I feel like I'm in 4th grade again, driving (albeit in reverse) along the Oregon Trail. I don't know about people who didn't grow up in Oregon, but we Oregonian kids studied the Oregon Trail in depth for a whole year of school, culminating in a week-long re-enactment, complete with an Indian attack carried out by the 6th graders.
The pioneer fun carried on in the form of the Oregon Trail computer game, which is pretty much all I remember doing, ever, during elementary school computer lab time. This one time, I started out as a farmer, didn't have anybody die of dysentery, cholera, a broken leg, or starvation, chose to raft the Columbia River, and didn't crash, but then computer lab time was up and I had to walk away just moments from finishing what was basically a perfect game. Sigh. I can still feel the thwarted anticipation of earning a triple score for being a farmer.
So you can imagine my giddiness when on our trip today we started passing such notable sights as Fort Bridger. Fort Bridger! It was all I could do to restrain myself from going into town to trade some goods.
We set ourselves at a steady pace with meager rations. We only drove 9 hours but we limited our food to what we had in the car plus one $5 sub from Subway to split among us all. It worked out pretty well. We're staying the night in Scottsbluff, Nebraska and are looking forward to visiting Chimney Rock tomorrow. Chimney Rock!
Nebraska is very exotic to me. The stoplights are sideways and the only past tense that exists is third-person singular, at least if the front desk clerk at our hotel is any indication. There are rolling fields and country highways whose speed limit is 65 mph and everything seems very wholesome and corn-fed.
Next up, on Day 2: the rest of Nebraska, and hopefully a goodly portion of Iowa.