On the road again!

Our first stop this morning was Shoshone Falls around 10 a.m.. Along the way we spotted a llama and what Samuel thought to be a skunk. As we backed up to get a closer look he said that the chicken was "ready to rock it!" Taylor said that the chicken was a rock star. The water at Shoshone was gushing today, and it was fun watching the birds catch the upward winds and float above the falls. Mist from the falls was pretty great today, so we even managed to grab a second shower! It was a beautiful sight to see all that water pour over the falls. We are eager to open the book that Dion gave us and learn more about Shoshone Falls. This book was written by Dion's grandmother, an ID state historian, but we are going to wait until we are back home to remove the plastic so that we can keep the cover in nice condition. (Thanks, Dion, for sharing it with us!)
Then it was on to Promontory, UT where the boys were able to earn their third jr. ranger badge at Gold Spike National Park. While there we were able to see both the Union Pacific (UP) and Central Pacific (CP) engines before the engineers housed them for the evening. The engines were replicas since the originals were scrapped in 1906. The UP was coal burning and started from near Omaha, NE. CP was wood burning and started in Sacramento, CA. UP laid more track with the Irish workers because they covered so much of the plains territories. The CP with its Chinese immigrant workers, however, had 1069 feet of granite to work through, and they were only able to clear about 8" a day! We also got to hear various whistle signals as they moved the trains in for the evening. You might have noticed in the pictures that some of the telegraph poles and ties are square and some are rounded and have pointed ends. The CP had saw mills. The UP did not, so they had hand hewn ties and round poles. The boys are now proudly sporting their own train pocket watches and keeping "track" of the time for us.
We passed a NASA rocket display where they test launch rockets as we were entering the park, and we must have just missed one as we were leaving Golden Spike National Park. The ranger had said that all they see from the park is some smoke when one is launched, and we were driving through a smoky haze that covered the sky as we got back out to the launch site.
Utah's mountains are unique as well. There are some grassy ones, but many are red and rocky with patches of grass. We even spotted some brave souls scaling the face of one of them. The skies were an inviting blue with white fluffy clouds dotting the view. We are now in WY and trying to cover some ground. Nathan is mourning the fact that we will miss a good bit of the scenery here in southern WY since the sun has now set at 9:45 mountain time. We are only catching glimpses of the buttes in the shadows. We saw an exit awhile back for Grand Tetons and Yellowstone off of I80, but it would have taken us 201-254 miles out of the way to get back to them. We had hoped to see the Tetons and Jackson Hole, but the weather and time did not allow. We still have many miles ahead, and to date have covered about 4300 miles in 14 days and have just gone through our first mountain tunnel in Green River, WY.
S...I...G...H... Finally, we are in Laramie at 1:30 a.m. Never again will I drive the barren 20 mile stretch between Hazen/Des Arc and Brinkley, AR with the same boredom. You haven't even seen desolate 'til you head down some of these highways in WY - long straight shots with no lights, billboards, or traffic anywhere it sight!! It's not so bad during the day when you can see the beautiful mountains on the horizon, but it's dreadful in the dark of night!