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Pics for the day
Passed our first wind farm. That was cool to see. Oddly beautiful. Graceful. Also huge. I have a bunch of pics of the windmills, but I've also got one (taken in CA) of an extra-long flatbed truck carrying one of the blades. You just don't get the scale of the things until you see that.
Also passed our first Oregon Trail site (though we blew right by it without stopping), which was cool. And made us think about what it would have been like to travel the country as a pioneer. In the truck, we were covering every half hour a distance it would have taken a chuck wagon a full day or more to cover, even on a good day. And we had maps, a GPS, cell phones, a paved highway, rest stops, hotels, modern medicine... Amazing what the settlers managed.
Passed an interesting sign along the highway, too. It said that 47,000 tires had been recycled and used in the paving of the section of highway we were on going between two towns. We wondered how many miles that would be. We guessed. I looked it up on the map. You want to guess how many miles of highway you can pave with 47,000 tires? Remember that the tires are only a portion of the mix used to make the pavement.
Made your guess yet?
Okay.
The answer is... 6. 47,000 tires made 6 miles of pavement.
Had lunch at just about exactly our halfway point in the little town of Kearny, NB... just after passing their Archway. It's an odd sight. Hundreds of miles of cornfields (and little else) behind you. Hundreds of miles of the same ahead. And, out of nowhere, this arch spanning the highway. Which turns out to actually be a museum (which we unfortunately didn't take the time to explore). Go figure.
Another interesting series of signs were the ones warning that if the attached lights were flashing, the highway ahead was closed and we should exit immediately. They're there for winter storms, mostly. Now, we get blizzards in NJ. At least we used to when I was a kid. They've been more rare in the last 10 or 15 years. Stupid global climate change. But NJ is the most densely populated state in the country. Constant traffic keeps the snow from piling up on the highways, and there's no shortage of plows. The idea of a major highway having to be closed so often as to require a permanent sign with flashing lights and heavy construction was just completely alien to me.
And, other than passing exits for Granger and Potter, that was about the most interesting thing we managed to see from the road. Iowa and Nebraska were, for us, 1000 miles of cornfields. (And, every once in a while, a field or two of some other crop we never definitively identified (hard to tell at highway speed. A little poking on the 'net seems to suggest they were likely soybeans. Would not have guessed that.) Glad to know we still have thriving agriculture (most of NJ's farms were bought out and paved over during my childhood, if not before), but it does get kind of monotonous.
I suppose I could mention the radio. Fits as well here as anywhere. We came across a lot of country stations, of course, but neither of us is particularly fond of the genre. So we searched for what else we could find. That was almost always classic rock. Which makes good cross-country driving music, I think. Pleasant, with a good beat, but not forceful or aggressive or overly fast-paced. Thing is that as we approached the center of the country, the age of the music increased. The mix included a bit of the 90s, then down to the early 80s, then 70s and below. Then, as we got past Wyoming and over towards the west coast, we traveled back through time to more modern music. Very odd effect.
Other thing about the radio is that we found ourselves hearing songs we hadn't heard in years... only to hear them again later that day or the next day and again a day or so later. From completely different radio stations. (Though probably stations owned by some media conglomerate.) I heard more Gin Blossoms that week than I'd heard in a decade. After their heyday in the early 90s, I don't think anyone played the Gin Blossoms except at some random listener's request. But we heard them as we traveled back to the 90s (in Iowa or Illinois) and again as we returned through time (in Nevada and eastern California). I forget other specific songs and artists, but it happened again and again with a variety of them. It was fun at times, but also just weird.
Anyway, we made about 500 miles for the day. Stopped for the night in Laramie, WY.
Passed our first wind farm. That was cool to see. Oddly beautiful. Graceful. Also huge. I have a bunch of pics of the windmills, but I've also got one (taken in CA) of an extra-long flatbed truck carrying one of the blades. You just don't get the scale of the things until you see that.
Also passed our first Oregon Trail site (though we blew right by it without stopping), which was cool. And made us think about what it would have been like to travel the country as a pioneer. In the truck, we were covering every half hour a distance it would have taken a chuck wagon a full day or more to cover, even on a good day. And we had maps, a GPS, cell phones, a paved highway, rest stops, hotels, modern medicine... Amazing what the settlers managed.
Passed an interesting sign along the highway, too. It said that 47,000 tires had been recycled and used in the paving of the section of highway we were on going between two towns. We wondered how many miles that would be. We guessed. I looked it up on the map. You want to guess how many miles of highway you can pave with 47,000 tires? Remember that the tires are only a portion of the mix used to make the pavement.
Made your guess yet?
Okay.
The answer is... 6. 47,000 tires made 6 miles of pavement.
Had lunch at just about exactly our halfway point in the little town of Kearny, NB... just after passing their Archway. It's an odd sight. Hundreds of miles of cornfields (and little else) behind you. Hundreds of miles of the same ahead. And, out of nowhere, this arch spanning the highway. Which turns out to actually be a museum (which we unfortunately didn't take the time to explore). Go figure.
Another interesting series of signs were the ones warning that if the attached lights were flashing, the highway ahead was closed and we should exit immediately. They're there for winter storms, mostly. Now, we get blizzards in NJ. At least we used to when I was a kid. They've been more rare in the last 10 or 15 years. Stupid global climate change. But NJ is the most densely populated state in the country. Constant traffic keeps the snow from piling up on the highways, and there's no shortage of plows. The idea of a major highway having to be closed so often as to require a permanent sign with flashing lights and heavy construction was just completely alien to me.
And, other than passing exits for Granger and Potter, that was about the most interesting thing we managed to see from the road. Iowa and Nebraska were, for us, 1000 miles of cornfields. (And, every once in a while, a field or two of some other crop we never definitively identified (hard to tell at highway speed. A little poking on the 'net seems to suggest they were likely soybeans. Would not have guessed that.) Glad to know we still have thriving agriculture (most of NJ's farms were bought out and paved over during my childhood, if not before), but it does get kind of monotonous.
I suppose I could mention the radio. Fits as well here as anywhere. We came across a lot of country stations, of course, but neither of us is particularly fond of the genre. So we searched for what else we could find. That was almost always classic rock. Which makes good cross-country driving music, I think. Pleasant, with a good beat, but not forceful or aggressive or overly fast-paced. Thing is that as we approached the center of the country, the age of the music increased. The mix included a bit of the 90s, then down to the early 80s, then 70s and below. Then, as we got past Wyoming and over towards the west coast, we traveled back through time to more modern music. Very odd effect.
Other thing about the radio is that we found ourselves hearing songs we hadn't heard in years... only to hear them again later that day or the next day and again a day or so later. From completely different radio stations. (Though probably stations owned by some media conglomerate.) I heard more Gin Blossoms that week than I'd heard in a decade. After their heyday in the early 90s, I don't think anyone played the Gin Blossoms except at some random listener's request. But we heard them as we traveled back to the 90s (in Iowa or Illinois) and again as we returned through time (in Nevada and eastern California). I forget other specific songs and artists, but it happened again and again with a variety of them. It was fun at times, but also just weird.
Anyway, we made about 500 miles for the day. Stopped for the night in Laramie, WY.
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