Report from the road.

Terry and I are currently in Cheyenne, Wyoming after two days of driving across PA, OH, IL, IN, IA, and NE. We've covered between 1600 and 1700 miles of the 2800 total from the Aerie to Eugene, OR.

Sunday, Mother's Day, proved to be an excellent day to travel through Ohio and Illinois. The roads were empty and the weather was ideal. We ran into areas along I-80 where construction would have been happening on a weekday but, no one was at work. (I-80 is ALWAYS under construction in every state. I think they start at one end and rebuild the highway working from west to east. When they reach the east side of the state, they go back to their western border and start over again.) We managed to cover about 825 miles and made it just beyond Davenport, Iowa. Virtually no rain fell along our route although the southern parts of Indiana and Illinois got hammered with severe weather.

Monday was a good day on the road, too. We again traveled between 825 and 875 miles (I'll have to check the trip odometer in the morning) and the weather was gorgeous. We would have made even more distance but...well, Nebraska has three Cabela's that are close to I-80. We managed to pass the first at LaVista, but the one at Kearny--although very difficult to find due to poor signage--just called to us. And the original store in Sydney was just about the right time for our dinner stop. We managed to spend very little at each and could have picked up the items we did purchase using my accumulated points. (Total time "lost" at the two Cabela's was about 1 1/2 hours.)

We gained one hour each day as we crossed west from one time zone to another. This will not happen tomorrow, however, as we will only be going as far as the area north of Salt Lake City. We'll lose that time on our way east next week but it's making the trip westward quite nice.

Some observations from the road:

Along one stretch of I-80 in Ohio, where the road was three lanes wide, there were signs saying trucks and slower vehicles should use the right two lanes. This resulted in some slow cars remaining in the middle lane and slowing traffic down. Proper signage should have been: Keep right except to pass. No trucks in left lane.

The stretch of I-80/I-90 to the southeast of Chicago is still under construction. It has been under construction since at least 1993 when we did a tour of the western states with the kids.

Despite being very windy in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, only Iowa had any sizable wind farms generating electricity. It also had very large corn farms producing corn for energy (ethanol) and has some of the largest refineries for ethanol production in the US. I am led to believe that these refineries have filed for bankruptcy. (Search "ethanol refineries" and "bankruptcy" and "Iowa" for a list of articles VeraSun is one company that has already been auctioned off under Chapter 11.)

Kansas may be super flat (as I reported when we drove out to Colorado a couple of years back) but so is much of Nebraska. And Nebraska is much, much larger than you think. Over 400 miles from the east side to the west, you could plop Pennsylvania into the eastern portion and still have over 100 miles on the west uncoverent by the Keystone State.

One good thing about Nebraska is the 75 mph speed limit. Although, traveling at that speed will really, really kill your mpg levels--especially since you are likely to be batteling a wind AND you are going up hill most of the time as you head west. The highest point in the state is where I-80 crosses into Wyoming.

There have been tons of calves born to the cattle in Iowa and Nebraska so don't feel badly about eating beef for dinner. The little ones dot the pastures in plentitude! (Oh, and as cute as the calves and their mommas are in the field, Terry says feed lots really, really, REALLY stink! But then, she can smell whether a coin is heads or tails from across a room crowded filled with curry loving Indians.)

Birding at 70-80 mph is extremely difficult--especially if you're the driver. We did spot some interesting birds along the way, however. Most were large as you might expect. In the flooded waters along I-80 in Illinois we spotted a horde of Common Egrets. Hawks abound along the highway verge and Terry identified many Red-tailed Hawks, a pair of Ferrigenous Hawks, a Swainson's Hawk, a couple of Kestrels, and perhaps a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Bank, Cliff and Tree Swallows could be seen at every crossing of the Platte River in Nebraska and we got very up close (perhaps too upclose as it smashed into the windshield of the truck) to a Rough-winged Swallow on Route 15 in PA. Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Grackles, American Robins are far from engandered. Several times in the waning hours of the afternoon on Monday, we spotted Wild Turkeys in the fields between the highway and the Platte River in Nebraska.

With the distance we've made so far, we should have no trouble getting to Salt Lake City, Utah tomorrow. We will then see about doing some real birding in the evening and on Wednesday morning at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

We got a phone call from Adam, who is babysitting our cats and keeping an eye on the Aerie for us. He had given each of the cats a whole can of moist food for dinner tonight and then though better of it when he took a look at the stock. He called to confirm that, yes, we feed them ALL just one can of food a day. That is, each cat gets just 1/3 of a can of food. If Adam continues to feed them each one can of food per day (he won't), Chester will look like a beach ball!

That's about all for now, time to hit the sack and get ready for what tomorrow may bring. I'm toying with the idea of getting off I-80 and doing some back country roads. We'll see how much time we have.