2017-08-28 Road Trip to Illinois

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This blog is chronicles our road trip to Illinois in 2017 for Mary's 50th high school class reunion. We didn't do a huge amount of sightseeing on our drive but we were able to find a few interesting detours giving us a chance to visit some things that we hadn't expected to see.

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Aug 28 - Great Salt Lake

We have taken the drive across California to Nevada many times so we didn't stop to take any pictures. The long drive across Nevada and Utah is generally not all that interesting. We made it to Salt Lake City today with only photo stops being the Great Salt Lake.

Aug 29 - Bow Mountain Wyoming

No more photo stops or other stops until we got to Rawlins Wyoming, where we stopped at our favorite Mexican restaurant, Rose's Lariat, for lunch. We had discovered this restaurant on our previous road trip to Illinois. It is a tiny, whole in the wall restaurants with one table and about 10 chairs at the counter. While eating lunch we started visiting with the couple next to us at the counter. When they found out that we were heading east they recommended that we take a detour through the Bow Mountain area. It turned out to be great advice.

The drive through the mountains was very beautiful.

We had a great time viewing a mother moose and her calf.

Mary took photos of wild flowers that we saw at our various stops.

We had a photo stop at picturesque Lake Marie.

While there we were visited by a ground squirrel.

Just down the road was equally lovely Mirror Lake.

No long after exiting the main Bow Mountain area the road took us through a small settlement. We stopped at a shop that advertised homemade ice cream. Who can resist that. They also had a lot of interesting signs and goodies to buy.

Aug 30 - Drive Across Nebraska

One generally doesn't thank that Nebraska has much of interest for tourists. However, we did find a couple of interesting stops along the way. Our first stop was in Gothenburg NB where we visited a small historical museum and a small park with an old cabin.

We also stopped in Kearney NB at the Archway Pioneer Memorial. This huge arch spans the four lanes and median of Interstate 80. It had a very nice exhibit inside.

Aug 31 - Iowa

Iowa, another fly over state that most don't associate with tourist stops. However, some billboards enticed us to detour south of off Route 80 where we found the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City. The site has a herd of American bison that is part of the efforts to preserve this great beast. They have a program of circulating bison with other herds in the US and Canada in an effort to maintain genetic diversity.

We saw bison but they were very far away.

The refuge is part of an effort to restore and preserve the prairie grasslands that used to dominate the center of the country before farming took over. The tall grass prairies were in danger being totally wiped out and many of the unique grasses lost because of the extensive farming across the middle of the US. This refuge, and others are trying to preserve these ancient grasses. Reconstruction has started on over 3,000 acres and restoration is taking place on more than 300 acres of prairie remnants.