Sunday, December 22

Mountain Standard Time. It's cold. Very cold. But the sky is blue and we can see for miles.

Anyone who knows Ken and me knows that, wherever we are, we envision ourselves living there. This afternoon and evening in Cheyenne, Wyoming we drove around the neighborhood north of the state capitol and thought, "Wow! Nice houses: we could live here!" Not yet. But the city has a glorious Romanesque Revival train station and blocks of fantastic late 19th century commercial buildings. Will people come and visit us if we live in Cheyenne or Laramie?

We're tired. We'll sleep on it, and we won't contact a real estate agent. After all we're still on the road.

Mid-Nebraska wheat and corn fields

Earlier today, leaving Lincoln, Nebraska we saw the cornfields and farms dwindling and the ranches and open ranges expanding. What had been a palette of straw yellows, browns and grays (it is winter after all) became at first more brown and gray, but then we realized that every other color was represented as well, albeit subdued by winter. The area around North Platte was gorgeous - Interstate 80 follows the Platte River in western Nebraska. After North Platte there began to be glimpses of the ancient rivers that carved bluffs and small mesas out of the soft rock. By the time we were nearing the Wyoming border the entire landscape looked like a location shot for a western movie. And at a late lunch after arriving in Cheyenne we realized that we were finally in the West: we were beyond the gravitational force field of the East Coast (even west of Chicago you still fell as if you're in familiar territory). Tonight I think we're driving with the only Connecticut license plate in the state.

Western Nebraska ranch land

It's snowing now, a light, soft, dry snowfall - Ken just returned with the dogs: they did not appreciate the light, the soft or the "dry". It was snow, killer of all walks.

The open sky and the enormous horizon are beautiful. Driving across the country has changed in the last 150 years. It's been 50 years since I drove several time across the country with my parents and today the concerns and arrangements one made before departure no longer are there. But even though the drive is an extended commute in a sense, it does unroll slowly enough to notice how the landscape evolves and changes. We're now at 6000 feet and when we look across the fields we can see for miles. We can see the Rockies we'll begin climbing tomorrow. Since the road follows the old trails and railway lines we inevitably see monuments and museums dedicated to those pioneer treks: the point where the rail lines from Omaha and Salt Lake City finally met, the stations where the Pony Express riders changed mounts, and the many trails whose ruts still show the weight of so many wagons. It is beautiful, beautiful country. we look forward to seeing it again when we drive back next year in another season.

Nearing the Wyoming border