7:15 in Lincoln Thursday morning and nothing worth eating

at the Courtyard we fumbled our way to the interstate, went west with constant trucking on 80

to a C-store and gas a bit before Kearny [no bananas but fortuitously found in the ice chest a small piece of melt-in-the-mouth beef from the previous night’s dinner].

At exit 272, 125 miles out of Lincoln, we took 44 south, the threatening rains holding off until Holdredge and the Country Cookin’ Cafe where at 10:45 they’d just stopped serving breakfast

so we happily settled for panini and fries with a burger [not shown], all friendly fresh

and perfect. Linda drove after that as the rain made good on its threat, continuing

persistently down into and across

Kansas [Jennings – “Come Czech Us Out”] until

Sharon Springs where, though not before some Arizona asshole in a giant motorhome [naturally towing the obligatory SUV] nearly ran her into the ditch as she pulled off for gas,

I took over into weather forecasted as “cloudy”, though with said cloud down to the deck

it surely seemed no different. Long spacious stretches of mostly nothing, the temperature

half what it’d been coming up three days before. Completely different in that regard…

the rain let up, mostly, and after couple of hours I gave up

until Walsenburg where after stopping for Safeway and a last gas we drove

up into the remnants of a wet day at the ‘Commune’…fogs were disappearing into the valley

to disperse utterly for a bright and sunny Friday which saw laundry done and Erin off

to Albuquerque, the dogs having apparently enjoyed all the extra exercise, but also happy

we were home. We, too; I immediately decided it was time to immortalize the drive, only to find someone [me] had already been there…

Oh well, swell; at least we had three days to puzzle that out before town, again…and Then.