Day 3: Rock Springs, WY to North Platte, NE (476 mi)

After yesterday's marathon drive, today's drive (one of the shortest if not the shortest of the whole trip) was a piece of cake.

The cats were very calm about it. Boring even. Here are the obligatory cat pics, though:

Still insisting on both being on the cushion

"X" marks the (napping) spot
(I guess Phoenix was in Gizmo's way.)

Interesting stuff for the day:

I had my idea of the continental divide completely redefined today. After a couple of climbs out of Rock Springs, we came out on a plain with soft rolling hills. As we drove across the plain, I could see mountains in the distance and was thinking that we'd have to climb those to reach the top of the Rockies and, therefore, the continental divide. Imagine my surprise when we came to the top of a not-particularly-high rolling hill and were confronted with a sign marking the continental divide! My surprise was even greater about an hour later when we again came across a sign marking the continental divide. It turns out that the divide itself splits around and through the Great Divide Basin. We never did make any of the fantastic climbs to a high pass in the Rockies that I was expecting.

Throughout the parts of Wyoming that we drove today, there are signs approximately 5 miles apart that say "Strong Wind Possible Next 5 Miles". The winds were pretty strong all day, but it seems like the signs could have been posted more efficiently.

Coming down out of the Rockies and onto the Nebraska plains was pretty anticlimactic, but I learned something. The plains aren't as flat as I had always understood them to be. Most of the time, you can't really see all that far because you're surrounded by rolling hills. When we could see off into the distance, it was usually obscured by the rain storms that seemed to be everywhere. We only drove through a small amount of rain, but the way one moment you're dry and the next the windshield is being pounded by very large raindrops is pretty impressive.

The best place name of the day: Point of Rocks (somewhere not too far east of Rock Springs). We didn't see the geographical feature that this refers to, but my guess is that it's some sort of point made up of rocks.

For those who may be curious, the car is running amazingly well. We're getting 23-25 mpg even though we're doing 75-80 mph (speed limit 75) with the air conditioning on and climbing some pretty steep hills and passes from time to time. The gas prices have gone steadily down as we've gone east, too. The station right outside my hotel window as I write this is charging $3.639 for regular.