DAY 4

Gas price was $2.74. Mileage was 1238. As we left Iowa, we recorded our thoughts on it. We all thought it was a beautiful state. Lots of corn, pretty hills, lots of terracing, very clean, very green.

Animal behavior was getting stranger. Our cat, Bunny, was now able to occasionally venture outside her cage. When Bunny went out, she would sunbathe on top of the cage, enjoying a nice snack of tissues a la carte. However, she spent most of her time secure in her kennel's litterbox, where she felt safe. Our dog, Kessie, became very picky about what she drank. She turned down a container of Lake Erie water. Of course, she always needs to be on someone's lap.

Absolutely nothing happened until we stopped on the Nebraska border. I looked for the Bionicle Encyclopedia 2 at a B&N, but it was nowhere to be found. I had some mediocre Sbarro pasta. My father got gyros for himself and his wife, sho had a tantrum because she wanted a turkey sandwich. Poor lady.

We soon arrived in Nebraska. By 5:00, we had gone through Omaha and Lincoln. Corn, hops and barley grew plentily, rising up like the great botanical beard of the state. The gas stations in Nebraska had impressive candy selections. My mother stocked up on confections like a squirrel preparing to hibernate.

After passing many hay farms and ranches, we arrived in our destination of North Platt, a dingy Nebraska town and home of Buffalo Bill. The only suitable hotel was a pit called the Royal Colonial Inn. Colonial, sure, but anything but royal. There was no computer, so I went mad and had nearly amputated my wrist by the end of the day.

DAY 5

It rained as we left hideous North Platt. We remembered a disturbing incident that morning where we frantically searched and searched for Bunny, who had climbed into a tiny hole under the mattress and was trapped there.

Breakfast in Nebraska: I had a donut. My parents had Sausage McSomething-or-others, each of which had about 2,000 calories each. My mother even ate a whole bag of potato chips as an appetizer. My father was desperate for coffee--a rarity in the Heartland--so he got the brown dishwater from McDonalds that they try to passoff as coffee. He hated it, so he rushed into a Starbucks--the first one we had seen since New England--and ran out with good coffee, which he loved so much, Religious content removed. - Nukora

As we drove down the road, we saw our first tumbleweed--the classic cartoon symbol of desolation. The topography had changed, too. The flatlands had been replaced with hills, the corn with cattle and the townships back to towns.

Sidney, Nebraska: $2.99 for gas, mileage in the 1700s. We received a very disturbing newsflash--the road was closed from Cheyenne to Laramie due to snow issues. That was an essential link on our route. In the confusion, I ate my father's candy bar and he ate mine. We decided to take it a step at a time and head for Cheyenne.

Ultimately, the only thing we did in Cheyenne was eat a typical road lunch of Burger King and soda, as I-80 had re-opened. Cheyenne, while glazed with a layer of snow, was hideous. We moved on to Laramie, which was several googolplex times prettier than Cheyenne and covered in white. We had found lodgings in Laramie, but we wanted to move on to Rawlins, 90-someodd miles away, where there was another excellent hotel.

So we did.

Big mistake.

There was a major traffic jam in a mountain pass. No good radio, hail hitting the car like an avalanche, a huge poultry truck blocking our view, moving along at about five miles per hour. We stayed in this jam for an hour, the only scenery a wind farm that was blowing, barely stopped by the pounding hail.

We emerged from the traffic jam after that long period of agony to find ourselved sandwiched in between a beautiful rock-face and an even more beautiful mountain, Elk Mountain, a Medicine Bow Mountain with an elevation of 11,196. We passed a sign that said "CERTIFIED HAY." If anyone can tell me what that means, they will receive $1,000,000 and a poodle of their choice.

We, interestingly enough, also noticed many trucks that had jackknifed off the road. Perhaps the traffic jam had been in favor of the three huge vehicles that had gone off the roadside.

We expected a miracle hotel--it had a lounge, restaurant and indoor pool. Yes, it had all those things, but it was as ugly and sleazy as the horrible city it was in. Rawlins was sleazy, worn-down and full of low-class, baseball-hatted loiterers. Bad grammar everywhere. Not only is the place a pit, but the people are illiterate. More grammatical errors than a Bionicle meets the Flintstones parody in the old Comedies forum.

So I am writing from this computer, which is surprisingly fast. By tomorrow, we will be in Winnemucca.