Day 3: Big, boring Nebraska

We started out the day in Des Moines, Iowa and passed more cornfields and bright blue skies:

This map at the rest stop showed us near the Iowa/Nebraska border:

This sign says "Mall of the Bluffs" hehe

This is the Missouri River:

Now entering Nebraska!

Nebraska is sunny, flat and full of corn:

This dump truck was pulling another dump truck (on the left):

This was a typical Nebraska rest stop: a tiny building right next to corn fields: 

Route 80 in Nebraska paralleled the old pony express, Oregon trail, mormon trail, and California trails: 

Nebraska license plate!

Here is a typical tiny Nebraska rest stop with just bathrooms and vending machines.  That's my Prius : )

View from the rest stop:

Interesting directions in the rest area bathrooms: 

Behind the rest stop, a sign warning against rattlesnakes:

This sign was behind the rest stop:

Tons of glare, but this says "welcome to wyoming!"

Wyoming had tons of trains carrying goods:

Our hotel for the night -- best western in cheyenne, wy, surrounded by absolutely nothing!

Cowboy boot planters outside our hotel doors:

We ate dinner at a pub inside an old train depot in Cheyenne, WY:

Giant cowboy boots everywhere! This one was in front of the old train depot: 

End of day 2: sunny Iowa!

For lunch on day 2, we stopped at a Golden Corral buffet in Indiana. So much food for only 7.99! They had a chocolate fountain for dessert:

We then headed back to route 80, on our way to Illinois and Iowa! 

Rainy Illinois looked a lot like this :

We even saw a town named princeton : )

And we also saw some wind turbines!

And then we crossed the Mississippi River between IL and Iowa, at the only point where the river flows east-west :

At which point we arrived in Iowa! Iowa gave us a beautiful, sunny afternoon with lots of pretty farms.

Gorgeous blue sky!  For dinner, we ate at the Iowa Machine Shop Restaurant in Des Moines, where I took my pic with a giant corn-on-the-cob:

Tomorrow we finish the western half of Iowa, do all of Nebraska (Omaha, Lincoln and Kearny), and spend the night in Cheyenne, WY.

Fun fact learned today while trying to get a cashier's check for my new apartment: Bank of America has NO locations in Nebraska, Wyoming or Utah. Ugh!

Day 2: A rainy Ohio and cloudy Indiana

We started off today a little before 8 leaving our La Quinta in Toledo, OH:

And we've been driving for a few hours and now we're in Indiana! This is our first "new" state on the road trip!

Gonna pass by Chicago and Cedar Rapids today on our way to Des Moines, IA!

Day 1: Toledo, OH

Today started off with a nice fall day in NJ and turned into a windy, rainy day on the PA Turnpike.  We passed by Philly, Lancaster, Hershey, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and now we're spending the night in Toledo, OH.  Tomorrow we pass through Indiana and Illinois and spend the night in Des Moines, IA.  It was a pretty uneventful day -- no traffic or accidents.  Here's what the landscape in Ohio looked like:

And here's some of the gorgeous fall foliage we saw in PA:

Starting off!

Today I leave for my 5-day cross-country road trip to start my new job in San Francisco!  Day 1 ends in Toledo, OH, then Des Moines, IA, then Cheyenne, WY, then Elko, NV, then CA!  Today I started off driving to my parents' house in a Hopewell, passing familiar farm and fall foliage scenery on the way: