Crossing the Country Day 4: Nebraska to Colorado

The first half of day 4 of our journey was definitely through the most boring landscape: Nebraska. Interestingly, we also saw more police there than probably all of the other states we drove through combined. Maybe they have a problem with people speeding to get through the boring parts more quickly.

We did find one interesting thing in Nebraska. We stopped in North Platte for lunch, which turned out to be the birthplace of Buffalo Bill Cody. There was a free museum next door to the restaurant we ate lunch at, so we stopped in for a look.

They had a very intricate, hand-carved replica of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show that moved. Sarah thought it was fascinating.

Mostly she was excited to ride all of the fake animals in front.

We were just happy to find something interesting for our poor, cooped-up toddler to do to get some energy out. She really was a trooper. She usually got in one good fit per day right before falling asleep for her nap. We counted ourselves pretty lucky getting away with 10 minutes of screaming each day.

From Nebraska, we headed down into Colorado so that we could visit family and then go home through Utah. It started snowing pretty much the moment we entered Colorado. By the time we reached Kelson's Aunt Deedee's house in Parker, we were driving through several inches of snow on a muddy road to reach their house. We figured we would be pretty safe weather-wise traveling the last week of April, but apparently we were wrong.

We forgot to take any pictures at Aunt DeeDee's house, but we had a delightful visit with her and her family over dinner. Sarah was just excited to have a couch with blankets and pillows to tuck herself in on again. One of the best parts of traveling is when you can stop to catch up with friends and family that you rarely get to see. We were very happy that we could make it to their house on this trip.

After dinner, we decided to try to make it a couple more hours down the road into the mountains before stopping for the night so that we would have time to do some things the next day. The drive up Vale Pass turned out to be very snowy and treacherous. We were extremely relieved to reach Silverthorne and stop at our hotel for the night. It felt more like traveling in December than April. 

This is what our car looked like by the next morning. Gross. Stay tuned for days 5 and 6 to hear about the rest of our adventure!