north on I-25 until we hit Wyoming. Looking into Wyoming, we could see a field of windmills. Tall white spires that just screamed "renewable recourse!" They weren't even ugly like some solar panels. They were sleek and lean and just all around cool.

Wyoming, this part of it anyway, looked a lot like the part of Colorado that we just drove. We jumped onto I-80 east, which was also Route 30. Route 30 goes through Gettysburg. When I get back, I'll have to spend a few days there. We've got some catching up to do.

For us, Wyoming lasted only a little more than an hour (we'll be back).  Nebraska was up next. And as soon as we hit it, it was very Nebraska. Everything you've heard about Nebraska (which is probably not much) is true. It's flat and pretty uneventful. In need of gas, we pulled into an old old gas station along Old Route 30 (still had the concrete from the 1930's). This was like jumping back in time. Old cars were rusting along site the garage, the girl pumping our gas has frosted blond hair, and everyone seemed kind of hometown goodness mixed with a heavy dose of "what are you strangers doing here?"  Neat experience. Someday I'd like to take Route 30 the whole way from Philly to wherever it ends up. Same with Route 50, The Loneliest Road.

We thankfully exited the interstate and were on a US Route. Two lanes and just wide open spaces. Small towns with old, mostly shut down shops. Even old movie theaters. It would be nice to spend more time in places like this, but you can't hit them all, right?

Alliance, Nebraska is the home of Carhenge, our main stop for the day.  The town was like most towns we've seen on this trip. It looked like something from Route 66, but without the charm. It was old and dusty and... Nebraska. We stopped for a Slurpee and headed out to Carhenge.

Now, what in the devil is Carhenge? OK. Carhenge is a replica of Stonehenge, only, as the name implies, built out of cars.

Big, gray cars are stacked in the exact shape of the stones at Stonehenge?  Why would people do this, you ask? Why would we want to see it? Simple! They did it because they could. We're seeing it because it's there!

I was worried that it would a) be closed and b) be expensive. Luckily, it was open and FREE! This is REAL art, folks. Art is for everybody all the time! It's accessible by all people of any income bracket. Exciting!

It's really a hard place to describe, just check out the pictures. You'll probably never be going through Nebraska, but if you are, it's well worth a visit. I'm VERY glad we went. I'd love to go back for a solstice.

Though Carhenge was amazingly wonderful, we had to push on. We still had no idea where we'd be sleeping tonight. That's a fun thing, but still, it was getting late. OK, it was five, but we didn't know when we'd find something. And we really didn't want to stay in a motel.  Since Carhenge was open all the time, I suggested staying there. I would have loved it, but I'm not sure if we would have been hassled by the fuzz.

So we scrammed for the north, shooting for the Rapid City/Black Forest  (or was it Black Hills) area. We drove and drove and Nikki slept as Ashley read.  We wandered into a town called Hot Springs. They were big into Sturgis and tons of bikers were everywhere. Cool stuff. We found a movie theater that was playing biker movies all week. Mad Max was tonight, but Easy Rider is playing tomorrow, Beach Party, Wild Bunch, Mask and a few others had already played. What a cool fest!

This town was great! But we had to get going. Still no place to sleep. And with the bike rally going on, it might be tough to get a place. Only a few miles out of town was Wind Cave National Park. We were half afraid that they'd charge us $15 for just driving through it, but we ventured on anyway. We crossed a cattle guard and right to our left... a buffalo! We stopped and grabbed the pictures. This big fella was just sauntering along the road, keeping one eye on us and the other on whatever it was in front of him. Big ugly cow is what he was. But cute too.

Time to move on, it was after 7 and still no place to stay. We had a few hopefuls, but with the rally... yeah. Anyway, a few more miles and we came to a campground sign. We hung a left and were greeted by scores of ground hogs! They were everywhere! Nikki laughed goofily and the ground hogs laughed back! It was all very wonderful. We love fuzzy little critters and this trip has provided them in ways we couldn't even dream of! Thank you, trip!

Another mile and there was a mama deer with two fawns. This place is awesome! We better be able to find a site! 

What luck! It was one of those parks where you plop down in an empty spot, set up your tent and put your money in a little brown envelope. And we did just that! While picking out our site, we noticed that a HUGE Chinese family had claimed most of the sites in the trees. They had a gigantic van packed full of camping stuff. Just odd. You don't see that much. I don't know. Just interesting.

Our site overlooks some nice grassy rolling hills. A campfire was immediately set as we settled down for the evening.

All in all, a wonderful little day.

As I was writing this and the girls were away, an adult bunny hopped right past me, not noticing me until it was too late. He was five feet away and stopped in his little bunny tracks.  Slowly, he walked a big farther, stopped and for the next 15 minutes chomped down on some yummy grass.

Oddly enough, just as I was writing the bunny story, Nikki said to me, "There's something walking towards us..."

"How big?"

"Like human size."

Then I heard something big walking up to us and we could see something through the smoking glow of the fire. Something big.

"It's a deer!"

And there she was. Not 10 feet away from us. She didn't seem to mind the fire or us talking. Odd how tame they are here. No one can really (legally) hurt them, so they have no fear of humans. Just as it should be.

I took a few pictures with the flash to hopefully shoosh her on and it worked. She moved up to the tree line and away from the campers.

This place is amazing. I am in love. And sadly, we're leaving tomorrow morning.

Such is life.


Stats
Miles traveled today: 424
Hours on the road: 7
Miles traveled in total: 8975

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera.

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)