CHeyenne

The deal today was that if we got up early we could drive to Cheyenne in time to get a really great fresh steak dinner. What could be better than fresh beef? So we left Davenport early and got on the road with a good foot under us, as the Irish saying goes. Okay, there were a few snippy comments between Mom and Dad regarding sunglasses and newspapers. Devon listened to us and kept repeating that he was glad we hired out the bathroom project because it is obvious we can't work together for long periods. So I went to the back of the van and went to sleep. Seinfeld comments were also frequent. It is frightening to think that a show about nothing so closely resembles our life no matter what we are doing.

We saw a lot of windmills today. Iowa is dotted with them. They look big when we were driving by them, but we couldn't get the full impact until we saw individual pieces being transported on the roads. They are huge! We even saw a train pulling dozens of windmnill arms.

We can finally see mountains off in the distance. The terrain has moved from flat corn fields to rolling hills and buttes.

We got to the hotel around 9 pm. As we neared Cheyenne, we called the hotel to find out if there was a good steak restaurant that would be open late on a Sunday. The hotel staffer, Michelle, said yeah, there was an Outback Steakhouse just across the street! We explained that we had an Outback a mile or two fromo our home in Michigan, and was there anything with local flavor. There was, she said. So we got set for a nice dinner.However, when we checked in later Michelle said that another family had just been there and the place was not open at all on SUnday. She suggested another place, The Capitol Grille. It was open and the food was great. Devon and Brendan both had buffalo and loved it.

After dinner I hit the hot tub. There was nice young man using the hot tub to take the aches and pains out of his bum knee. We got to talking and it turns out he was in Cheyenne for the week on business. Turns out he installs windmills. And they are big. Each arm is 135 ft long and each windmill takes one full day to install. He says there is no recession in his line of work; he's busy all summer.

So now we are all tucked into bed, the boys are catching up on all the news they care about on ESPN. Tomorrow it is on to Salt Lake City.